Customer Reviews

Mr. Darwin's Shooter

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

"I would rather be the offspring of two apes than be a man and afraid to face the truth"?

Thomas Henry Huxley's challenge to "Soapy Sam" Wilberforce confronted established religion with Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection. Although sold out on the first day of publication, it's safe to say that few readers, even highly educated ones, comprehended On the Origin of Species. What of those lacking liberal education or otherwise at least well imbued with a tradition of faith? Huxley's barb brought about instant clarity. Science was uncovering secrets hitherto trapped in the earth. One could either accept the information revealed by diligent labour in field and laboratory, or withdraw into the comfortable mythology of faith. Put so simply the options sound an easy choice, but in that era [indeed, in this one as well!] abandoning faith had no match in bringing about an emotional wrench.

One man, vitally involved in the work leading to the clash at Oxford, was not at the debate. He was far away in Pambula, New South Wales, running cattle. Roger McDonald has chosen this most central of all possible people as a focal point in the debate between science and Christianity. Syms Covington, the Beagle's sailor chosen to become Mr Darwin's Shooter, collected many of the specimens of birds and animals Darwin examined in developing his theory. McDonald depicts him as a Congregationalist Christian, a sect viewed suspiciously in Victorian England, but one which encouraged education and learning. This dichotomy allows McDonald to show Covington growing increasingly mindful of the importance of what he and Darwin are bringing into view. Covington knows The Book Darwin is writing will bring it all together. Yet, even in Australia he continues to gather specimens for his 'gentleman' in England. He's not fearful of learning, but his growing knowledge of life's variations and history brings intensified fear and resentment. His fright sometimes results in violence born of frustration.

McDonald has an exceptional, if subtle, talent for depicting a man's qualities. His books don't pander to the dictates of 'political correctness'. As a historical figure, McDonald's Covington is a vivid example of a man's emotional and intellectual clashes of hopes, ambitions, fears, judgements revealed in a clear, unexaggerated manner. McDonald doesn't make Covington a "hero". He knows how few heroes there are and these rarely valid under close scrutiny. McDonald's revelation of male feelings may be unpalatable to some. Still, every bit as much as Darwin did, McDonald unveils a truth. His books, in particular Mr Darwin's Shooter, should be read by anyone wishing to understand that truth. This book is highly recommended for a variety of reasons, not least being the sheer ingenious idea of writing it at all.

As a side note, anyone interested can read Covington's journal as an electronic book in the Mitchell Library in New South Wales. However, Amazon policy forbids my listing the URL, but any search engine will bring it up.

It is such a pleasure to find a book which grapples with some of the Big Ideas of history. Surely the theory of evolution and the publication of Origin of the Species are among the most life-changing developments in intellectual history in the past two hundred years. McDonald does justice to these, attempting to present momentous ideas with the seriousness they deserve while at the same time creating compassion for the people whose immediate lives and religious beliefs are seriously challenged, if not threatened. Though some may feel that the use of 19th century language and vocabulary are pretentious, I found them completely appropriate to the subject, creating a realistic setting for the ideas and themes. Since fiction by definition involves pretense, the use of "dated" language is not necessarily a failing. This is a challenging, fascinating work, which is, at the same time, great fun to read.

This book represented to me, above everything else, the story of a man that we've never heard of before, who played a major role in helping Charles Darwin formulate his theory of Evolution by Natrual Selection. This book is about Syms Covington, field assistant to Darwin during and shortly after the voyage of the beagle. His realization of the theory's implications is an epiphany that McDonald scripts brilliantly, as Covington is torn between pride in his role, anger for lack of recognition, and fear because of the conflict with his faith. This thread looms again and again, building suspense as we wait with Covington for "The Origin" to be published-or, really, unleashed upon the world. It is this emotional conflict that is a key element of this book. On the down side, it gets off to a slow start and, unfortunately in my mind, there isn't enough interaction between Covington and Darwin...the day-to-day stuff of tromping in paradise collecting ad infinitum, prepairing specimens, measuring, etc. However, that may have been intended or necessary because of their backgrounds: darwin was from the aristocracy and covington was a commoner. That comes across in the book, but I think that it could have been explored much more.

I have both a personal and professional interest in natural history and view Darwin as one of my scientific heros. I've just added little known syms covington to that list...as written, he was truly an engaging character and with remarkable depth.

