I hate the work of Robert MacFarlane.

I have tried multiple books and not got on with any of them. I think if you are going to write you need to give people something: A gnarled opinion, a moment of vulnerability. Something.

What MacFarlane delivers is erudition without analysis and affect without emotion. He writes and thinks like the enemy.

Like... Uncle Monty from Withnail & I is the British upper-class: Cellars full of fine wine, quotes from Baudelaire, Latin, and weeping in Butcher's shops.

Then. At the end of the night, they're chasing you around a bedroom because all of that sophistication and gentility is a means of extraction and papering over the consequences.

MacFarlane is all "Come on lads... We must get back... The sky is beginning to bruise" and then an admirable veil is drawn over what follows.

I hate the work of Robert MacFarlane.

I have tried multiple books and not got on with any of them. I think if you are going to write you need to give people something: A gnarled opinion, a moment of vulnerability. Something.

What MacFarlane delivers is erudition without analysis and affect without emotion. He writes and thinks like the enemy.

@Taskerland Erudition without analysis you say

🧐

@Printdevil I've got analysis dribbling out the back of me thank you very much.

@Taskerland Sir, I was thinking of myself.

@Printdevil You're analytical. You're not just out here monologuing in Latin.

@Taskerland Only at dogs.

I hate the work of Robert MacFarlane.

I have tried multiple books and not got on with any of them. I think if you are going to write you need to give people something: A gnarled opinion, a moment of vulnerability. Something.

What MacFarlane delivers is erudition without analysis and affect without emotion. He writes and thinks like the enemy.

@Taskerland "The wild" takes on an entirely different dimension when it's literally outside your front door a few dozen paces in the high arctic (my home in Inuvik was at the edge of town; open our door, walk about ... call it three dozen paces, and you're in the genuine wilderness). Or when it's outside your tent flap on a weeks'-long journey where there is absolutely no visible sign of humanity in any direction in northern B.C.

🧵 ️

@Taskerland "The wild" is not some destination you visit to experience "enlightenment" (the Buddhist temple is over there) before returning home to your comfortable middle class lifestyle chomping down on cucumber sandwiches (crusts cut off!) and guzzling tea. It's an entity of its own and if you've ever truly experienced it you'll not write tawdry, flowery, prose about it. You'll write wild, shamanic poetry (Chuci) or tell tales of incomprehensible power (Haida/Tlingit) about it.

🧵 ️

@Taskerland (Postscript: I may have a bit of a grudge against people who think wandering around well-regulated, carefully-cultivated, artfully-arranged land is somehow "connecting with nature".)

@Printdevil @Taskerland New character quirk just dropped @RogerBW

"Non Ducor, Duco!" He shrieked as the Spaniel hauled him up the road at breakneck pace chasing squirrels.

@shimminbeg @Taskerland @RogerBW

@Printdevil @shimminbeg @RogerBW Footage of Robert MacFarlane in Richmond Park: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GRSbr0EYYU

I like the comment "Legend has it he is still running after Fenton"

it's a very spoken over the end of a film line.

@Taskerland @shimminbeg @RogerBW

@Printdevil Fenton is such a posh name for dog. @shimminbeg @RogerBW

I am reminded of this excellent piece by Kathleen Jamie https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v30/n05/kathleen-jamie/a-lone-enraptured-male

@Taskerland Is it typical of me to find the idea that the ashes of the dead alter the chemistry of a place the most fascinating bit in that, rather that the point you're making?

@Printdevil No. Because that's the bit that really stayed with me too.