(Woodstock: The Overlook Press, 2009)
Hardcover, 258 Pages, Nonfiction
“There’s a danger in labeling someone a genius; it makes them inaccessible. Darwin the Genius is beyond the reach of sympathy. But Darwin the person—the one who stood and watched the sunset over this same river, the one who would happily join in with Josh and I in skipping rocks—well, he was a lot like us. He was us. His career-crowning idea of evolution by natural selection is a triumph of human achievement that sprang from the perfectly achievable endeavors of careful observation, meticulous note-taking, and joyous, boundless curiosity” (224).
From the Cover: One snowy day in Ushuaia, Argentina, the self-proclaimed “southernmost city in the world,” writer Eric Simons picked up a copy of Charles Darwin’s The Voyage of the Beagle. Simons had just hiked the mountains overlooking Beagle Channel, and he found himself engrossed in Darwin’s account. Like Simons, Darwin was in his mid-twenties when he traveled to the continent. Simons followed Darwin further into South America—to stand where Darwin had stood and to explore the histories, legends and people that had fascinated him two centuries before. Simons trekked to as many of the locations Darwin wrote about as he could find to see if he could see these places through Darwin’s eyes, and to learn what South Americans know about Darwin. 2009 is a double-anniversary year for Darwin: the 200th anniversary of his birth in February, and the 150th anniversary of publication of The Origin of Species. Darwin Slept Here is an innovative and thrilling new look at a familiar subject from a compelling new writer to watch.
My Review: A week or two ago I was helping my brother move furniture in anticipation of their coming baby. While we were taking a break he threw a book in my lap and said “This book made me feel like a loser.” I raised an eyebrow and my brother continued: “I went to high school with Ricky. We were in journalism together. He’s got a published book on Darwin. I’m in school for the second time.” (We’ll leave off the fact that it made me feel like even more of a loser, since I have finally gotten my Bachelor’s degree after fourteen years of higher education.) I asked my brother if I could borrow it, since I was near finishing the book I was reading at the time, and as soon as my plate was cleared, I dug into Darwin Slept Here.
Now, after having finished this book, I come away from it with mixed feelings: I have a new respect and admiration for Darwin the man (not that I ever didn’t respect him, but he was always a “distant” historical and literary figure) but I’m not sure what to think of the author. It’s hard to separate the two of these ideas, since for Simons Darwin is—for whatever reason—inextricably linked in his (Simon’s) mind with himself, but I will do my best to separate the “idea” of the book and the “execution” of the book.
After my brother tossed the book into my lap, I flipped open to the introduction (enticingly titled “Introduction: The World’s Most Famous Iguana Hurler”) and read the following:
Evolution had done the thing right. The marine iguana of the Galapagos Islands swam well. Dined well. Lounged well. It basked in the sun, it munched seaweed, it strutted out for an occasional constitution-improving swim, all until one cloudless, sweltering September afternoon in 1835, when a young man stepped ashore and ruined everything.Charles Darwin had not yet conceived of the theory of evolution by natural selection. Five months shy of his twenty-seventh birthday, tall and thin and already distinctively heavy-browed, he had not yet acquired a reputation as a scientist, had not yet published a celebrated travelogue about South America (or an influential treatise on tropical corals), and had not yet had a species of ostrich named after him. His visit to the Galapagos came at the tail end of a five-year trip around the world, and it did not act on him as one of those Sistine-Chapel-ceiling, hand-meets-hand kind of moments. But Darwin was in the midst of a travel-induced transformation, combining his childhood love of exploration and biology with an increasingly sophisticated ability to catalogue nature. When he published The Origin of Species twenty-four years later, it was notable for the meticulous observational detail Darwin used to support his theory. For someone who delighted in scientific inquiry, the reptilian megafauna swarming the Galapagos was a scaly, ugly, crawling—and terrific—learning opportunity.Darwin spent one day studying tortoises, chasing them, riding them, and upending them to see if they could right themselves. He spent another day with the marine iguanas, and it was not a good day to be a member of the lizard kingdom. He cut up the iguanas to see what they were eating (seaweed), and in his journal, he disparaged their color (“dirty black”), their disposition (“stupid and sluggish”), and their looks (“hideous”). He and a co-conspirator tied one animal to a rock and dropped it off their boat, the Beagle, to see what would happen (“when, an hour afterwards, he drew up the line it was quite active”). He also noticed that some of the iguanas seemed to like the water, and he wondered: How well did they swim?On the morning that Darwin chose to answer this question, it became evident that in one way, at least, evolution had failed the iguana: It had given it no recourse at all for dealing with thrill-seeking British naturalists. Darwin strode across the craggy rocks toward a napping “imp of darkness,” cornered it, snatched it by the tail, and hurled it into a pool left by the receding tide. The iguana, no doubt wondering what had gone wrong on a day that had started so pleasantly, swam straight back to its sunning rock.Charles Darwin was a scientist at heart, and a good scientist always repeats his experiment. As the aggrieved beast climbed dripping from the pool, Darwin jumped forward again, clasped the iguana firmly in hand, and drew back. And then, in the name of science, discovery, and swimming iguanas, he hurled it into the sea. (11-13)
You can probably see why I was intrigued. The rest of the book plays out in much the same vein: with Darwin iguana hurling, discovering of a new species of ostrich through eating the poor creature, señorita-watching in Buenos Aires, travelling gaucho-style in the Argentinean pampas, experiencing the Concepción Earthquake of 1835, touring the gold mines of Chile and, in one of the more surreal moments, Simons attends a performance of what can only be described as a Monty Python-esque musical (appropriately titled “The Adventure of the Beagle”—El espectáculo del fin del mundo) in Tierra del Fuego which chronicles the Beagle’s expedition, as well the return of three native Fuegians (oddly named by the English who had traded for them, and this is true, York Minister, James Button and Fuegia Basket (there was a fourth who died shortly after arrival in England who had been saddled with the name Boat Memory)) to their home.
