There's a class of optical illusions called cognitive illusions in which simple shapes are arranged in such a manner as to take advantage of our tendency towards perceptual organization. The silhouettes of faces that look to one another became a vase in white; a sketched animal might be a duck or a rabbit. It's possible to create such an effect in prose as well, to give the world a half-twist and re-write our perceptions. It's mostly a matter of voice, telling the story in a manner that is both particularly clear and spectacularly unique.
Hannah Holmes finds that voice in 'The Well-Dressed Ape: A Natural History of Myself,' her entertainingly dispassionate view of the Human Animal. The premise of this innovative work of non-fiction is quite simple. 'The Well-Dressed Ape' is a 300 page-plus "fact sheet" for homo sapiens. By unplugging her perceptions of humans as humans and re-jiggering her view so that she sees and speaks of us as animals, Holmes manages to engagingly entertain her readers while elucidating just what it means to be human.
Holmes' narrative is straightforwardly organized. First she describes our bodies ("Quick As A Cricket: Physical Description"), then our brains, organs of perception, range, tendency towards territoriality, diet, reproduction, behavior, communication, predators and our impact on the ecosystems we inhabit. I listed them all because that seems like a pretty tall order in a pretty readable and skinny book. But Holmes has that voice, that narrative storytelling style that helps her reign in each of her areas of interest so that she covers the ground without seeming to skimp.
'The Well-Dressed Ape' is simply a delight to read. Holmes prose is often very funny and very informative in the same sentence, tweaking our sensibilities with her skewed point-of-view. She refers to our "fur" and "this pinnal flap of mine. It's no thing of beauty. It's a bald ruffle of cartilage, immobile as an owl's eye." (It's her ear.) She's simultaneously sharp and silly. By taking a single step back and viewing humans as animals, she's free to choose words that are quite appropriate, yet rarely applied to the human realm. The craft of writing in this book is quite superb. She does reign herself in nicely, never pushing the prose, but simply following her muse. Readers will follow with great reading pleasure.
Beyond the prose, Holmes offers a wide variety of the latest science discoveries clearly explained and expertly threaded through her story arc. You'll learn far more than you thought possible without ever losing the page-turning quality that makes this book so much fun to read. For a book focused on humans, she manages to pack in a fair amount of stuff about other animals as well. Everything's referenced and indexed, which lends the whole proceeding a soothing assurance that we're not just getting another "pop-sci" book, but a scholarly, if entertaining and a bit odd work of actual science.
And that's the thing about 'The Well-Dressed Ape.' It is in the end a fine work of science writing, a book in which the prose craftsmanship plays as important a part as the facts that underlie the work. This is humanity as we might seem if viewed by benevolent aliens, surveying all the life on earth. Sure, there are a lot of facts here. But the real science is in the writing, in the half-twist perception that we aren't just humans, we are animals as well. We look in the mirror and see one; to see the Other requires the gift of language.
New to the Agony Column
02-22-10: Commentary : Graeme Gibson's 'The Bedside Book of Birds' and 'The Bedside Book of Beasts' : A Feast for Your Mind, Your Eyes and Your Mind's Eye
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2009 Interview with Graeme Gibson : "Our common humanity, our common culture, will help make the connections."
02-19-10: Commentary : Ralph Waldo Ellison 'Three Days Before the Shooting ...' : One Book, Many Stories
Agony Column Podcast News Report : John Callahan and Adam Bradley and 'Three Days before the Shooting' : "I've moved through the phases of my own life, and I find those phases mirrored in the characters of this novel." — John Callahan "...capable of brilliance, eloquence and power; that's how I understand the second novel, as we see it in Three Days Before the Shooting, and that's certainly how I understand, and I think how Ellison understood, America." — Adam Bradley
02-18-10: Commentary : George Mann Scares Up 'The Ghosts of Manhattan' : Hard Core Pulp Action
Agony Column Podcast News Report : Speaking Frankly With Thomas Frank : From Tea to Shining Tea : "When I think about what I'm saying, it's so depressing..."
02-17-10: Commentary : Thomas More, Clarence Miller and 'Utopia' : Politics, Satire, Fantasy
02-15-10: Commentary : 'Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded' by John Scalzi : A Decade of Whatever
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2010 Interview with Chitra Bannerjee Divakaruni : "I have to work through the novel and then it comes to me, how it's going to end."
02-12-10: Commentary : Stephanie Merritt Becomes S. J. Parris : 'Heresy'
02-11-10: Commentary : Max Watman 'Chasing the White Dog' : Home-Made Hooch and Rebellion
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2010 Interview With Sam Farr : : "The money came from Washington, but the uses for that money came from the local community."
02-10-10: Commentary : Anne Lamott Spots 'Imperfect Birds' : The Ties That Unbind
Agony Column Podcast News Report : Speaking Frankly: Thomas Frank on Re-Populism and Re-Launching The Baffler : "I have never seen 'populist backlash in a headline before."
02-09-10: Commentary : Douglas Clegg Returns to 'Neverland' : Is 1980's Horror Returning from the Grave?
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2009 Interview with David Drake, Part 2 / Complete : "I didn't have governor ... that is ... anything, endgame, was me killing somebody."
02-08-10: Commentary : David Louis Edelman Completes Jump 225 : 'Geosynchron'
02-05-10: Commentary : DC Pierson is 'The Boy Who Couldn't Sleep and Never Had To' : The Insomnia Vibe
Agony Column Podcast News Report : Three Books with Alan Cheuse: Too Much Money, Dominick Dunne; The Privileges, Jonathan Dee; Adam Haslett, Union Atlantic; The Forty Rules of Love, Elif Shafak; Wild Child, T. C. Boyle
02-04-10: Commentary : David Grann and 'The Devil and Sherlock Holmes' : An Obsession with Obsession
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2010 Interview with Josh Sundquist : "It was a really amazing testament to the power of small-town America and to the power of organized religion at its best."
02-03-10: Commentary : James Rollins Unleashes 'The Altar of Eden' : Monsters at the Zoo
02-01-10: Commentary : 'He Walked Among Us' : Cassandra, John Titor and Norman Spinrad
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2010 Interview with Charlie Huston : "The prospect of things becoming deeply unhinged seemed very, very immediate"
01-29-10: Commentary : Henghis Hapthorn Meets 'Hespira' : Matthew Hughes Devolves the Universe
01-27-10: Commentary : Glen Cook Walks the 'Shadowline' : Every Old (Science Fiction) Thing is New (Space Opera) Again
Agony Column Podcast News Report : An Interview with Jeff Carlson at SF in SF on January 16, 2010 : "The bad guys never consider themselves the bad guys..."
01-19-10: Commentary : Gene Wolfe Moves into 'The Sorcerer's House' : Magical Surrealism
Agony Column Podcast News Report : Three Books with Alan Cheuse : Don Delillo: 'Point Omega,' Robert Stone: 'Fun With Problems,' Douglas Preston: 'Impact'
01-18-10: Commentary : George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois Bring On 'Warriors'n : An Anthology Waiting to Happen
