A Dying Art (Last Chance to See - Douglas Adams, Mark Carwardine)

Member Name: x_elff_x

Product:	Last Chance to See - Douglas Adams, Mark Carwardine
Date:	05/09/01 (222 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Creatures destroy an utterly insignificant blue green planet

Disadvantages: This isn't fiction!

Mention the name Douglas Adams and most people will instantly think of Zaphod Beeblebrox, Marvin the Paranoid Android, or possibly his recent, untimely death, at only 49, from a heart attack.

What hardly anyone will think of in association with his name is the wonderful book I am going to urge you to all rush out and by - Last Chance to See - which he wrote with acclaimed zoologist Mark Carwardine. I'm sensing a few of you shuffling in your seats already (please don't it's very off-putting) and I can hear the almost inaudible whisper of 'he wrote a book with a zoologist???!'.

But book he wrote and what a book it is. It is, essentially, a non-fiction catalogue of a number of endangered species - and when I use the term endangered here I am talking about hundreds and more often only tens of animals which, thanks to a certain hairless race of apes, are fast being beaten off the planet. I wasn't sure I was going to enjoy this book, I am not a big non-fiction reader, but it is gripping and entertaining from beginning to last, rather like a string of highly intelligent newspaper articles, which is where the idea actually started.

This book is no drab catalogue of fading beasties, using dusty words which are nearly extinct in themselves, rather it is a largely jovial travelogue which pulls the reader from idea to idea, contrasting the seemingly uncontrastable and offering a fresh perspective on the plight of the planet. Perhaps the best way I can illustrate Adams wonderful use of language is to quote a little bit for you, the first paragraph, in fact.

'This isn't at all what I expected. In 1985, by some sort of journalistic accident I was sent to Madagascar with Mark Carwardine to look for an almost extinct form of lemur called the aye-aye. None of the three of us had met before. I had never met Mark, Mark had never met me, and no-one, apparently, had seen an aye-aye in years.'

Do you see his
wonderful use of perspective in there. The way he equates meeting this strange, far-flung and scarce creature with teaming up with Mark. It makes it seem friendly, you want to know if they meet up and what happens when they do, don't you? Just so you don't lie awake wondering, I'll tell you, they do all meet and their encounter is as fascinating as it is educational.

This whole segment of the book, entitled Twig Technology, is a joy to read. Adams talks about how the Lemurs managed to cling on (literally) in Madagascar when they died out elsewhere, because of the abscence of apes and goes on to explain, how after managing to avoid said apes for centuries, it is the highly evolved hairless ones (though some of us are more hairless than others), with their twig technology, that are threatening their delicately-balanced ecosystem.

By carefully describing the animals and their habitats in simple language and everyday terms he makes them incredibly real in your mind, from the aye-aye to the kakapo ('the world's fatest and least able to fly parrot'),.from the jungles of Madagascar to the backwaters of Bali where he meets the immense Komodo dragons and is at once appalled and amazed by the tourist industry surrounding them, you are struck by his sense of wonder and his overwhelming concern that these animals are drinking in the last chance saloon of life.

It is Adams gift for description which makes the book so readable, for example, when visiting the baiji dolphin, he likens their system of navigation - echolocation - to the use of bike bells by the Chinese, thus making the animal much easier to understand and, along the way, providing an insight into modern Chinese living.

This book is about the animals, but it is so much more than that. It is also a wry reflection on the society we live in today, both the good aspects and the bad, and more importantly it is a funny and anecdotal piece of glorious writing. T
he tale of him trying to buy a condom to put a microphone in so that they could record under water , for example, is as funny as anything in Hitchikers Guide. It is these lighter moments which put the terrible positions of these animals into even sharper relief. As Adams says when they finally manage to get condom and microphone into the waters of the Yangtze, to hear what the bajii dolphin is trying to echo within:

'The sound we heard wasn't exactly what I had expected. Water is a very good medium for the propagation of sound and I had expected to hear clearly the heavy, pounding reverberations of each of the boats that had gone thundering by us as we stood on the deck. But water transmits sound even better than that, and what we were hearing was everything that was happening in the Yangtze for many miles around... Instead of hearing hte roar of each individual ship's propeller, what we heard was a sustained shrieking blast of pure white noise.'

This is ultimately a book of hope, inspiring us to consider the impact we have on the environment in which we live and urging us to take an interest in more than ourselves. They do get to see (almost) all the animals they are seeking and it is clear from the epilogue that much good has come out of their collaboration. This is one of the few books I have had the urge to immediately rush out and buy a further four or five copies of to give to all my relatives and friends, but it is a classic and, unfortunately, due to his untimely death, one of the last chances to see this brilliant man's work shown to its best, most educative and inspired advantage.

Bookends:
ISBN 0-330-32332-5
It is available for 6.29 on www.bol.com and 5.59 on amazon.co.uk - I notice it is virtually impossible to pick up second hand, as strong an endorsement for a book as I think you can get.

For more about douglas adams you can visit http://www.douglasadams.com/ which also contains links to
a couple of his favourite charities.

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