Mr. Darwin's Shooter recreates the 19th-century world in language that is baroque, evocative, and almost poetic. The book is filled with impressive learning on almost everything -- from life on sailing ships, to the genocide of Argentina's Indian population, to the nitty-gritty of slaughtering and skinning animals. Unfortunately, information and language don't necessarily make for a great novel. In the case of Mr. Darwin's Shooter, the narrative is glacial, Charles Darwin has only a secondary role, and, contrary to many of the reviews below, the book never grapples with the "Big Idea" of Faith vs. Science except in an incidental, indirect way. I liked the book, because I like pretty writing and I'm interested in the 19th century -- but there's no way that I would read it a second time.

Syms Covington, the protagonist of this magnificent novel, was a real person. A seaman on board the HMS Beagle, he became the personal servant to Charles Darwin, helping him gather specimens in South America, tending him in England, and maintaining a correspondence even after his emigration to Australia. He might have remained a mere footnote to history, mentioned in Darwin's letters but not acknowledged in either THE VOYAGE OF THE BEAGLE or THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES, had Roger McDonald not given him an intensity of life that, in this book, quite eclipses the reticent Darwin.

One thread of the novel begins with Covington as a knacker's apprentice in Bedford, England, a latter-day follower of the Christianity of John Bunyan and his PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. Meeting a charismatic sailorman-preacher, he goes with him to sea, both ending on HMS Beagle, where Covington strives to get noticed by Darwin. Through strength, skill, and sheer persistence, he eventually succeeds, and embarks on a series of adventures, both scientific and amatory. Alternating with these sections are others set thirty years later in Australia. Covington has become an eccentric half-deaf old man, his fortune made, but terrified that Darwin's conclusions in the forthcoming ORIGIN OF SPECIES will reveal him as an accomplice in disproving the scriptural foundations of the faith on which he has based his life. The unequal relationship between the old hermit and the ambitious young doctor who at first tries to patronize him has an austere fascination as the facts gradually emerge, but I cannot say that it is realized with sufficient clarity to bring Covington's spiritual crisis truly into focus. By contrast, the youthful chapters leap off the page in an incandescence of language that is at once brilliant and strange.

Darwin's vessel called in at Australia on her return voyage; his servant Syms Covington emigrated there; and now an Australian author is writing about both characters. It seems appropriate; Australia, as McDonald's Covington observes, is a country where servants soon become masters. It is also, like the hinterland of South America and the wastes of the Galapagos, a land of strange wonders where even to inhabit it is to partake in a new act of creation. And to match it, McDonald virtually creates a new language out of old ingredients: one part deliberate archaism, one part the scriptural overtones of John Bunyan, one part vernacular slang, and one part sheer invention, the whole making a brilliant verbal coinage that feels new-minted. Take this description of Covington playing his fiddle outside the cabin where the four officers are carousing:

"They saw it, the winking curves of walnut wood. And presto Covington was enjoined to render a tune, a merry jig played in the inn near the crowded kennel where Spit and Polish were fart-daniels in his Pa's litter. Pelting over the bridge Covington bowed, raising a fine dust of resin. Soon his four were fox-hunting, with all the tally-hos and tarantaras in their tiny State Room, their sweaty shirts and stitch-busting breeches jerking around in the close air, the smells of their guts thickening the tropic night. Mr Earle went leapfrogging over the back of the gent with neither room to bend nor turn, and Capt deep in his cups was obliged to render Covington invisible to his emotion."

Old beliefs and new discoveries, old language and new; McDonald juggles both brilliantly throughout. But he ends in the simplicity of reconciliation: "He saw Darwin on his knees, and there was no difference between prayer and pulling a worm from the grass. As for Mr Covington, he prayed in the old-fashioned way. It was the last of anything he knew."

Mr Darwin's Shooter, Roger McDonald's sixth book, and the winner of a number of Australian literary awards, including the National Fiction Award for 2000, is a mixed bag of wondrous, layered writing encased within a dull plot that is unsure where it wishes to go.

Syms Covington was Charles Darwin's 'shooter', during his second voyage on the Beagle. This title has a double meaning, in that Covington literally shot at and collected the vast specimen of bird and animal, insect and fish, from which Darwin drew upon when composing his scientific treatise, The Origin of the Species. Further to that, Covington acted as a manservant, a catch-all, a 'men's wife', an obedient dog. But never, ever a friend.

The novel is split into two distinct time periods, the first of which travels at a much faster pace, to link with the second by the book's end. We are shown the young man's life as a ship's boy, sweeping the decks and praying for his soul alongside John Phipps, a brooding, angry man who wanders the lands, scouring the poor towns and villages of England for young boys willing to leave their homes for a life on the sea and a soul with God. During this time, we are exposed to some of the more exotic locations throughout the world - or exotic to an Englishman, at any rate - and we are introduced to the man who would play such a large part in the life of Covington, and the mind of the 19th century - Charles Darwin.

