Sunday, January 23, 2005

In Amazonia 2: On Second Thought

On the other hand, the book does avoid most of the pitfalls of this genre. Raffles is interested in language, but he doesn't get as pedantic or deterministic as cultural historians can. He does get a bit carried away with the class stuff (at one point using a source's affectionate comments about Henry Walter Bates' accent as proof that Bates could never escape his class), but not to the extent of a lot of scholars. Most importantly, Raffles covers so many eras and people that he doesn't have time to indulge in the sort of self-indulgent musing that characterizes these things. He even includes some annecdotes about natives chiding him over his tendency to over-analyze. These stories are amusing, although the natives in question do have a point

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