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zachlittrell 's review for:
Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle
by Daniel L. Everett
Daniel Everett's book is interesting, but too often completely on accident. Dan seems like a likable, okay guy with a whole lot of stories to tell about his time with the Pirahã -- just he's always two gasps away from saying what the audience actually wants to hear. (Hint: it's not about his beef with 80+ year old linguists).
It's easy to see why Dan was charmed by the Pirahã. They regularly use repetition as a rhetorical device, because they like it and often because it's hard to hear over all the damn noise in the Amazon. The women have a slightly different language than the men (this, sadly though, gets little discussion). And couples go off into the freaking jungle to get their freak on.
But Dan, uncomfortably, talks about the warts too. He acknowledges the Pirahã men nearly killed him and his family in a drunken stupor. Children are euthanized out of a form of Darwinian 'mercy.' And they aren't exactly well-behaved with some of their other neighbors along the river. Dan calling them 'peaceful' people feels a little weird and patronizing given evidence they're way more complex than that.
What really grinds the fun to a halt is when Everett puts on his "Rebel Linguist" hat and goes leaping at Noam Chomsky. Everett believes Pirahã is a unique language and gives Chomsky's theories of universal grammar a black eye. Real shame then that Everett does a bad job of really explaining what that means here, and a worse job defending it. It's not clear how Pirahã is really that unique except for the most hair-splitting of arguments. All he really accomplishes is coming off a little bit like a macho snob -- Chomsky never went down the Amazon like a REAL linguist/man, like me, did he?? Did he?!
The Pirahã people and language does seem really interesting -- hell, Dan's experience being a missionary and father in the middle of a people who share no common language with him is a neat journey too. But he couldn't help himself to get on his soapbox and air his grievances with Lingusitics Old Guard and organized religion (it doesn't take long to realize that little "translate the bible" project ain't gonna get done).
On the flip side though, I reckon it is kinda hard to put 3 decades of experience with an indigenous Amazonian people nearly into a single book.
It's easy to see why Dan was charmed by the Pirahã. They regularly use repetition as a rhetorical device, because they like it and often because it's hard to hear over all the damn noise in the Amazon. The women have a slightly different language than the men (this, sadly though, gets little discussion). And couples go off into the freaking jungle to get their freak on.
But Dan, uncomfortably, talks about the warts too. He acknowledges the Pirahã men nearly killed him and his family in a drunken stupor. Children are euthanized out of a form of Darwinian 'mercy.' And they aren't exactly well-behaved with some of their other neighbors along the river. Dan calling them 'peaceful' people feels a little weird and patronizing given evidence they're way more complex than that.
What really grinds the fun to a halt is when Everett puts on his "Rebel Linguist" hat and goes leaping at Noam Chomsky. Everett believes Pirahã is a unique language and gives Chomsky's theories of universal grammar a black eye. Real shame then that Everett does a bad job of really explaining what that means here, and a worse job defending it. It's not clear how Pirahã is really that unique except for the most hair-splitting of arguments. All he really accomplishes is coming off a little bit like a macho snob -- Chomsky never went down the Amazon like a REAL linguist/man, like me, did he?? Did he?!
The Pirahã people and language does seem really interesting -- hell, Dan's experience being a missionary and father in the middle of a people who share no common language with him is a neat journey too. But he couldn't help himself to get on his soapbox and air his grievances with Lingusitics Old Guard and organized religion (it doesn't take long to realize that little "translate the bible" project ain't gonna get done).
On the flip side though, I reckon it is kinda hard to put 3 decades of experience with an indigenous Amazonian people nearly into a single book.