The second timeline is set after the voyages, when The Origin of Species has been published and is already creating a stir. Covington lives in Australia, and is a rich, cantankerous middle-aged man. He befriends a young doctor, MacCracken, who attempts to discover the mystery behind the man.

Throughout the novel, there is a sense of religion fighting science. The narrator directly comments upon this at times, using it as a metaphorical device to explain the problems within Covington's soul. On a basic level, this metaphor works. We are able to understand the dichotomy of religion and science, because we are aware that, when it comes to natural selection and genetic heritage, Darwin has 'defeated' God. But on a deeper level - on the level that the novel sets itself, with all its grandiose posturing of man coming to terms with forces that threaten to undermine the foundation of 19th century belief - it fails. Covington is not a sufficiently 'three dimensional' character to show off the difficulties of such turbulent times, and it almost seems as though McDonald is aware of this. We read more pretty phrasings of bird plumage and cloud-assailed skies, and not enough about a man who is being internally ripped apart.

As is so often the case with novels that have themes too powerful for the author to handle, we are told, not shown, what is happening. We are told that Covington and Darwin are inextricably linked to one another through ties greater than science and religion combined, but what we are shown does not reveal this. Rather, we see a young Covington enamoured of this grand gent, we see an old Covington, bitter and angry. We see the small, petty details, and the grand sweepings of a time that is so inherently interesting - a time when religion was attacked, again, by the cold harsh reality of science - is relegated to the sidelines.

The concept itself is extremely interesting. There are shadows of a much greater novel on every page. McDonald is capable of astonishing visual imagery - he is a man with a clear love of nature and the beauty it is so capable of displaying. As a wordsmith, there is a great deal of confidence, with complex sentences, subtle and obtuse metaphors, and vast, grand passages of sustained verbal beauty. McDonald is clearly at home with a pen, but this redounds to his detriment, as the pretty words and stylish phrasings seem as so much make-up on an ugly child.



For it's flaws, the novel is worth reading. Perhaps the story of Darwin's voyage is waiting for a greater novelist - or perhaps simply a greater novel - to properly reveal its potential. Perhaps not. Whatever the case, Roger McDonald is an accomplished author, though perhaps one who should restrict his ambition to a theme and concept which his narrative skills can do justice.

Gothic, that is, in the peculiar literary sense applied to 19th Century novels of Romantic Imagination, from Bram Stoker to the Brontes to Herman Melville. There's a lot in "Mr. Darwin's Shooter" that reminds me of Melville, beginning with the obvious fact that much of the story is set on a sailing ship bound around Cape Horn for the vast Pacific. The central character, Syms Covington, is a match for Melville's Ishmael, an outsider by virtue of his untaught intelligence and intensity, cast among the rough 'naturals' of the crew yet instinctively conscious of belonging more among the officers of the human species. Covington's ship is "The Beagle" - afloat on a sea of metaphysical storms, as isolated as Melville's Pequod - but his Ahab is the naturalist Charles Darwin. Covington was a real personage, the sailor on the Beagle who became Darwin's servant and specimen collector for seven years.

All the most flamboyant Gothic novels are about God, about the compulsion to pierce through the illusion of reality in quest of the ultimate truth. Like Ishmael in thrall to Ahab, Syms Covington is simultaneously overawed by Darwin, resentful of the gap between himself and his social and intellectual 'superior,' judgmental of and competitive with his 'master.' The language of "Mr. Darwin's Shooter" is gothically flamboyant also, as idiosyncratic and high-flown as Melville's, though author Roger McDonald had a more immediate stylistic model in the works of his fellow Australian Patrick White, another spiritual Gothic. The chapters of "Mr. Darwin's Shooter" that portray Syms Covington in his later life as a settler in the Australian outback could be merged stylistically into the pages of Patrick White's "Voss" without obvious seams. McDonald's language is eccentric - at times to the point of seeming 'overwritten.' It's intended, I think, to evoke the dialect of Covington's ilk, the dialect of rural, lower class England and the slang of sailors. But it bears no close resemblance to the actual language of the real Syms Covington's journal, or to that of Captain Maryatt or any other 1800-1860 writer I could name. It's almost chewily poetic, another 'gothic' quality, and rather surprising in a novel written in 1998.

