Books of sporting, travel, and adventure in countries little known to the average reader naturally fall into two classes. Neither class, with a very few exceptions, is of great value. One class is perhaps the result of the other.
Of the first type is the book that is written to make the most of far travels, to extract from adventure the last thrill, to impress the awe-stricken reader with a full sense of the danger and hardship the writer has undergone. Thus, if the writer takes out quite an ordinary routine permit to go into certain areas, he makes the most of traveling in "closed territory." This implies that he has obtained a special privilege and has gone where few have gone before him. As a matter of fact, the permit is issued merely so that the authorities can keep track of who is where. Anybody can get one. This class of writer tells of shooting beasts at ranges of four and five hundred yards. I remember one in particular who as a matter of fact killed all his antelope at such ranges. Most hunters have shot occasional beasts at a quarter mile or so, but not as a matter of fact. They do so more with thanksgiving and a certain amount of surprise. The gentleman of whom I speak mentioned getting an animal at seven hundred and fifty yards. By chance I happened to mention this to a native @African.
"Yes," said he, "I remember that; I was there."
This interested me, and I said so.
"He made a long shot," said I.
"A GOOD long shot," replied the man.
"Did you measure the distance?"
He laughed. "No," said he, "the old man was quite delighted. 'Eight hundred yards if it was an inch!' he cried."
"How far was it?"
"About three hundred and fifty. But it was a long shot, all right."
And it was! Three hundred and fifty yards is a very long shot. It is over four city blocks, New @York size. But if you talk often enough and smoothly enough of "four and five hundred yards," it does not sound like much, does it?
The same class of writer always gets all the thrills. He speaks of "white knuckles," of the "thrilling suspense," and so on down the range of the shocking story. His stuff makes good reading, there is no doubt of that. The spellbound public likes it, and to that extent it has fulfilled its mission. Also, the reader believes it to the letter. After all, why shouldn't he? Only there is this curious result. The reader carries away in his mind the impression of unreality, of a country impossible to be understood and measured and traveled by the ordinary human and his equipment. It is interesting, just as are historical novels, or the superheroes of modern fiction, but it has no real relation to human life. In the last test, the undeniable untruth of the thing forces itself on him. He believes, but he does not understand. He accepts the fact, but he cannot grasp its human quality. The affair is interesting, but it is more or less concocted of cardboard for his amusement. Essential truth is lost.
All this, you must understand, is probably not a deliberate attempt to deceive. It is merely the display of the writer's boyish desire to be a hero in a brand new environment. When a man jumps back into caveman days, he digs up some of his ancestors' cave-qualities. Among these is the desire for personal flourish. His modern development of taste doesn't permit skewers in the ears and polished wire around the neck. So the man drapes himself in qualities instead. It is quite an engaging and diverting trait of character. The attitude of mind it both represents and helps to bring about is too complicated for my brief analysis. In itself it is no more worthy of blame than the small boy's playing at @Indians in the back yard. It is also no more worthy of praise than a child's decoration with feathers.
We are more concerned, though, with its results. Probably each of us has his mental picture that passes as a symbol rather than an idea of the different continents. This is usually a single picture -- a deep river, with a forest, hanging snaky vines, snakes, and monkeys for the east coast of South America, for example. It is built up in youth by chance reading and chance pictures. It serves us as well as a pink place on the map to stand for a part of the world about which we know nothing at all. As time goes on, we extend, expand, and modify this picture in the light of what knowledge we may gain. So the reading of many books modifies and expands our first crude notions of @Equatorial @Africa. And the result is if we read enough of the sort I describe above, we build the idea of an exciting, dangerous, continent, visited by half-real people more like the historical-fiction hero. These people have strange and interesting adventures which we could not possibly imagine happening to ourselves.
This type of book is directly responsible for the second sort. The author of this type is deadly afraid of being thought to brag of his adventures. He feels that the critical eyes of the old-timers is constantly on him. When he comes to describe the first time a rhino dashed in his direction, he remembers that old hunters, who have been so charged hundreds of times, may read the book. Suddenly, in that light, the adventure becomes pitifully unimportant. He sets down the fact that "we met a rhino that turned a bit nasty, but after a shot in the shoulder decided to leave us alone." Throughout the story he keeps in his mind's eye the imaginary audience of those who have done. He writes for them, to please them, to convince them that he is not "swelled head," nor "cocky," nor "is full of himself," nor thinks he has done, been, or seen anything wonderful. It is a good, healthy frame of mind to be in. But it, just as with the other type, can produce books that leave on the minds of the general public no impression of a country in relation to a real human being.
As a matter of fact, the same trouble is at the bottom of both failures. The adventure writer, half unconsciously perhaps, has been too much occupied play-acting himself into half-forgotten boyhood heroics. The more modest man, with even more self-consciousness, has been thinking of how he is going to appear in the eyes of the expert. Both have thought of themselves before their work. This view of the matter would probably vastly astonish the modest writer.
If, then, one is to formulate a goal toward which to write, he might express it exactly in terms of man and environment. Those readers who desire sheer exploration can get it in any library. Those in search of sheer romantic adventure can purchase plenty of it in any book store. But the majority of people want something different from either of these. They want, first of all, to know what the country is like. They don't want it in vague and grandiose "word paintings," nor in strange and foreign sounding words and phrases. They want it in comparison with something they know. What is it nearest like -- @Arizona? @Surrey? Upper New @York? @Canada? @Mexico? Or is it totally different from anything, as is the Grand Canyon? When you look out from your camp -- any one camp -- how far do you see, and what do you see? Do you see mountains in the distance, or a screen of vines or bamboo near hand, or what? When you get up in the morning, what is the first thing to do? What does a rhino look like, where where does it live, and what did you do the first time one came at you? I don't want you to tell me as though I were either an old hunter or an admiring audience, or as though you were afraid somebody might think you were making too much of the matter. I want to know how you REALLY felt. Were you scared or nervous? Or did you become cool? Tell me just how it was, so I can see the thing as happening to a common everyday human being. Then, even at second-hand and at ten thousand miles distance, I can enjoy it actually, humanly, even though I'm not there. And I can imagine a bit as to how I would have liked it myself.
Obviously, to write such a book the author must at the same time sink his ego and show honestly his personality. The conflict in this is all too real. He must forget either to strut or to blush with nervousness. Neither audience should be forgotten, and neither should be addressed by itself. Never should he lose sight of the wholesome fact that old hunters are to read and to weigh. Never should he for a moment slip into the belief that he is justified in addressing the expert alone. His attitude should be that many men know more and have done more than he, but that for one reason or another these men are not ready to share their knowledge and experience.
To set down the creation of an ideal is one thing: to perform it is another. No one knows better than I how limited my African experience is, both in time and extent. It was confined to East Equatorial Africa and a year. Hundreds of men are better qualified than myself to write my story. But unfortunately they will not do it.
