to read this mammoth of a book, even though I regularly read two novels a month, if not an entire book in one sleepless sitting. Underland is the longest I`ve ever held onto a library book. Why? Because it was ‘worthy’. Because I believe in Macfarlane’s eco vision. Because I read The Wild Places years ago and fell in love with his kind of heartfelt writing, as it reminded me of falling in love with wild landscapes when I was 14, moving from London to the edge of Dartmoor.
Yes, here comes the first`but’ …
Theres’ a lot of repetition, a lot of metaphorical Anthropocenic blurring regarding viewpoints which want to be inclusive but instead accumulate throughout the under and overland journeys to become overplayed, if not desperate. Like the useful, with regard to the opening of minds (and hearts) earnestness of his prose, up to a point… Look, I absolutely get what Macfarlane is trying to do, by exposing a lack of living language that ought to add to rather than sidestep or accept the Anthropocenic, and I certainly believe it needs to be done. But for me, as a sofa-reader, attempting to live now within my own limitations, without feeling crass and too humanly culpable, the journeys described to melting glaciers which include massive feats of endurance, for example the mountain trek to the cave in the Norwegian Lofotens, leave me behind in a snow cloud as winter storms close in, and I can`t help wondering what the point of that struggle was, especially as it was reportedly ill-advised by locals… I mean, by the time I got to the travails of the Knud Rasmussen glacier moulin, it was quite hard to understand let alone empathise with such a mindset that had already left me behind in the Parisian underworld. I will never put up a tent on a glacier. I will never travel alone through a Norwegian winter over mountains which made the route through the possible passes a game of roulette. Okay, a part of me is thankful that Macfarlane was able to share these experience and survive, of course it is. My main bug-bear is the lack of acknowledgement about his life choices, and how they relate to the rest of us. How are we supposed to assimilate his life, his mountaineering, caving self?
I admit it, he pissed me off. His feelings, obviously authentic, started to grate. I’m sure he knows he’s a lucky man, but . But. What do I do with all his beautiful emotional reactions now?
the theory of accidents 