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Written by: Rod Boyle

Category: Books

Published: 23 January 2025

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“Exploration is the Physical Expression of Intellectual Passion”

Now, this book, at over 600 pages, took me far too long to finish. This is no fault of the author, or the book, it is Five Stars, rather more of my temperament that having been to the Poles with Shackleton and Scott and again in the mind of Cendrars, and being thoroughly persuaded that it's hell on Earth, why then did I return with Cherry-Garrard?

Well. His take on it is as good as the others. By far the youngest member of Scott's failed Antarctic mission he survived 3 years in the Antarctic, being on the team that helped depot up supplies for Scott's final push to the poles, and again on the team that found his grave.

So, how to break it down? 

#1) Criticism: It really could have benefitted from some maps - timelines, depots, points of interest, photos and Wilson's watercolours. At 600 pages another hundred or so more wouldn't have mattered and would greatly have clarified where/what they were up to. And while I looked these things up online that's not the point, when my nose is in a book I like to keep it there. This is the publisher's error, not the authors.

#2) The Men: The descriptions of his colleagues, characters, gentlemen every one of them, men of action, substance, character,  united in a higher purpose, that of science, of reaching the pole, and camaraderie unto death. Remarkable how men can get along in the face of such adversity and environs. This class of humanity I fear has by-and-largely gone extinct. 

#3) The Environs: Antarctica, of course, but add in the temperatures - lowest recorded on earth, close to -100 degrees Celsius, the blizzards, the precarious sea ice, calving icebergs, bottomless icy blue crevasses, bottomless and echoing and despite countless slips and misadventures not one of the party was lost to one, 4 months of utter darkness in the winter, 4 months of daylight in the summer, the Aurora Australis, eruptions of Mt. Erebus against the perpetual Antarctic Night, add to this landscape the limited provisions, dietary and otherwise, the dogs, the ponies, the failing motor sledges, the sleeping bags and reindeer mittens/coats of 1911, the frostbite, of the toes, fingers, cheeks, noses, faces, spreading to the feet (as in Oates), snow goggles & blindness, headaches from the pressure ridges, Scurvy, Dysentery, the altitude of the Polar Plateau (over 9,000 feet), well, you get the idea. "Worst Journey in the World" is an understatement. Fun fact: James Clark Ross named Mt. Erebus and Mt. Terror after his ships (and the Ross Ice Shelf after himself) - these ships, of course, would go on to later infamy at the other pole with the Franklin Expedition. This is a journey into the furthermost recesses of mind, the darkest of places we cannot but dimly imagine flanked by the aptly named volcanoes that guard it’s shores.

#3) The descriptions of the Sea Life: - the comical Emperor Penguins, the Charlie Chaplins of the South Pole, and their egg stealing, incubation of rocks, the raising of the penguins, the dire expedition to try and retrieve their eggs, their lack of Christian charity and ungentlemanly conduct in pushing one another off the icebergs to check the waters for sea lions and Killer Whales.

On that note, the descriptions of the Whales, especially Killer Whales, the dogs, ponies and people being hunted by them while out on the flows, to see them breaking up the ice and rolling out upon it to turn their heads for a glance of what might be a new and tasty treat, for those who deny that we are prey is only because of our familiarity with them (or theirs with us), once upon a time this wasn't so.

And, his digression to describe his delivery of the Emperor Penguin eggs to the Natural History Museum, to be summarily and rudely dismissed by scientists who have no idea as to what cost was their acquisition...

#4) The character of the animals in an alien, inhospitable land, the ponies, rebelling, biting, kicking (Christopher), their various demeanours, some mild, hard-working, some otherwise, the killing them one by one to feed the dogs or lay rations at a depot, and the dogs, trying to escape where no paths to escape or survival existed, resisting the bit, the harness, hunger strikes, feigning injury to avoid pulling the sleigh, and the pecking order of dogs, dogs that nip the heels of others not pulling their weight, none questioning when members of their team disappeared, merely trust in the kindness of their masters, what realization had they that theirs were bit parts to a bigger tragedy, the “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern” to Shakespeare’s Hamlet? 

#5) The End: We all know how it ends, but to recap, Cherry-Garrard was part of the first relay to be turned back on December 22, 1911, the next relay of 3 was turned back on January 3, 1912. Scott chose 4 men to accompany him to the pole; Seaman Evans, Wilson, Oates & Bowers. On January 17th they reach the pole, only to find Amundsen's flag - he had beaten them by several weeks. They spend time, survey the area, and pick up a letter addressed to the King of Norway.

