Bring ’em Back Alive 381 crisis brought Buck’s own animal trading to a halt, however, he discovered that writing about his adventures was far more lucrative. Employing Edward Anthony, a well-known New York writer, to assist him, Buck turned out two bestsellers, Bring ’em Back Alive (1930) and Wild Cargo (1932). According to Buck scholar, Steven Lehrer, Anthony wrote the stories in a modest, matter-of-fact, allin-a-day’s-work fashion; yet almost everyone has its own breath-catching spice of danger. With his knack for eliciting telling details, Anthony created a real sense of drama. (2000: xi) We do not know the exact contributions of each, or the liberties taken to enhance the encounters described, but the formula was a winning one. During the Depression years, Buck’s books and films provided tales of fantasy escapism. His stories brought the thrills of the trophy hunt, formerly only available to the elite, to the common man, who, because of Buck’s collecting, was also able to see the same fantastic beasts for the first time in the public zoos. II. Gerald Durrell’s Worldwide Family Gerald Durrell, born in India, describes his passion for natural history beginning with his family’s four-year stay on Corfu (19351939). However, Durrell did not write about this childhood idyll in My Family and Other Animals until after his first four books on collecting in Africa and South America became bestsellers. With amazing recall for the sensuous detail of the island’s terrain, he recreates the enchanted time on Corfu as an Edenic world without evil; all living things were delightful and every difficulty could be told as a comic misadventure. This boyish enthusiasm and wonder for life in all of its forms remained the touchstone of not only his approach to the capture, and subsequent care, of animals, but also of his perception of what animals are vis-à-vis humanity—all kin. Growing up in Corfu contributed to Durrell’s unique brand of
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