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101 of 107 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Memorable, Forgettable Character, May 14, 2007
This review is from: Too Close to the Sun: The Audacious Life and Times of Denys Finch Hatton (Hardcover)
If you know of Denys Finch Hatton, you probably know of him as the flyer in _Out of Africa_, whether in the memoir by Karen Blixen (under the pen name Isak Dinesen) or in the movie as played by Robert Redford. His long and troubled love affair with Blixen and her commemoration of him in her writing are now just about all there is to Hatton, but that was not what those around him would have thought. He was a legend in his own time, idolized by men and adored by women, as unforgettable a personality as anyone around him had ever met. The new biography of Hatton, _Too Close to the Sun: The Audacious Life and Times of Denys Finch Hatton_ (Random House) by Sara Wheeler, contains many reminiscences of those whom Hatton had impressed. "As for charm, I suspect Denys invented it," wrote aviatrix Beryl Markham, who also wrote of her lover in the memoir _West with the Night_. "The man with about the most impressive personality I have ever known," wrote Bertie, Lord Cranworth, who had fought alongside him. Yet as Wheeler admits, "the real Denys" is unknowable. He did not leave a diary, and there are only a few dozen letters existent. It is clear that except for making himself into a legend, his accomplishments were minimal. Since he died in 1931, no one now alive has adult memories of him. He is thus perhaps a thin subject for a full biography, but Wheeler has summarized both the life and the social forces of its time, to make a portrait of a man who charmed himself into history as effortlessly and successfully as he did everything else he tried. He was schooled at Eton, which remained in his memory as his happiest years. He was admired there for his good looks, ability at sports, and his wit. At Oxford, he excelled in sports, and didn't care much about academics, leaving with a fourth-class degree and no particular enthusiasm for a career. In 1911 he headed for British East Africa, now Kenya. He had to do something, and he invested in land, in shops, in cattle, and in mining, with little effect. He served in the African arena of WWI, but a friend remembered that he "made no secret of the fact that warfare bored him to distraction." It was only after the war that he discovered the vocation of big game hunter (and guide to would-be big game hunters) that was perfect for him. He was just the fellow to kill two lions with successive bullets from a double-barreled rifle. He eventually worried about the toll that such killing was taking on the area's ecology, and long before his countrymen came around, he was talking about the importance of conservation. He took up photography and advocated that visitors come shooting with the goal of bringing back as trophies photographs rather than mounted heads. He had many satisfied customers, none more important than the Prince of Wales (the future Edward VIII), who didn't like anyone much, but liked Hatton. The Prince bet him that he couldn't affix the king's head to the bottom of a rhinoceros, but the fearless Hatton managed it, putting postage stamps on each buttock of a sleeping rhino. He had the Prince's admiration, and he also had the Prince's ear and understanding as he advocated for photography of game and against the useless shooting of it from motorcars. On another safari, he was asked by American tycoon Frederic B. Patterson how it was that he came to the career of guide. "Oh, it just happened, if you know what I mean," came the reply. He was exactly right; striving for accomplishment was not in him. When he encouraged Karen Blixen to resume painting for relaxation, she wrote, "He has a great talent himself but cannot be bothered to do anything about it." He also could not do anything about relationships with women, of whom Blixen was merely the most important and enduring. Book and film have made her part in his story well-known, but he did leave her when she was emotionally and financially at her neediest. And then, never having accomplished much besides being well liked and admired by almost everyone, and loved by many, in 1931 he was killed in a plane crash, sealing the legend forever, and preventing any resolution of the many enigmas he personified. He might be a minor figure, but he is a fascinating one, and for all his limitations, and the sparseness of documentation of his own reflections, Wheeler has given as good a portrait as he is likely to get. No one knew him well during his lifetime, and not even Wheeler's careful attention explains him satisfactorily, but he is worth knowing even just a little, as all around him would have said.
