It seemed like the sort of self-conscious thing I avoid having any part of. I hate the whole idea of saying 'I am a weak man who is half-ironically trying to be a strong man.' If you want to be something better or stronger or more capable then please just inhabit it already. I also hate the idea of pursuing hunting as a desperate lunge toward stereotypical manliness. I know many accomplished female hunters and there is nothing 'manly' about them. Hunting is human. It is gender neutral.
After reading a few chapters I found a degree of sympathy for Heimbuch and shifted my view toward accepting this description of his experience for what it is. An honest description of a human experience is almost always a useful and worthwhile thing. I realized that what Heimbuch was struggling with was probably very much the same sort of personal crisis that a great many of my students and readers have been through.
Heimbuch became trapped in the humdrum falling-middle-class life that has ensnared millions of American men and women. A life filled with a series of screens and commutes and dinners at Bob Evans. He saw a little window out of that life through guns and hunting and he grabbed on to it and waited to see where it would take him. I really can't fault the guy.
It seems sort of silly to me to watch this guy going to enormous lengths to bag a simple pheasant. If he'd put half this much effort into taking his first deer then the pay-off would have been much better. But the book is well-written and has a sound structure. As a non-fiction author myself, I know that its tough being restricted to reality as it actually occurred. It would be nice if a rhinoceros suddenly charged the narrator in the tall grass about two thirds the way through, but the rhinos don't usually cooperate. Especially when hunting in North America.
I'm not sure who this book is for. Perhaps this is the answer that the public has to writers such as myself, Hank Shaw, and Tovar Cerulli. 'We're trying to do like you said but its sort of a pain in the ass and we'd like to go back to playing Angry Birds and maybe its ok to just eat at Bob Evans instead of butchering our own venison medallions out of aged whitetail backstraps.'
The book is a useful record and I'm glad that I read it. I feel like I understand normal American men in the modern, mainstream world (which I dropped out of years ago) a little bit better now.
0 comments:
Post a Comment