In Brief: March 01, 2000

The Spirit in the Gene: Humanity’s Proud Illusion and the Laws of Nature by Reg Morrison Cornell Univ. Press 286 pp.; $27

“The human animal,” we say—but what precisely do we mean by that? The dominant answer (though not the only answer) in the West since the Greeks is that human beings are indeed animals and yet also more than animals: not just unique (isn’t each animal unique?) but set apart from all the rest of the animal kingdom.

In our time that answer is increasingly contested. A case in point is photojournalist Reg Morrison’s new book, with an introduction by Lynn Margulis and superbly illustrated with photo graphs and drawings. Like many popularizers of science, Morrison believes that humans would be far less likely to allow overpopulation and sanction the direct or indirect destruction of other species if they realized that they are (as Morrison puts it) “entirely typical animals” who exist in a complex and interconnected biological web.

At the same time, Morrison holds to a genetic reductionism—we are our genes—that would seem to let us off the hook and render his exhortations futile. So, for example, under the heading “The Cult Boom,” he writes,

The more mystic, grandiose, and frankly unbelievable the scenario, the more attractive it is to our mystery-starved hunter-gatherer genes. In those nations where extended-family structures have virtually disappeared and genetic relatedness no longer provides a practical glue to cement communities together, any tribelike cults that dispense bizarre mystical dogma on a wholesale basis tend to prosper and proliferate.

This seeming contradiction between genetic determinism and human responsibility mars an otherwise interesting look at human evolution and the environmental concerns that humanity faces going into the new millennium.

Morrison’s movement from genetics to philosophy and theology has been repeated many times in recent decades by Edward O. Wilson, Richard Dawkins, and others. It always begs to be confronted with an epistemological question—precisely how do we know that humans are nothing more than the sum of their genes? The answer, of course, is that there is no strictly scientific way to know that this sort of genetic determinism is actually true. It is merely accepted as an article of faith. Morrison says it is an “obvious corollary” of evolution, but he too easily ignores or dismisses alternative interpretations of evolution that see it as the slow unfolding of God’s purposes in the universe.

Many Christians share Morrison’s environmental concerns. We would prefer to say, however, that the environment has been harmed because Christians and others have forgotten that we are to care for the creation. The problem, then, is not too much spirituality, but not enough.

—Matt Donnelly

Lives of the Poets by Michael Schmidt Alfred A. Knopf 975 pp.; $35

This book proclaims itself an homage and successor to Samuel Johnson’s eighteenth-century book of the same title. It is neither. To accompany an anthology, Johnson produced fairly detailed biographical accounts of around 50 poets, coupled with thorough and in many cases brilliant critical commentary. Schmidt by contrast tries to cover the entire history of English poetry from the fourteenth century to today: this means that both his biographical and critical comments tend to be skimpy, and many of his judgments—especially about pre-twentieth-century poetry—appear to be tossed off, in the brief declarative untransitioned sentences of which he is overly fond. Those judgments are often shallow or dubious, and it sometimes seems that Schmidt hurries through the first five hundred years of his story to get to the stuff he really likes: the twentieth century takes up about half the book.

Fortunately, Schmidt is a much better guide to recent verse, calling our attention to some fine poets the world has neglected—the great Charles Causley, for example, a poet from Cornwall almost unknown except to his fellow poets. But on balance, readers of poetry would do better to invest their money in a substantial collection like The Norton Anthology of Poetry, or, for this century, The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry. The introductions in the latter volume tend to be better than what Schmidt offers, and you get the poems to boot.

—Alan Jacobs

Why Read the Classics? by Italo Calvino translated by Martin McLaughlin Pantheon Books 278 pp.; $26

What a joy and a boon it would be to have a book on this subject by the late great Italo Calvino. Unfortunately, what we have here is a brief essay called “Why Read the Classics?” followed by a series of reflections on various great writers from Homer to Cesar Pavese. Some of them are excellent—Calvino is a wonderful guide to writers who share the characteristics he thought essential to literature of the coming century: lightness, rapidity, precision, visibility, and multiplicity—others merely workmanlike. But the title essay is the best, with its 14 provocative definitions of a classic. Would that it had been longer.

For a taste, here are a couple of the definitions: “4. A classic is a book which with each rereading offers as much of a sense of discovery as the first reading. 5. A classic is a book which even when we read it for the first time gives the sense of rereading something we have read before.”

