R. C. H. Sweeney

Wow. I wouldn't have thought a story about collecting animals in Africa could be made boring. A large part of the problem is his colonial attitude - he describes the peculiar antics of the animals and the Africans in very much the same tone. One particularly nasty scene where he's traveling in his jeep and gets lost; he spots some boys, roars towards them, and when they run (can't tell whether they've never seen a jeep/vehicle before, or they think he's a slaver), he literally chases them down until one trips and he catches him. All to ask them some directions. Ugh, have some empathy, man! Some of his descriptions of the animals (and insects, that's actually his specialty) are interesting, but the same attitude prevails - he wants one, so he captures it and puts it in his "zoo", and if it dies, well, that's very annoying. He does consider, occasionally, the well-being of the animals - he doesn't ask the locals to capture animals for him, because he expects that they would be captured with too much force (and damaged in the process), and/or parents killed to capture juveniles. But mostly it's "what I want, I get". Written in 1969 - I don't know if he was normal for the time or suffered from more arrogance than most. I love animal-collecting stories (fictional or true), but I won't be reading any more of his.… (mehr)