Donovan Hohn is new to me, and immediately joins the very small set of writers (
John McPhee,
Adam Nicholson,
Barbara Kingsolver,
Ian Frazier...) that merit an "automatic buy" of any non-fiction they write, literally even if the title be: "Toe-Jam."
[Update: I still haven't finished this book, having elevated it all the way to bathroom book, to prolong it longer: 20 minutes per day is a lovely dose. I'm realizing the author is more sly than he presents himself, but at this point I'm willing to forgive him anything.
But sly? At one point, a team he's with want to use ATVs to move several tons of collected plastic garbage across a wild, beautiful Alaskan isthmus so that it can be safely removed by boat. They're forbidden because archeologists complain that the ATVs might damage spruce trees that were "culturally-modified" by the ancient Unegkurmiut people. The team members rant on about how Spotted-Owl-ridiculous this all is, and make jokes about doing some "cultural modification" of trees using their chainsaws. Hohn opens the next paragraph discussing the Stockholm Syndrome, and how people tend to sympathize with the people they're with, but the rest of the paragraph is a description of the Unegkurmiut people, how utterly central the spruce trees were to their existence, and how future archeologists would curse the cleanup crew with the same breath used to curse Schliemann if their ATVs dragged garbage through the area. Sly.
Right now he's addressing his lifelong fear of water after watching "Jaws" at summer camp, and wondering if he has not somehow transmitted his fear into his young son by telepathy. At the same time he's also describing the run-in he's having with a certain recently-famous Alaskan governor, who vetoed funding for beach cleanup on State land because ... well, Alaska didn't PRODUCE the garbage, so it's not responsible for it...]
None of the other reviewers mention, but Hohn is also a genuine lover of words. Shortly after he boards a ferry for Alaska, we get: "I stand at the taffrail and think to myself 'taffrail,' enjoying the reunion of a thing and its word." That occurs on page 51, and I immediately relaxed into the book and literally put my feet up, secure that I was in the hands of a fellow-spirit.
Of course the story isn't about rubber duckies: the ducks are simply the fulcrum he places his lever on, the MacGuffin. He brings himself along as well: far better than dispassionate, invisible observer, he slips just a little of himself into the story, somewhat like John McPhee in
The Control of Nature standing on a vibrating lava tube, looking down a hole onto the red flow itself, and admitting a fear-thrill a clear order of magnitude greater than any other in his life.
Hohn knows his science, but doesn't lord it over us; you get the sense of discovering things along with him. But perhaps the greatest joy of the book is how much a student of human nature he is. He's the sort of person who sits in a railway carriage and actually looks at the other people present, observes them, converses with them out of interest. I don't care who you are: you will learn plenty, reading this book.
![[Start the discussion]](http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/x-locale/communities/discussion_boards/start-new-discussion-sec._V192250339_.gif){kind=small}
