Farley Mowat begat the popular Black Brant sounding rocket and
air-to-air missile Velvet Glove when his patriotism and search for
a new purpose after WWII led him to... well, you'll have to read
Mowat's latest book Otherwise (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart,
2008) to find out how he accomplished this feat.
The few reviews I'd seen told nothing about this unMowat-like
exploit, but it doesn't surprise me. George Stroumboulopoulos of
The Hour probably asked Mowat to recount another WWII tale, one not
in this book, as it speaks to Mowat's status as eccentric,
anti-war, compassionate environmentalist unlike the one beginning
on page 138. But the rocket story enthralls much more.
Otherwise covers Mowat's life from his birth in 1921 to 1948
(officially from 1937 to 1948). He writes with his distinctive
verve and, at the beginning of the book, is much in love with
lists, lists of collections, lists of food, and lots and lots of
lists of birds. He flows through the years seamlessly with stories
hilarious and sobering, including his gleeful description of
killing birds for science's sake. He uses journal entries and
letters effectively, especially for the war years. Depending on his
old writings for those years, I imagine would be easier on the
psyche since it would allow a distance that putting oneself back in
time would not.
Whether writing about his 16th birthday among the birds or WWII or
his expedition to the Barren Lands or even resolving mysteries and
giving background information, Mowat shapes his stories with a
cadence and love of words, using the language of the day, that
draws you in to that time, keeping you glued, until he jars with a
note of present-day opinion. It is said better to show than to
tell, and nowhere is that adage clearer than when Mowat injects an
opinion that he holds today -- rather than one from that time --
and it is especially bad when it is based on faulty fact as on page
83 with his reference to coyotes (coyotes thrive when humans
threaten).
Unfortunately, he resorts to this habit in the ending and makes a
blanket statement about humanity. I wonder how much his war
experiences, his own reactions to terror, and his need to
extrapolate to all other humans, minus the aboriginals in his
opinion, shaped that statement. I, personally, would not have
reacted in the way he did and was dumbfounded by his. It would have
been much more effective if he had left the story in such a way as
to cause readers to consider their own reactions in light of his;
even if he had simply omitted the last two sentences it would have
been better. Instead he crashes the mood he had so carefully built
up in the last pages and creates a barrier to self-reflection in
the reader.
Critics opine that Mowat is free and easy with his facts. But I
also believe that editors ought to be held accountable. Whether it
was the famous James Frey incident or the recent Herman Rosenblat
story or the year that changes from page to page in Otherwise,
publishers go the cheap route, leaving the writer to be writer,
editor, and fact checker all in one (which is just about impossible
to do as writing puts you so close to the manuscript that you need
a fresh, objective perspective to find the verbal tics,
inconsistencies, and questionable facts). The ordinary reader
relies on the editor and fact checker to do this job as Mowat's
writing is so good that one would not know which is truth, which
fiction. Some of the errors in Otherwise were easy to spot, easy to
fix. Why did editors not do so? Facts relying on his memory and
journal entries would've been harder to check up on, true, but his
historical asides would not have been since there exists published
material and other sources on them. And, as well, why did no one at
M&S think to add a map? Editors of mass paperback historical
mysteries manage to think of such things, knowing most readers
aren't geography majors.
If you have not read anything by Mowat, begin with Otherwise. It
sets up and explains the birthing of his previous books, and it
will make you fall off your chair laughing and sit still in deep
thought. If you are a Mowat fan, you will enjoy reading this book,
from its familiar Mowat-type tales to the shocking revelations.