Aside from the iguana hurling, I found the story of Simons’ time in Tierra del Fuego and his attendance at El espectáculo del fin del mundo to be the most amusing portion of his travelogue. The musical, as Simons describes it, is nothing short of ridiculous (in a good sense) and, as I mentioned above, sounds like a Monty Python version of events. For example, here are some of the lyrics to the songs, as Simons provides. The sailors on the Beagle sing by way of prologue: “We’ll fight the roaring seas / We shall face no defeat / All across the Seven Seas / The Beagle will succeed” and later on, Darwin sings “There’s no way to go on / And there’s no turning back / Nowhere to run / Nowhere to hide / I’m torn inside” (136-137). Oh, and did I mention that Simons reports that there is “a twenty-foot-tall dancing sloth fossil that sang to Darwin that ‘you can try to deny what your eyes meet … but think you fool, don’t be a mule … I am as real as these bones’” (137)? Well, there is. (Also, according to Simons there is a strange homoerotic overtone between the actor playing the Beagle’s captain and one of the native Fuegians, which—to both Simons and me—seems an oddly placed interpretation.) It would almost be worth travelling to Tierra del Fuego just to see El espectáculo del fin del mundo!
Simons’ enthusiasm for his subject cannot be denied. He drags often reluctant friends across the South American continent in search of historical sites that Darwin visited during his time on the Beagle, accosting locals, travel bureaus, museum proprietors and once strolling right up to the gates of the largest gold mine in Chile and asking—unannounced and without any sort of introduction or recommendation—if he and his friend can look around, since that is what Darwin did: visited mines in Chile. He badgers locals about Darwin, most of whom could care less about the naturalist and often didn’t even know that Darwin had even visited their sleepy little corner of the world in the Nineteenth-Century. It is here that I found the distinction between Simons’ “idea” or “subject” and Simons’ “execution” to wear a little thin.
Simons repeatedly comes across as taking the stance that Darwin is immutable, infallible and utterly correct and that anyone who does not believe in Darwin’s Theory of Evolution (especially those who believe in the Biblical account of Creation) are backwards bumpkins who are living in the Dark Ages (not his words, but certainly his sentiment). As someone who does believe in a Creator, but also believes that evolution, natural selection and a Creator are not mutually exclusive ideas Simons stance comes off as condescending at best and antagonistic and belligerent at worst. Simons states that he has no use for evangelism at all and when he does meet up with missionaries at one point (on a penguin viewing boat tour in Port Desire, Argentina) he spends his time avoiding them, rather than engaging with them about Darwin and his interests (I know that this probably would have worked since the missionaries in question were from my own Church and are—for the most part—open to discussion as we believe, as I stated above that evolution, natural selection and a Creator are not mutually exclusive ideas.)
All too often, however, Simons’ fanatic devotion to Darwin plays out in a way that seems quasi-religious in its own, rather ironic, way, and this gets in the way of Simons’ ultimate point that The Origin of Species overshadows The Voyage of the Beagle; that Darwin is too often seen as the white-bearded evolutionist that his later work in life presented him as, and we almost always overlook the fact that Darwin’s voyage on the Beagle was that of an enthusiastic and curious twenty-something who liked to throw iguanas into the sea, ride with gauchos and crawl over every mountain and hill he could get his hands on (as well as ogle the señoritas in Buenos Aires). Darwin was a man of science, yes, but he was also a human being who loved life, was curious about the world around him and had an insatiable desire to learn.
This is the Darwin that we all need to get to know and love, and in spite of the shortcomings and/or biases of Simons as an author, the book, overall, manages to present a wonderful picture the formative experiences of a young man cut loose in South America to learn and explore and who goes on to change the face of science as we know it, as well as the devotion and obsession of another young man, nearly a century-and-a-half later who goes in search of his idol across the vast backdrop of South America. It is a good read, maybe even a great read, and one I would recommend—with some reservations, as mentioned above—and a great book to read in this year that is the bicentennial celebration of Darwin’s birth as well as sesquicentennial celebration of the publication of The Origin of Species. (The website for Darwin Slept Here can be found HERE.)
This review can also be found at Bryan’s Book Blog.
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