this ain't livin'

This has long been one of my favourite Doctor Dolittle books, and I happen to have an old edition, complete with all of Lofting’s charming, delicate pen and ink drawings. (And some of the less charming ones too, like the caricatures of African characters which have been removed from sanitized editions.) The book chronicles the adventures of Mudface, a turtle who lived through the flood, and tells Doctor Dolittle and his household about it, from the building of Noah’s Ark to the ultimate survival of humans.

I love all of the members of the Doctor’s household. Gub Gub the pig, Dab Dab the duck, Too Too the owl…and let’s not forget Chee Chee, Jip, Whitey, and of course Polynesia the parrot. The characters in the books really are all distinctive, and Lofting clearly had a love and respect for animals, and tried to impart it to his readers as well.

There’s something deeply agreeable about a man who prefers the company of animals to people. Lofting’s books definitely had some issues, although apparently not enough to interfere with getting a Newbury award. I suspect that if Lofting had been alive today, his books wouldn’t have subtle sexist and racist gibes; rather, these issues are relics of the time he lived in wrote in, and I think they illustrate the need to read books as they were written, to understand their context and the popular thinking of their time.

One thing about the book which I had missed as a child was the anti-war message at the end. At the very end of the book, the Doctor, Mudface, and the household explore some ruins from before the deluge which have surfaced as a result of an earthquake, and they find themselves in the treasure vault of a long-dead king. While in the vault, they discuss the tyranny of the king, and his attempt to conquer the entire world, and there’s a little anti-war speech. I had always found that part of the book kind of awkward, and now I realize why: Lofting was trying to embed a little pacifism in the book, and he wasn’t quite sure how to go about it.

Demographics:

Doctor Dolittle and the Secret Lake, by Hugh Lofting. Published 1948, 366 pages. Fiction.

I ordered this book from the library because my godfather recommended Michael Doane, and it was the first book that came up when I searched for Doane in the catalogue. I’m not quite sure what to think about it. I finished it earlier today, and I’ve been mulling it over in my mind.

One the one hand, the book lacks a certain polish, and feels a little bit unfinished to me, which is not something which I find terribly attractive. It’s obviously been edited, and it’s reasonably well put together, it just felt like its shirt wasn’t tucked in. I can’t decide if this was a deliberate stylistic choice, or if someone hurried at the end of the editing process.

On the other hand, something about it grew on me, and I found myself enjoying the book and getting attached to the characters as I kept reading.

I experimented with this book, not reading the blurbs, the cover, or anything about it, so that I could approach it knowing nothing. At first, I thought that it was science fiction, but as the book wore on, I realized that the “science fiction” was really just a description of computer technology from 1992. It wasn’t that the author was trying to be futuristic in an era before computers, but rather that this was the state of the art technology, for the time.

The book is about Africa, sort of, and the relationships between people. There are some really interesting characters, like a presumably retarded woman who actually turns out to be deaf (and I wonder how many deaf people have been diagnosed with retardation by mistake…what a waste). There’s also an evil doctor who turns out to be not so evil, raising a question about whether or not torture can be humane. If torture is going to happen anyway, shouldn’t it be humane, rather than cruel? But isn’t torture by definition inhumane? I love the aging jazz pianist, the car thief turned aid worker, the angry and passionate African poet.

This is also a book about secrets, and at times the secretiveness got to me. There were a lot of allusions in the book, some of which really irritated me, because I wanted to beat the author over the head and say “just say it already! Don’t dick around!” It was appropriate, therefore, that one of the themes of the book was frustration with people who keep secrets, and anger about feeling left out.

Maybe I’ll make up my mind about this book in the next week or so. Perhaps I’ll order another Doane, just to see where it gets me.

Demographics:

City of Light, by Michael Doane. Published 1992, 324 pages. Fiction.