This is a review of the Advance Reading
Copy of Wild Animus by Rich Shapero, Published in 2004.
When I first read the back cover, the
things that stood out were the parts stating that “all proceeds
from the sale of this book will be dedicated to the conservation of
strategic wilderness lands in Alaska.” The book screamed out
conservation and environmentalism, which I am okay with. But the
first couple of pages made me hesitant about reading the book in its
entirety. The descriptions given were very intellectual. The language
used was very precise and it was written in a way that suggested this
was a book more for a literature class than casual reading. I have a
decent lexicon, but I had to start keeping a journal of words that I
should look up the specific meaning to confirm the connotations
derived from context clues. I wound up with about 20-30 words on the
list by the time I stopped reading.
For as uptight as the descriptions are,
the dialogue was wonderful. It sounded like people actually talking
and interacting. One thing was said, another thing was done, and the
characters reacted appropriately according to their personality and
experiences. It was a delight to read the dialogue because things
happened, people acted and reacted. It's a shame that multiple
character interactions are a very limited part of the book.
To summarize the plot of Wild Animus,
our main character Sam Altman starts out at Berkeley in 1969 during
the riots. He gets tear-gassed, and helps another student, a girl
named Lindy, out of the gas and into a store to get water to rinse
their eyes. He feels a connection to her and asks her for her number.
From there, Sam and Lindy go on a drug filled journey where Sam
identifies with a White Dall Ram that was on the cover of the
magazine he used to get Lindy's number, and then Lindy supports Sam,
now calling himself Ransom, as they flee from their life in Berkeley
to Seatle, and then into the Wrangell Mountains. Which ultimately
leads to Ransom's death. This doesn't really spoil anything for you
as a reader, because in the PROLOGUE, you have Lindy Altman in a
helicopter flying over a volcano finding “his body” with blood on
his chest, and on the inside of the crater, but ultimately unable to
recover the body due to weather.
I will admit to being unable to finish
this book. I made it through 7 of the 14 chapters before taking out
my bookmark and closing it without any intention to return. And
here's why: I didn't have any positive connection to Sam/Ransom. I
didn't like him or care about him. I also didn't hate him. I felt
more of a connection, or rather sympathy, with Lindy having to deal
with her boyfriend who went off climbing mountains to get closer to
nature and trip acid, while she was holding down a job and basically
financing him. And if Lindy were more prominently portrayed by the
middle of the book, I might have cared more about her to find out how
she turned out. As it was, the book was firmly about and around Sam,
and often only with one other person. This leads to long-winded
chapters describing elusive and artistic feelings and visions as our
main character takes another quarter tab of acid. Overall, the tone
of the book was narcissistic and self-important. No other character
got strong focus and emphasis, and there wasn't enough of a
connection presented with the main character to want to follow him on
his journey.
I would recommend this book to
intellectual environmentalist pot-heads. I wish it was worth
suggesting as a literature course quality book, or an artistic
environmentalist book, but the content is out of touch with a general
audience. If you come across this book, give it a try, but if you
read the prologue and find yourself disinterested, close it and put
it away, because outside of the first three or four chapters, it's
just more of the same.
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