Bring ’em Back Alive 407 insightful and comic aplomb. Few books about environmental destruction and animal extinction are humorous, but Durrell’s “fireflies” keep people engaged rather than turned off or paralyzed by the immensity of the problems. In contrast, Buck’s books are rarely read for pleasure anymore and mostly attract the ire of scholars who wish to critique him and his life work; even his humor seems dated and can sometimes be construed as offensive. Buck’s popularity was defined by his era, and his views on animal collecting and captivity are no longer viable. His naïve optimism and hubris do not obviate his affection and fascination for animals, but his attitude is dictated by the pervasive views of the time that assumed humanity’s religious, economic and scientific dominion over nonhumans. Buck casts himself as a hero dealing with a world fraught with danger, performing roles of judge and jailor of villains, and protector of the weak and innocent. Yet his narrative is ebullient, full of the early twentieth-century American confidence and can-do spirit, a beacon to those boyish-at-heart as well as bold enough to seize the opportunity—a fulfilment of American masculinity and its concept of progressive civilization. In applying the dictum that ontogeny repeats phylogeny to the development of both individuals and societies, however, Aldo Leopold (1949: 175-176) suggests that the men subscribing to the trophy hunter narrative are “cavemen reborn . . . who never grow up . . . who must possess, invade, appropriate” because they can never really value the wilderness. Buck, as well as his place and time, were caught up in what Leopold calls the “prerogative of youth” and never graduated to “husbandry” of the mature naturalist who works with the land and its nonhuman inhabitants. In contrast, Durrell’s paradoxical nature operates in reverse. He suffered from being ahead of his time in practicing wildlife husbandry and land stewardship. His buoyant humor conceals a deep pessimism that contributed to worsening alcoholism. In his later years, he portrays himself as still the entranced boy of twelve
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