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40 of 45 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
The literary equivalent of a Potemkin Town - a beautiful surface, but nothing inside, January 9, 2008
This review is from: Too Close to the Sun: The Audacious Life and Times of Denys Finch Hatton (Hardcover)
I picked up this book after finishing Isak Dinesen/Karen Blixen's OUT OF AFRICA and Beryl Markham's WEST WITH THE NIGHT. When I found out that a biography about Denys Finch-Hatton had just been published, I thought it was too good to be true - he is so fascinating, and so mysterious, in Blixen and Markham's memoirs that it's hard to read them without wanting to learn more. It turns out it WAS too good to be true. Finch-Hatton left little to no record of his own life. There are no diaries and very, very few letters. My burning questions were: What is the interior world of a charming, dashing adventurer like? What is he thinking while he's busy making life brighter, sweeter, and more exciting for others? Wheeler has no more idea than anyone else. Finch-Hatton has left no record of what his life was like, from his own point of view. Aside from Blixen and Markham, whose portraits of Finch-Hatton are already well known, his nearest and dearest didn't sit down to describe his character, his thoughts or hidden sides. I recognized huge sections of OUT OF AFRICA and WEST WITH THE NIGHT rephrased here, with additional comments pulled from research into Blixen or Markham's life, plumped up with (generally fascinating) cultural and historical context and (generally very clever) anecdotes and asides. But this was an enhanced reading of Blixen or Markham's life, nothing new, and at a real distance from the actual subject of this biography. I learned a lot about a particular moment in the history of British East Africa. I learned some things that I didn't know about Blixen and Markham and, yes, even a few things that I didn't know about Denys Finch-Hatton - a bit about his family history, where he went to school, where he was during the war and how he became involved in big game hunting and conservation. Wheeler writes beautifully; she has an exquisite style. She clearly hopes that if she can plump up her scanty material with lots of dazzling imagery, we won't notice that this lengthy description of the English countryside or that lengthy description of the Serengeti actually isn't telling us anything at all about Denys Finch-Hatton. This felt like sleight of hand to me, like a trick, and I resented her for it. I want to see gorgeous style used to make good, solid research come to life. I don't want to see it poorly masking the author's failure to gather enough material to justify a book. In short, even though I generally enjoyed reading TOO CLOSE TO THE SUN, I disliked it.
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18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Uneven and biased... but occassionally excellent, October 19, 2007
This review is from: Too Close to the Sun: The Audacious Life and Times of Denys Finch Hatton (Hardcover)
Having been to Africa several times, I had high hopes for this book. Unfortunately the book fell short. First, the good: The opening of the book is well done. Using evocative language, she sets out the story and her motivations for writing it. She goes on to place her characters in history, describing both personal and political backgrounds. And this is the real strength of the book; Wheeler manages to conjure the mood of the time in which Denys lived and this goes a long way to explaining him. Looking at the accompanying pictures, you can almost imagine how he moved and spoke. The other key strength of the book is that it was meticulously researched. There are myriad entertaining stories about minor characters in the book, from Beryl Markham to Bror Blixen to the hedonists of the Happy Valley set. Now the not so good: Wheeler clearly dislikes Karen Blixen. This would be fine if there were some objective reasons to back it up, but there simply aren't. Wheeler goes on and on about Blixen's histrionics and neediness and takes numerous shots at her abilities as a writer. By the book's midpoint the cattiness is bordering on the pathological. Apart from a grudging complement to Karen's "endurance" at the book's close, it seems she can do no right - especially in contrast to the supremely English Denys. And this "English good" while "others bad" runs throughout the book, so much so that I began to wonder if there wasn't a kind of cultural myopia at work. What Wheeler attacks as Karen's grandiosity (when she compares herself to a retreating Napoleon) was probably really an example of the Danish sense of humour, viz. bathos (read some Kierkegaard to see that in action!) At any rate, Wheeler's constant jibes at Karen were enough to wreck my enjoyment of the book - and to erode my confidence in her objectivity. The other criticism I have is in the writing itself. To be sure, Wheeler is a gifted wordsmith with a prodigious vocabulary (I had to run for my dictionary on numerous occasions) but she can also overdo things, wantonly at times. Long stretches of text are so crammed with adjectives it becomes hard to follow what she's saying. Take for example: "Below the fretworked balconies of close-packed coral-lime houses, rickshaw boys with teaky backs pulled carts teetering with the graying boards of dried kingfish." Happily, the writing isn't all so airless. Worth buying if you're very interested in East Africa in the early 20th century.
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