Half concealed in the narrative turmoil of Covington's spiritual crisis -- his guilty dread that he himself has contributed to the destruction of Biblical certainty implicit in his master's theory of evolution -- is a ripe gothic romance, or rather two ripe gothic romances, Covington's wild youthful fling under the stars and bushes of the Pampas and, decades later, the match-making he attempts for his shadowy 'natural' daughter with the young Dr. MacCracken, the second focal character of the novel, to whom Covington will eventually confess his spiritual anguish. As Starbuck was to Ahab and Covington to Darwin, MacCracken becomes to Covington, both witness and judge. But if this novel has a significant flaw, it's the half-formed afterthoughtish tale of MacCracken's mating with Theodora, Covington's daughter. The real core of the novel is the parallel drama of Covington grappling with Darwin and then MacCracken grappling with Covington. Yes, dear observant reader, there is a current of homoerotic agonism in "Mr. Darwin's Shooter," another similarity it bears to "Moby Dick" or to Patrick White's "Voss."

"Mr. Darwin's Shooter" is a bold, original, ambitious novel, not an escapist diversion, a novel you'll need to think about while reading. Don't press me too hard, however, for a recommendation! I'd have to say that I admire its writing more than I like it or enjoy it. What seemed natural and proper in writers of the 19th C -- all that metaphysical fuss and romantic bustle -- seems painfully archaic in a writer of my own lifetime.

This novel has been crafted around the life of Syms Covington, who was servant and assistant to Charles Darwin on the second voyage of the Beagle (December 1831 to September 1936). Covington was 15 when this voyage set sail, Darwin was 23.

There are two time periods to this narrative: the first focuses on the early life of Syms Covington and his travels with Darwin; the second focuses on him as an aging man living in Australia and awaiting a copy of Darwin's `On the Origin of Species'. The young Covington is an eager participant in Darwin's discoveries, the older Covington is concerned that Darwin's conclusions will reveal his own role in what he sees be a crime against his religious faith.

This is a fascinating novel. The contrasts and conflicts in the novel between the old and the new are not confined to religion and theories of evolution. Consider the phases of Covington's life: a narrow, circumscribed life in England; then his part in the voyages of discovery on the Beagle, followed by the wider possibilities afforded him by life in colonial Australia. There are many such as Syms Covington in history: often shadowy footnotes in the better known lives of men such as Charles Darwin and Robert FitzRoy. I have read quite a bit about Robert FitzRoy and Charles Darwin and the voyages of the Beagle. This novel adds a different perspective to these voyages and to those who were part of them.

I note, as another reviewer has, that the Journal of Syms Covington is available online for those interested in reading his own words.

`It was a life ended, all its days stolen.'

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

I enjoyed this book very much. I really had no idea what it was about before I picked it up, but was pleasantly surprised to find that it really hooked me, as far as the story goes. Like many others have mentioned, the language really is from another time, and I'm sure I missed out on a lot of meaning that the book contained, as far as the dialogue goes, but overall the story was pretty easy to follow. The author has done some pretty intensive research and I had to remind myself every so often that the story is based on true event and that these were real people.

I did like the conflict between religion and science that Darwin took on. I think his understanding of faith was very comparable to what someone in his position would be thinking and, even though subtle, was a major theme of the book. I would say give it a read, however, I would not read again.

Like a morally upright but humorless grandmother, Mr. Darwin's Shooter is easier to admire than to love. The book seems pointlessly erudite - if you don't know much about Pilgrim's Progress, or the meaning of words like "scrogs," you'll sense early on that you are missing out on some of the book's richness. An author with more empathy for his readers might have worked harder to help those readers make sense of the unfamiliar references.

The book's style contributes to its obscure feel. Presumably McDonald mimicked the prose he encountered when he read diaries and other materials written contemporaneously with the book's events. As a result readers must endure sentences such as "The gent was braving himself in FitzRoy's eyes as one who would not speak out loud, but hold, as a guest aboard must bravely, to naval lore in a flogging." For a book written at the end of the twentieth century, that sounds phony. It may be an achievement to write a book this way (and an accomplishment to read it), but I read books for enjoyment and illumination and found that the pseudo-archaic style interfered with both.

Heaven help the reader who doesn't know before opening the book that Darwin was aboard the Beagle not as a naturalist but as a gentleman's companion; that the captain of the ship was probably clinically depressed; that Darwin waited many years to publish because he feared the reaction he would get; and so forth. The book is completely consistent with these facts, but had I not read a lot of Stephen Jay Gould before tackling Mr. Darwin's Shooter, I suspect I'd have come away from the book rather confused. On the one hand, it is generally commendable when a book raises questions in the mind of the reader. On the other hand, when the questions raised are simple matters of historical record rather than philosophical queries, the author has not written a successful historical novel.