Voice of the Wild: An Anthology of Animal Stories - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670842931 ISBN 13: 9780670842933

Publisher: Viking Adult, 1992

Synopsis

An anthology of nineteen stories featuring nature's creatures includes the writing of Rudyard Kipling, Alistair Graham, Isak Dinesen, Jack London, William Faulkner, Farley Mowatt, Elspeth Huxley, and Antoine de St. E+a7xupe+a7ry.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly

This curious collection of fiction and nonfiction about wild animals from a group of 19 talented writers gathers well-created, insightful prose from the best of sources and yet fails to shed light on the themes of wildness it promises to explore. Set on several continents--from Kipling's primeval India to the abundance of Isak Dinesen's Africa of abundance to the rugged American West of Tom McGuane--these stories most frequently chronicle the hunt, but also seek to tell of natural lessons learned by men of animals, by animals of men, and by both of themselves. Elephants, porcupines, grizzlies, antelope, porpoises and other species appear in these pieces. But Beard has excerpted nearly all of these selections from larger works, and in the process shorn away meaningful context and obscured the variety of perspectives she means to highlight. The narrow focus leads to monotony, and in spite of its evocative writing the anthology begins to read like a survey switching from one creature to the next. The brief, wistful excerpt from Saint-Exupery's The Little Prince seems egregiously abstract in this company. This is by no means an exhaustive gathering of wildlife writers--many good ones are excluded. Nor are these obscure, little-known works--several have been made into motion pictures, and most of the authors (Rudyard Kipling, Jack London, Elspeth Huxley, Gavin Maxwell, Ernest Thompson Seton) are widely read. Yet the insights here come only in the narrowest of glimmers.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Viking Adult
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 0670842931
• ISBN 13: 9780670842933
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272
• Editor: Beard Patricia