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A review by duffypratt
The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin
2.0
For a long time (too long), it looked like it was going to take me longer to read this book than it took the Beagle to sail around the world. Darwin was a brilliant man, and a fine writer. But the genre of naturalistic travel writings is just not for me. In a similar vein, I've also read some of Thoreau's travel writings, a less brilliant man but a better writer, and came away with the same feeling.
In brief sections, I would find the book brilliant. But those brief sections would not be enough to drive me forward. So instead, I had to plunge through longer pieces at a time, and the brilliance somehow turns to a dull slog. After not too long, I simply lose interest in how many varieties of insect he found on that other side of some obscure mountain in South America. Yeah, and I know that's my failing.
In college, this book was required for several Freshman english classes, but thankfully not for mine. If I had been forced to read this in a couple of weeks or less, I might simply have dropped out.
I did find it interesting to see how thoroughly Darwin, who was otherwise extremely open minded, clung to the notion of British nobility and how it contrasted with savagery. I can almost see how the Social Darwinists would come to pervert his theories, because his notions about the superiority of civilization, and of British civilization in particular, seem to point in that direction (even if they are strictly speaking irrelevant).
The other thing that impressed me in this book was his acceptance that extinction is just part of the way of things. He blithely mentions the inevitable extinction of species at several points in the book. What a sharp contrast to the progressive environmentalists who seem to want to put an end to all extinctions, and think that it is somehow our duty.
I wish I had liked this book more. There's not a whole lot that I found wrong with it, given what it is and what it was trying to do. On that score, it is exceptionally good. The only problem is, I guess, that I just don't like that sort of book, and I refuse to learn my lesson and stop reading them.
In brief sections, I would find the book brilliant. But those brief sections would not be enough to drive me forward. So instead, I had to plunge through longer pieces at a time, and the brilliance somehow turns to a dull slog. After not too long, I simply lose interest in how many varieties of insect he found on that other side of some obscure mountain in South America. Yeah, and I know that's my failing.
In college, this book was required for several Freshman english classes, but thankfully not for mine. If I had been forced to read this in a couple of weeks or less, I might simply have dropped out.
I did find it interesting to see how thoroughly Darwin, who was otherwise extremely open minded, clung to the notion of British nobility and how it contrasted with savagery. I can almost see how the Social Darwinists would come to pervert his theories, because his notions about the superiority of civilization, and of British civilization in particular, seem to point in that direction (even if they are strictly speaking irrelevant).
The other thing that impressed me in this book was his acceptance that extinction is just part of the way of things. He blithely mentions the inevitable extinction of species at several points in the book. What a sharp contrast to the progressive environmentalists who seem to want to put an end to all extinctions, and think that it is somehow our duty.
I wish I had liked this book more. There's not a whole lot that I found wrong with it, given what it is and what it was trying to do. On that score, it is exceptionally good. The only problem is, I guess, that I just don't like that sort of book, and I refuse to learn my lesson and stop reading them.