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| First Written | 2015 |
| Genre | Nonfiction |
| Origin | UK |
| Publisher | Grove Press |
| My Copy | library copy |
| First Read | November 12, 2016 |
H is for Hawk
I was surprised at the end of White's The Goshawk to learn that White was ignoring more modern methods of falconry - but I was even more surprised to hear the perspective of a modern falconer about just how wrong TH White was. He was wrong over and over again, and his semi-willful ignorance of training a hawk was tantamount to abuse.
Noted on November 13, 2016
Frankly, I find the idea of the lonesome, half-broken writer putting themselves back together by 'manning' a hawk is totally great. I could be happy if this turned into a whole genre.
Noted on November 13, 2016
A book about a book: one that leans so heavily on a beloved book, I wondered if I'd hate it. But no - it's different enough that it feels like a very different book. And to my great surprise - It's great, and worth all its acolades and press.
Noted on November 13, 2016
The book you are reading is my story. It is not a biography of Terence Hanbury White. But White is part of my story all the same. I have to write about him because he was there. When I trained my hawk I was having a quiet conversation of sorts, with the deeds and works of a long-dead man who was suspicious, morose, determined to despair. A man whose life disturbed me. But a man, too, who loved nature, who found it surprising, bewitching and endlessly novel. 'A magpie flies like a frying pan!' he could write, with the joy of discovering something new in the world. And it is that joy, that childish delight in the lives of creatures other than man, that I love most in White. He was a complicated man, and an unhappy one, But he knew also that the world was full of simple miracles.
Quoted on November 15, 2016
Looking back, I think I was never truly mad. More mad north-north-west. I could tell a hawk from a handsaw always, but sometimes it was striking to me how similar they were. I knew I wasn't mad mad because I'd seen people in the grip of psychosis before, and that was madness as obvious as the taste of blood in the mouth. The kind of madness I had was different. It was quiet, and very, very dangerous. It was madness designed to keep me sane.
Quoted on November 15, 2016
Of all the lessons I’ve learned in my months with Mabel this is the greatest of all: that there is a world of things out there – rocks and trees and stones and grass and all the things that crawl and run and fly. They are all things in themselves, but we make them sensible to us by giving them meanings that shore up our own views of the world. In my time with Mabel I’ve learned how you feel more human once you have known, even in your imagination, what it is like to be not. And I have learned, too, the danger that comes in mistaking the wildness we give a thing for the wildness that animates it. Goshawks are things of death and blood and gore, but they are not excuses for atrocities. Their inhumanity is to be treasured because what they do has nothing to do with us at all.
Quoted on November 13, 2016
I wish that we would not fight for landscapes that remind us of who we think we are. I wish we would fight, instead, for landscapes buzzing and glowing with life in all its variousness.
Quoted on November 13, 2016
When you are learning how to do something, you do not have to worry about whether or not you are good at it. But when you have done something, have learned how to do it, you are not safe any more. Being an expert opens you up to judgement.
Quoted on November 13, 2016
Here’s a word. Bereavement. Or, Bereaved. Bereft. It’s from the Old English bereafian, meaning ‘to deprive of, take away, seize, rob’. Robbed. Seized. It happens to everyone. But you feel it alone. Shocking loss isn’t to be shared, no matter how hard you try.
Quoted on November 13, 2016