The Worst Journey in the World
May. 2nd, 2023 07:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
primeidealSometimes you come across a book where you've sort of, kind of, osmosed what it's about and then when you actually read it, it turns out that it sort of was but also sort of wasn't what you expected. And sometimes, the actual book is better! "The Worst Journey in the World" was like that for me. This isn't a review per se, this is a broad outline of "what I expected versus what it actually was, and some caveats/notes about the reading experience.
"Worst Journey" is Apsley Cherry-Garrard's account of the Terra Nova expedition, written ~10 years after the fact. Terra Nova is known for Robert Scott's expedition to the South Pole, in which the English party were beaten by the Norwegians to the South Pole, died on the return trip, got praised as heroes for their stoicism and stiff-upper-lip attitude, got deconstructed because imperialism is bad mkay and this is Norwegian competence erasure, got reconstructed because actually their planning was reasonably competent given the knowledge of Antarctic weather they had...Etc.
After returning from Antarctica, Cherry-Garrard served in WWI, but he had physical and mental health issues that plagued him for many decades afterwards. The Wikipedia article on Terra Nova quotes Scott biographer David Crane on Cherry-Garrard: "the future interpreter, historian and conscience of the expedition." So what I expected was something pretty darn bleak, the retrospective of a man struggling with post-traumatic stress, feeling survivor's guilt, maybe second-guessing himself. Compared to other surreal, stranger-than-fiction polar narratives, I wasn't sure it would be all that appealing to me.
In fact, the style of "Worst Journey" is much more relevant to my interests than I'd guessed! Cherry-Garrard doesn't mess around--he has kind of a Hugolian style at times in telling you how tragic, or miraculous, or Extra something will be. There's a lot less "jaded postwar nihilism" and a lot more "hey, we were brave, we were smart, we had a plan," tonewise.
There is also a lot going on that's not related to the polar journey; the less well-known plotlines are just as fascinating in the sense of "how did everyone else survive." The titular "worst journey" refers to a journey to gather emperor penguin eggs in the Antarctic winter, which was unprecedented and also miserably cold; Cherry-Garrard was part of that trio and has firsthand insight. A group of six get trapped on "Inexpressible Island" and have terrible ptomaine poisoning. In one of the returning supply parties, the leader almost dies of scurvy and asks his comrades to leave him behind, they refuse. Somehow everyone gets through this and records it in the stereotypically understated British way?
And so a lot of it is not just "Cherry-Garrard writing a decade later," but also copious excerpts from his real-time diary, together with other people's diaries/letters/notes. The contrast among everyone (Bowers is an adorable mama's boy, Wilson is artistic but laconic, Lashly is a normal "seaman"/non-officer so he's straightforward and to the point without a lot of book-learning, stylistically) was a neat surprise.
The book is long. I read it in several stints, several months apart, so my memory may be erratic, but I highlighted lots and lots of interesting turns of phrase on my e-reader to resume. Some parts are like "for the benefit of future expeditions, it would be wise to learn from what we did well and what went poorly, here is a general comparison of dogs versus horses versus mules versus humans for sledge-hauling," and these are less engaging, but then a few pages later Cherry-Garrard will be anthropomorphizing penguins again.
If I were to post all of these "over-the-top/hilarious/melodramatic/vividly written highlights" as an enticement, or even some of them, we would be here all day, so here is an overly long Google doc. tl;dr it is a lot, but if you are on the fence, at least browse some of it! (But this may only be useful advice if your tastes are like mine.)
"Worst Journey" is Apsley Cherry-Garrard's account of the Terra Nova expedition, written ~10 years after the fact. Terra Nova is known for Robert Scott's expedition to the South Pole, in which the English party were beaten by the Norwegians to the South Pole, died on the return trip, got praised as heroes for their stoicism and stiff-upper-lip attitude, got deconstructed because imperialism is bad mkay and this is Norwegian competence erasure, got reconstructed because actually their planning was reasonably competent given the knowledge of Antarctic weather they had...Etc.
After returning from Antarctica, Cherry-Garrard served in WWI, but he had physical and mental health issues that plagued him for many decades afterwards. The Wikipedia article on Terra Nova quotes Scott biographer David Crane on Cherry-Garrard: "the future interpreter, historian and conscience of the expedition." So what I expected was something pretty darn bleak, the retrospective of a man struggling with post-traumatic stress, feeling survivor's guilt, maybe second-guessing himself. Compared to other surreal, stranger-than-fiction polar narratives, I wasn't sure it would be all that appealing to me.
In fact, the style of "Worst Journey" is much more relevant to my interests than I'd guessed! Cherry-Garrard doesn't mess around--he has kind of a Hugolian style at times in telling you how tragic, or miraculous, or Extra something will be. There's a lot less "jaded postwar nihilism" and a lot more "hey, we were brave, we were smart, we had a plan," tonewise.
There is also a lot going on that's not related to the polar journey; the less well-known plotlines are just as fascinating in the sense of "how did everyone else survive." The titular "worst journey" refers to a journey to gather emperor penguin eggs in the Antarctic winter, which was unprecedented and also miserably cold; Cherry-Garrard was part of that trio and has firsthand insight. A group of six get trapped on "Inexpressible Island" and have terrible ptomaine poisoning. In one of the returning supply parties, the leader almost dies of scurvy and asks his comrades to leave him behind, they refuse. Somehow everyone gets through this and records it in the stereotypically understated British way?
And so a lot of it is not just "Cherry-Garrard writing a decade later," but also copious excerpts from his real-time diary, together with other people's diaries/letters/notes. The contrast among everyone (Bowers is an adorable mama's boy, Wilson is artistic but laconic, Lashly is a normal "seaman"/non-officer so he's straightforward and to the point without a lot of book-learning, stylistically) was a neat surprise.
The book is long. I read it in several stints, several months apart, so my memory may be erratic, but I highlighted lots and lots of interesting turns of phrase on my e-reader to resume. Some parts are like "for the benefit of future expeditions, it would be wise to learn from what we did well and what went poorly, here is a general comparison of dogs versus horses versus mules versus humans for sledge-hauling," and these are less engaging, but then a few pages later Cherry-Garrard will be anthropomorphizing penguins again.
If I were to post all of these "over-the-top/hilarious/melodramatic/vividly written highlights" as an enticement, or even some of them, we would be here all day, so here is an overly long Google doc. tl;dr it is a lot, but if you are on the fence, at least browse some of it! (But this may only be useful advice if your tastes are like mine.)
