Slicing the Silence: Voyaging to Antarctica (Hardcover)

by Tom Griffiths (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. As the climate changes and polar ice caps shrink dramatically, author and environmental historian Griffiths (Forests of Ash) provides essential background for understanding how we reached the current state of meltdown. Griffiths weaves journal entries from his own voyage to Australia's Antarctic stations in 2002-03 with extended chapters on the history of human exploration in Antarctica. His description and analysis of the polar experience is clear and comprehensive: he knows the rough seas, the storms, the desolation, the strange lack of green, the physical disruption of body rhythms and the psychological distress, and makes vivid use of that knowledge in his accounts of past explorers (Roald Amundsen, Robert Falcon Scott, Douglas Mawson, Richard Byrd and many others). As an Australian, Griffiths looks European colonial misdeeds head-on, but he also analyzes forthrightly the Australian government's claims on and behavior toward Antarctica. A jumpy style can be difficult to follow at first, but soon the Griffiths' many angles of pursuit-the effects of solitude, the experience of overwintering, the struggle for survival, the biology and behavior of penguins, etc.-come together in an engrossing and highly satisfying pastiche. A fine and informative ecological adventure, Griffiths' history is worth reading and re-reading.
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From Booklist
Australian environmental historian Griffiths presents a comprehensive and enjoyable survey of Antarctic history, recounting the exploration, research, and management of the southernmost continent. Armchair travelers will relish Griffiths' witty writing style and his excellent command of everything from geology to politics to the searing impact of loneliness. What is really interesting here, though, is the fresh view he gives to so many of the stories readers might already know. His takes on Scott, Shackleton, Amundsen, and the cold war rivalry between the U.S. and the Soviet Union are smart, insightful, and packed with first-person narratives. Antarctic aficionados will appreciate the lesser-known voices that Griffiths highlights, such as Douglas Mawson, Fred Middleton, and Robert Cushman Murphy. From reports of the Nazis dropping swastikas on the ice to bitter recollections from the first party to overwinter, Griffiths attends to sources rarely heard. His is the writing of a consummate scholar, a man both curious about and committed to knowing all that makes Antarctica "the last place on Earth, the first place in Heaven." Very well done. Mondor, Colleen

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 408 pages
• Publisher: Harvard University Press; 1 edition (October 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674026330
• ISBN-13: 978-0674026339
• Product Dimensions: 14.8 x 9.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #513,138 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Deep but lively history, February 16, 2008

By	Robert C. Ross (New Jersey) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Griffiths opens his book: "To voyage towards Antarctica is to go beyond the boundary of one's biology towards a frightening and simplifying purity. [You need warmth and food, and stories.] Stories are privileged carriers of truth. Truth ... cannot easily be stated explicitly. It is not to be found in a chronicle of facts ... Story creates an atmosphere in which truth becomes discernible as a pattern."

Griffiths includes extracts from other authors, for example quoting Ursula le Guin, who argues that Scott's "real heroism" lay in "what he made of his failure", his rendering of a needless sacrifice in virtuoso prose. Scott knew the power of story-telling, as he lay dying in his tent, writing copious letters and notes. "In the elemental purity of the ice, in the white noise of the enshrouding blizzard, the written word assumed extraordinary power."

The book's structure is based on pages in Griffiths' Antarctic diary when he sailed to Antarctica as a guest of the Australian Antarctic Division. Each chapter can be read as a stand alone essay, and each essay is an excellent summary of its topic. These are adventure stories, but contain a great deal of analysis as well.

The first six chapters review the history of the Antarctic up to the International Geophysical Year of 1957/58. It is concise but comprehensive. There are chapters on living in the Antarctic, comparing the heroic era and with the modern. There is an excellent exploration of the issue of food and entertainment and the closing chapter discusses the role of tourists. [I was one of about 30,000 tourists who visited in 2004.]

The background literature is outstanding and extensive and explores literature not usually found in debates on Antarctic. There's an Australian bias to the book, of course, but that adds an interesting point of view. Australia claims 40% of the continent and has taken steps to make that portion "Australian" to reinforce its legal claims.

The book is compelling reading, and very well-produced.


Robert C. Ross 2008

4.0 out of 5 stars Deep Discussion of Last Continent, July 1, 2009

By	Douglas E. Cornelius "dougcornelius" (Boston) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Since The Son and The Daughter came I have become an armchair adventurer rather than an outdoor adventurer. The tale of Shackleton's adventure to Antarctica has always fascinated me; Trapped in ice for months and sailing to rescue in a small boat to an island hundreds of miles of away. I am always stunned that his entire crew survived in a situation where none should have.

I came across a blurb about Tom Griffiths' Slicing the Silence: Voyaging to Antarctica in National Geographic's Adventure magazine.

The author traveled to Antarctica and kept a diary. This book mixes entries from his diary with the history exploration of Antarctica and settlement on the icy continent. The book is about the enduring power of the "heroic era" stories of exploring Antarctica, as Edwardian figures sledged across the inhabited expanse of snow and ice.

[Antarctica] is a place where nature is lethal, humans are always just visitors and the land is covered by ice kilometers deep. This is a landscape in which the laws of chemistry and physics - and indeed the power of metaphysics - predominate, and terrestrial biology looks very marginal indeed. The ocean is where life is: the largest land animal is a mite. The ice is massive, deadly and - in spite of its own variety - reductionist. It simplifies and universalises

Griffiths does a great job of summarizing the history of exploration, living on Antarctica and the implication of Antarctic research on human behavior. He puts in contrast the easy death of humans on the continent with the abundant life in the ocean just offshore. He moves onto the current technology and climate research at the Antarctic bases. In this place where humans can barely exist, we are learning more about our world.

In the end, people go South to Antarctica "for purity, solitude, otherworldliness; they go there for the silence."