t0ll3l3g3 's review for:

Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle by Daniel L. Everett

4.0

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You know when you can’t be bothered with an endless New Yorker article so you read the book instead because that makes a world of sense?I just finished Don't Sleep, There are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle by Daniel Everett. The experience of listening to the audiobook was like listening to what,in literary fiction, is known as an unreliable narrator. Prior to his research into the language of a community of indigenous people in the Amazon called the Pirahã, the author was an evangelist missionary intent on translating the New Testament to their language. The so-called Old Testament has way better stories, but ok. Firstly. Secondly, you can detect in his narrative an element of condescension to the Pirahã. And lastly, Nome Chomsky called him a charlatan! The book is nevertheless full of jaw dropping stories and interesting observations—such as that maybe linguists should get out more. How has this not been made into a film? The conclusion, at least to this humble poster, brought to mind the ideas presented in This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom by Swedish philosopher Martin Hägglund which boil down to “live by the moment” if I dare to be so reductive and it is as if the Pirahã were a living, even transcendent embodiment of his ideas in the book.