Driving with Animals

Charley Waterman used to say. of a dog that always occupied the driving seat when the humans were absent, that she knew driving was important, and that somebody had to do it; she just didn’t know how.

Quote

“In my rucksack I took Mandelstam’s Journey to Armenia and Hemingway’s In Our Time. Six months later I came back with the bones of a book that, this time, did get published. While stringing its sentences together, I thought that telling stories was the only conceivable occupation for a superfluous person such as myself.” Bruce …

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Beebesaurus

I finally got my copy, Beebe’s copy, of his book Our Search  for a Wilderness, with his bookplate. The seller thought it was an iguana, but I knew it was a sketch of a possible “pre-Archaeopteryx” avian ancestor he had imagined. In 1910. I think it was 2003 when they dug up Microraptor gui. The …

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Mislaid

ANOTHER review. I don’t do many for satirical novels, but this one is caviar, and unique. I have oxymoronically described it as vaguely like a kindly early Evelyn Waugh or a sane Edward St Aubyn, both manifestly impossible. Its tone and setting in contemporary Virginia remind me of photographer Sally Mann’s excellent recent memoir, Hold …

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Shrewdunnit

Conor Mark Jameson, who might be familiar to readers of the blog from his involvment in getting the TH White memorial plaque up at the World Center at Boise, or for his excellent book Looking for the Goshawk, has a new title out: Shrewdunnit: The Nature Files. Shrewdunnit is done in an old form, one …

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New Coursing Book

To See Them Run: Great Plains Coyote Coursing, with text by Utah folklorist Eric Elaison, splendid photos by Scott Squire, and a long introductory essay by me, is finally out from the University Press of Mississipi… and about time! Our efforts have seen us, for about five years (more?) right through a couple of academic …

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Got it!

The Mauser C96 “Broomhandle” automatic pistol– if anything I own is “iconic”, it is. I have wanted one for many years. I will add Arthur Wilderson’s excellent short essay when he sends it, but it was the gun of Churchill at Omdurman and Lawrence of Arabia; Walter “Karamojo” Bell supposedly shot down a German fighter …

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Italian Design

Italian gun design, like Spanish, has looked to England, albeit with more decorative engraving and gaudier wood. Now, things are changing, some radically, some more subtly. For the radical, see Benelli’s re- imagining of the over and under. I cannot warm to this angular- lined gun, but you should not bet against Benelli. Years ago, …

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Beebe

Will Beebe, naturalist, writer, inventor, New York socialite, jungle and ocean explorer, is a man whose like it would be hard to have today. But without his example, I don’t know if I would be the person I am. Tom McGuane also cites him as a childhood inspiration, not for writing (I think he slights …

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