{"id":5260,"date":"2011-03-03T12:20:03","date_gmt":"2011-03-03T16:20:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=5260"},"modified":"2016-06-27T18:46:11","modified_gmt":"2016-06-27T22:46:11","slug":"j-a-baker-the-peregrine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2011\/03\/03\/j-a-baker-the-peregrine\/","title":{"rendered":"J.A. Baker: The Peregrine<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"
The Peregrine<\/strong><\/em><\/span>\r\nby J.A. Baker (1967)<\/span>\r\nNYRB Classics (2004)<\/span>\r\n191 pp<\/span><\/pre>\n
One of the many things I like about NYRB Classics is that while they bring us works that should never have gone out of print they don’t focus on fiction only. They publish memoirs, travel journals, biographies, histories, nature sketches, etc. And since the mind behind the whole operation remains the same, you can read these knowing you’ll get your fill for great, literary, timeless\u00a0writing. I’ve picked up several of these other-than-fiction titles, but the first I’ve read confirms what I wrote above. J.A. Baker’s\u00a0The Peregrine<\/em> is a phenomenal piece of nature writing I’d recommend even to those who most abhor nature writing.<\/p>\n
\"\"<\/p>\n
I first heard about The Peregrine<\/em> on Twitter when someone simply said that I must read it. I’m tempted to say the same thing here and make this my briefest review yet. But, because I highlighted so many passages and found so much that fascinated me, both because of the substance and the writing, I will go on — happily.<\/p>\n
Reclusive J.A. Baker (in the introduction I learned that we don’t even know\u00a0when he died)\u00a0spent\u00a0a decade\u00a0tracking the peregrine falcons that\u00a0hunted around his home. This is his account, laid out like a journal, of one of those years. In it,\u00a0not only does he beautifully\u00a0write about\u00a0the weather and that land,\u00a0he gets the heart racing as he describes a hunting scene. At other times, he personifies the wildlife; I particularly remember an episode where Baker stumbled upon an owl and the two looked at each other for quite some time:\u00a0“It’s face was like a mask; macabre, ravaged, sorrowing, like the face of a drowned man.” But, as wonderful as they are,\u00a0these objective scenes\u00a0aren’t what make the book so great, that make the book transcendent.<\/p>\n
First, and still not the most fascinating aspect, Baker, in a tone that foreshadows W.G. Sebald’s great The Rings of Saturn<\/em>\u00a0(my review here<\/a>). In many ways, this is a patient walk around\u00a0the countryside, a walk that presents to the narrator many objects\u00a0that deserve deep reflection,\u00a0a walk that I, as a reader, am happy to follow.<\/p>\n
East of my home, the long ridge lies across the skyline like the low hull of a submarine. Above it, the eastern sky is bright with reflections of distant water, and there is a feeling of sails beyond land. Hill trees mass together in a dark-spired forest, but when I move towards them they slowly fan apart,\u00a0the sky descends between, and they are solitary oaks and elms, each with its own wide territory of winter shadow. The calmness, the solitude of horizons lures me towards them, through them, and on to others. They layer the memory like strata.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Coincidentally,\u00a0like The Rings of Saturn<\/em>,\u00a0The Peregrine<\/em> also takes place in East Anglia and ruminates\u00a0on the remnants of dead or dying pieces of history. In contrast, The Peregrine<\/em> focuses exclusively on the passing of a place’s natural history. In the late 60s, pesticides and other pollutants had all but destroyed the peregrine population, among others.<\/p>\n
I pursued them for many summers, but they were hard to find and harder to see, being so few and so wary. They lived a fugitive, guerrilla life. In all the overgrown neglected places the frail bones of generations of sparrowhawks are sifting down now into the deep humus of the woods. They were a banished race of beautiful barbarians, and when they died they could not be replaced.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
For me, though, the most incredible aspect of this book is the portrayal of one man’s desire to escape humanity and become the creature he hunts. It is an account of a man who truly lives on the fringe, again, written beautifully.<\/p>\n
I have always longed to be a part of the outward life, to be out there at the edge of things, to let the human taint wash away in emptiness and silence as the fox sloughs his smell into the cold unworldliness of water; to return to the town as a stranger.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
It is a strange, yet seductive\u00a0transformation\u00a0that occurs subtly throughout the book until Baker makes a surprising statement and finds himself at one with the hawk and baffled by humanity.<\/p>\n
I found myself crouching over the kill, like a mantling hawk. My eyes turned quickly about, alert for the walking heads of men. Unconsciously I was imitating the movements of a hawk, as in some primitive ritual; the hunter becoming the thing he hunts. I looked into the wood. In a lair of shadow the peregrine was crouching, watching me, gripping the neck of a dead branch. We live, in these days in the open, the same ecstatic fearful life. We shun men. We hate their suddenly uplifted arms, the insanity of their flailing gestures, their erratic scissoring gait, their aimless stumbling ways, the tombstone whiteness of their faces.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
There is another book I’d like to draw a quick comparison to: Melville’s\u00a0Moby-Dick<\/em>\u00a0(my review here<\/a>).\u00a0Perhaps I only remembered\u00a0the great\u00a0Moby-Dick<\/em> chapter “The Whiteness of the Whale” when I read in\u00a0The Peregrine<\/em>\u00a0the phrase\u00a0“tombstone whiteness of their faces,” and that small connection made me read Baker with Melville in mind.\u00a0Nevertheless,\u00a0there were many times I thought of that great book while reading this great book (yes, all three books that show up in this review are “great”). Both take a natural subject and blow it up to universal proportion. Both have the gift of language that both haunts and seduces.<\/p>\n
There is a big difference, though: The Peregrine<\/em> is a short book. There is no real excuse for not reading it now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Trevor reviews J.A. Baker’s strange 1967 book, The Peregrine<\/em>. Read the full post<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12886,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"libsyn-item-id":0,"libsyn-show-id":0,"libsyn-post-error":"","libsyn-post-error_post-type":"","libsyn-post-error_post-permissions":"","libsyn-post-error_api":"","playlist-podcast-url":"","libsyn-episode-thumbnail":"","libsyn-episode-widescreen_image":"","libsyn-episode-blog_image":"","libsyn-episode-background_image":"","libsyn-post-episode-category-selection":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_thumbnail":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_theme":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_height":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_width":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_placement":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link_text":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_custom_color":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-explicit":"","libsyn-post-episode":"","libsyn-post-episode-update-id3":"","libsyn-post-episode-release-date":"","libsyn-post-episode-simple-download":"","libsyn-release-date":"","libsyn-post-update-release-date":"","libsyn-is_draft":"","libsyn-new-media-media":"","libsyn-post-episode-subtitle":"","libsyn-new-media-image":"","libsyn-post-episode-keywords":"","libsyn-post-itunes":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-season-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-type":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-title":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-author":"","libsyn-destination-releases":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-enabled":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-input-enabled":false,"libsyn-post-episode-premium_state":"","libsyn-episode-shortcode":"","libsyn-episode-embedurl":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[800,230],"tags":[924,974,913],"coauthors":[505],"class_list":["post-5260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-j-a-baker","tag-1960s","tag-974","tag-nyrb-classics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/The-Peregrine.jpg?fit=338%2C530&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pqqvZ-1mQ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5260"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5260\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18959,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5260\/revisions\/18959"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5260"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=5260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}