The return is grueling. On February 17th Seaman Evans dies at the foot of the Beardsmore Glacier, of a head injury and exhaustion. March 16/17th Oates, suffering serious frostbite and realizing that his presence is risking the survival of the party, steps from the tent into a blizzard, saying "I am just going outside and may be some time". He is never seen again.

March 19th to March 29th, the remaining 3 men are trapped in the tent in an unseasonal blizzard, only 11 miles from One Tonne Depot. They die of starvation and cold. On November 12, 2012 Cherry-Garrard is part of an expedition sent to find the lost party, and they recover the letters and diaries. Scott has taken pains to write to the widows of the men that accompanied them, endorsing their heroic and noble demise.

In the end Cherry-Garrard eulogizes Scott, speaks to the joy, the necessity of discovery, and then compares the expedition to the comparative success of Amundsen's, at only 99 days return, with dogs alone and no loss of life.

So, all in all a very worthwhile read. If not the "Worst Journey in the World" it was certainly a strong contender, and Cherry-Garrard does not sell it short. And Antarctica still remains relatively unexplored, the most formidable and hostile environment on earth.

But I don't care to read of it anymore, and perhaps will seek out some sort of Unicorn Chaser or play Candy-Crush until I can find more pleasant diversions. That said, I've started on "Confessions of Dan Yack", fortunately he hasn't yet gone to Antarctica, and perhaps, if I'm understanding it correctly, he doesn't. We will see. 

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Written by: Rod Boyle

Category: Books

Published: 13 January 2025

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This, the latest to arrive in my Cendrars binge, good, his writing is excellent, only perhaps I've read a bit too much of him lately.

Opening with an 80 year old French Dowager getting railed by a member of the French Foreign Legion, so hard that she coughs her teeth onto the floor, and from there...

Well, a little time capsule of Paris at a certain age, enjoyable, better written that Maughm or Hemmingway, and certainly a lot more descriptive. Now I've "The Confessions of Dan Yack" to get through, but I'll think I'll head back to Antarctica for a bit and see how the ponies are doing...

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Written by: Rod Boyle

Category: Books

Published: 05 January 2025

Hits: 235

Antarctica, again, I can't seem to get away from it.

Anyways, the first of 4 more of Cendrars books I ordered arrive, giving me hope the rest are still tied up in the mail. 

About an English Shipping Magnate, in St. Petersberg, who having been thwarted in love after an bacchanal at a cabaret wakes up at the feet of a sculptor, a composer and a poet...

...after eavesdropping for some while upon their conversation he conspires to bring them with him for a year to Antarctica to explore the further limits of the Human Condition. 

And, Antarctica, I'm beginning to know it as well as if I'd discovered it myself. Things here though turn out very different than they did for Scott, Cherry-Garrard and Shackleton, but I'll wait until the next volume in the series arrives, the "Diaries of Dan Yack", which should apparently clear up any confusion arisen in the first book. 

A curious read, not my favourite (it is possible I've had quite enough of the polar climes), back to Cherry-Garrard. Halfway through and I'm thinking it'd be easier just to plant the god-damned flag myself and be done with it, or expire trying...

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Written by: Rod Boyle

Category: Books

Published: 27 December 2024

Hits: 296

And, having - not "tired" per se, but in need of something to alleviate Cherry-Garrard's "The Worst Journey in the World" - I mean, I've been there, with Shackleton, with Scott, this, it's a new POV for sure, but I read travel literature as much for the descriptions of place, people and custom as much as the difficulties they overcome. 

And these trials, the Antarctic, the penguins, the killer whales breaking up the ice looking for an easy meal (curious, who wouldn't be), the ponies, dogs, well, the blazing pack ice and sun, the frigid, sterile, cold Antarctic...

Enough...

Although, to be fair, what with the big global thawing underway I'm pretty sure there will be some treasures exposed, some creeks to be panned, gems to be mined, and damn whatever convention that holds that continent for Science I want to be there when these treasures are exposed!!! But there are no geologists on this expedition...

Anyways, Cendrars not having yet arrived (after the termination of Canada Post's Strike) I was looking for something to read, and I stumbled upon a pile of William S. Burroughs books. Which I thought I would have read by now, but, strangely, I haven't. 

So I pick up "The Western Lands". And I'm loving it. I mean, it's completely the opposite of whatever else I was reading, and his junkie's obsession with Centipedes, poisonous/venomous snakes/octopi/spiders/etc, well, it's rather completely up my alley. At the moment. Or merely it's the contrast to the stark realities of polar exploration...

"I'll have what he's having..."

Christmas 2024 passed with a couple of great authors, a little too much Vodka (Stoli, which does less damage) and too much time on my hands, not well used. There's always next year...

So I'll leave you with "A Junkie's Christmas" by William S. Burroughs. 

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6kHN92Yv48