—AJ

Dispossessing the Wilderness: Indian Removal and the Making of the National Parks by Mark David Spence Oxford Univ. Press 190 pp.; $35

What could be more natural than wilderness? Mark David Spence does not answer this question in Dispossessing the Wilderness, but does demonstrate that “wilderness” is as much a cultural construction as it is natural. Specifically, he argues that the ideals behind the creation of national parks necessitated Indian removal.

Antebellum artists and writers such as George Catlin and Ralph Waldo Emerson viewed Indians as the “children of Nature.” Their Romantic wilderness was an “Indian wilderness,” as “Antebellum Americans did not conceive of wilderness and Indians as separate.” Spence argues that among Americans who favored preservation, the Civil War and Indian Wars bred racism, nationalism, and impatience with Indians who refused to accept the inevitability of civilization. Post-war preservationists thus separated Indians from the wilderness by idealizing uninhabited nature and ignoring Indians who inhabited so-called wilderness areas, or by dismissing Indians as “tourists,” people who had merely “visited” these regions in the past. In either case, Indians had to be dispossessed of disputed lands and removed to reservations in order to preserve wilderness areas and create national parks.

The bulk of the book uses Yellowstone, Glacier, and Yosemite national parks as case studies to examine the process of creating national parks and dispossessing Indians between the 1870s and 1930s. Despite this lamentable history Spence holds out some hope for the future. Since the 1930s and the “Indian New Deal,” and especially since the 1960s, some park officials and preservationists have become aware of the ironies and injustices of dispossessing Indians to save wilderness areas and provide tourists with beautiful scenery.

There are no easy resolutions, Spence observes, but there is common ground. “Indians and non-Indians have both looked on national parks as crucial to their political, cultural, and even spiritual identity.” If park officials, non-Indian tourists, and Indians could recreate an “Indian Wilderness,” it might “revolutionize how Americans experience the wilderness” as well as “further tribal efforts to reclaim their traditions” and “strengthen their ability to remain politically and culturally distinct nations.”

—William Katerberg

American Indians and National Parks by Robert H. Keller and Michael F. Turek Univ. of Arizona Press 319 pp.; $19.95, paper

When conservationists and government officials “created parks out of Indian land,” they “took yet another significant step in the conquest of North America,” declare Robert H. Keller and Michael F. Turek. Keller is an academic who has taught and written on Indian policy and law. Turek has worked for the National Park Service (NPS), the U.S. Forest Service, the Native American Fish and Wildlife Society, the Yakama Indian Nation, the InterTribal Bison Cooperative, and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. Taking advantage of their diverse academic and professional experiences, the authors use both archival sources and interviews. The interviews give greater voice especially to Native Americans, and contemporary park officials, and provide the book with some marvelous anecdotes and quotations.

American Indians and National Parks ranges widely, from the founding of Yosemite National Park in the 1860s to the creation of an Indian liaison office by the NPS in the 1990s, and from Olympic National Park in Washington to Everglades National Park in Florida. In the process, Keller and Turek define four distinct phases in park/Indian relations. To the 1910s, the federal government unilaterally appropriated recreational lands without regard for Indians. From the 1910s to the 1960s it ended land-taking but continued to neglect tribal needs, treaties, and cultures. Indian resistance from the 1960s to the 1980s encouraged “aggressive pursuit of tribal interests.” Finally, in 1987, with the adoption of a Native American Relationships Management Policy, the NPS committed itself to “cross-cultural integrity and cooperation.”

This history includes instances of NPS/Indian cooperation— “good neighbor” relationships at the local level—but generally it is a story of bigotry and ethnocentrism. In recent years, as a result of Indian resistance and evolving NPS policies, a greater “native presence has found its way into park gift shops and interpretive programs.” However, many NPS staff continue to see themselves as “the best custodians of Indian land and culture.”

The strength of American Indians and National Parks lies in its detailed studies of particular parks. The book also makes compelling use of ethnographic sources to include Native American voices and viewpoints. Its weaknesses include a narrative that is scattered in places, a limited consideration of the wider cultural context, and little analysis, except at the be ginning and the end of the book. Mark David Spence’s Dispossessing the Wilderness is a better place to start reading about this issue, with its more focused, analytical study of three parks. Keller and Turek’s book is a valuable supplement that adds historical and geographical breadth. Together, these books will give you something to consider on your next vacation in a national park.

—WK

Matt Donnelly is assistant editor of CHRISTIANITY ONLINE magazine. Alan Jacobs is associate professor of English at Wheaton College. William Katerberg teaches in the Department of History at Calvin College.