Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #180506 in Books
• Published on: 2003-04-07
• Binding: Paperback
• 382 pages

Synopsis
When Captain Scott died in 1912 on his way back from the South Pole, his story became a myth embedded in the English imagination. Despite wars and social change, despite recent debunking, it is still there. Conventional histories of polar exploration tend to trace the laborious expeditions across the map, dwelling on the proper techniques of ice navigation and sledge travel, rather than asking what the explorers thought they were doing, or why. This book, in contrast, is about the poles as they have been perceived, dreamed of, even desired, and offers a cultural history of a national obsession with polar explorers and mountaineers. It sets out to show how Scott's death in 1912 was the culmination of a long-running national enchantment with perilous journeys to the ends of the earth.

Customer Reviews

Like trying to reach the north pole
After reading the other reviews on this site I thought I would give this book a go, having read a lot of the actual "pole exploration" books.

The target of this book, to appreciate the imagination, rather than the doing is admirable. One of the beginning chapters tries to define what Sublime meant to people in earlier times. The trouble is it went on, and on, and on, not really getting anywhere.

This book is about the imagination of armchair literary types, pontificating about linguistic philosophy. If thats you, then you will love the prose. However, even the best poems dont ramble in my opinion. They eloquently make the point using well positioned words.

For me, if Mr.Spufford were to go back and summarise this work, and half the length, it would achieve a lot more.

Beautifully written, but a bit of a ramble
I'm not sure what I was expecting from this book, after all the cover does say it's about how the poles and the explorers who went there are percieved, rather than being actually about them. I found this book to rather over-analyse the whole concept, trying to get right into a mindset that doesn't work that way - explorers and adventurers *do* rather than think, and to me this book rather missed that point.

It's fantastically well written, though the worming into the fine detail left me wishing the author would hurry up and get to the point - not a style that appeals to me - though I can see how many would thoroughly enjoy this book.

Not a history - a cultural exploration
This book is not a history of polar exploration. Whilst it does work its linear way through the names, tragedies, heroism, prejudices and unabashed ineptitude of British assaults on the poles, from the 17th century to Scott & Shackleton, it owes more to psychology, anthropology, and literature, than simple, chronologically-listed tales.

It is a valuable addition for anybody with a stock of Roland Huntford biographies, or any of the many boy's own-style books about the Endurance expedition. It places these tales in a psychological landscape. For anyone who wonders 'why?' these guys did what they did, this book attempts to get behind their eyes and show you.

It is beautifully written. The density of Spufford's style demands that you pour over every line, every word. It is not a book to be rushed. It is one of the best-written non-fiction book's I have ever read - for its use of language. There are some stunningly beautiful passages, as well as interesting accounts of Dickens' and George Bernard Shaw's roles in the history of the poles. The use of ice and snow in Moby Dick and Frankenstein has you looking as these works in a totally new way - not as singular works of genius and originality, but as stories using the common theme of the day at a time when everybody wanted a piece of the poles (much as novelists now write about Big Brother and text messages).

Despite this, it probably is a book only for lovers of extreme exploration, as it is quite a marginal subject, even in the face of the recent Shackleton-mania. But for the armchair Scotts/Shackletons/Amundsens out there, reading it will make your year. I cannot recommend it highly enough.