In a series of loosely interwoven nature essays, a teacher of
English reflects on a life of hunting and fishing in the swamps of
Georgia. There's something about a swamp that draw Kilgo in. He
just has to wander there and investigate it, not so much for the
deer or the trout or the wild pigs or the woodpeckers that he might
find (though they are certainly part of it) as for the mystery of
the swamp itself, the teeming, beautiful, dangerous, historical
life of it, It's hard to know just what Kilgo is trying to express
beyond his quasi-mystical feeling for swamps and the manly
pleasures of deer-hunting, but he does manage to say a lot about
the hunting, and gives a strong picture of his hunting club and the
strange characters and rituals that make it up. There is a section
on being lost in a swamp without a compass, and another on
introducing his son to bunting, that are particularly moving. But
Kilgo's voice, in a faintly disappointing way, remains a small one,
eloquent for its time and place but unable or unwilling to break
through to a more universal language in which his particular world
can stand forth in vivid terms. He seems to distrust his own powers
of verbal originality, and in the crucial moments when he should
put his own insights into his own words - such as when the smell of
a rotten beaver fills him with disgust at the idea of eating meat -
he falls back on quoting Thoreau. There is a real feeling for the
down-home people and natural places of the inland South in this
book, but the writing too seldom rises above the level of regional
sentimentality. (Kirkus Reviews)
Deep Enough for Ivorybills is a powerful, thoughtful collection of
autobiographical writings about James Kilgo's hunting and fishing
excursions in the woods, fields, and swamps of South Carolina and
Georgia. Portraying a world both visceral and majestic, Deep Enough
for Ivorybills establishes Kilgo not only in the sporting lineage
of Robert Ruark and William Faulkner but also in the naturalist
tradition of Annie Dillard and Loren Eisley.
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