From the Bookshelf: Michel Rio, Dreaming Jungles

I staggered across this book by my favorite means of book discovery: browsing in a bookstore. I picked it off the shelf at a new/used shop near Emory University called Eagle Eye Bookshop for $2.99, which was a total bargain.

After finishing the book – and it was quick, though dense reading experience – I surfed around the Web trying to get some info on the author Michel Rio, a Frenchman. I found very little. I don’t know anything about this writer other than a poorly written NYTimes review from the 90’s and a single line in Wikipedia. If I could read French, I’d be better off. Good reason, I think, to take up another language.

This book is almost like a second telling of one of my favorite books of all time, Heart of Darkness. No kidding, literally (it’s in translation) there is a sentence about the narrator “plunging into the heart of darkness.” Coming across that silly line, I was wondering if I was reading a highly sophisticated parody or satire. The plot of this novel involves a young man going upriver to study chimps in the wilds of Africa, and as you might imagine, he loses himself (deliberately, in this case) in the “savagery.”

I think it’s likely the brilliance of the writing that I can’t pin down the tone. Or that could be the flaw of the writing, not sure. I love the setting, and I love the plot, which moves along more rapidly than any novel I’ve ever read. Even though it feels partly like a Conrad rip-off, I was drawn into the jungle narrative, and I was impressed with the intense, carefully constructed diction (obviously an ode to Conrad, unless the translation is embellishing).

The novel is also a peculiar philosophical discussion. Large chapters are simply banter, in that upper-crusty civilized Brit way, about issues of evolution, natural selection, and Art. Sounds like a crazy mix, right? Well, it is damn crazy. Imagine a scene in which several well-to-do explorers are sitting around a campfire, amid pitched tents, in the deepest reaches of an African jungles, and they’re getting drunk, and they’re arguing the finer points of existentialism. That’s what happens in this book, and I supposed it’s a wonder that Rio pulls it off without too much absurdity.

There’s also a pretty ridiculous sexual plot here. I couldn’t reconcile this aspect of the novel. We read lofty paragraphs, in ornate prose, about the nature of man, and then the narrator is caught Peeping-Tom on the lone woman on the expedition, lounging by her candle in her tent. What does she do? Naturally she stares at the narrator, and then undresses and orgasms. Yoo-hoo! Somehow, her behavior, while erotic, doesn’t jive with the tone and topic of the rest of the novel. And indeed, the narrator’s climactic act (sorry about the language there) is to hole up, miles from civilization, in the deepest part of the jungle, alone, for a year. He lives in the treetops, eat only fruit, and studies chimps. When he returns to the camp, he confesses to the woman, a Lady Savile, that he loves her, and that’s why he engaged on such an improbable adventure.

Okay, so it probably goes without saying – this isn’t believable. And I agree. All the same, I was compelled by the unusual “artifact” of this novel. And you know, I’d love to be able to write something so fluid, so concise, and so unusual. It’s an utter Conrad carbon copy, and despite the lovely convolutions of language, it’s worth reading. I’ll never be able to write even poor Conrad, which Rio does; but I do think, now basking in the odd afterglow of this crude African Queen, that I could write an adventure/colonist/turn of the century novel with a more original plot. Really it comes down to one question. I picked the book off the shelf, I read the scintillating teaser, and I read the whole damn thing with a certain amazement. That’s an achievement. I’ll let time figure out the nuances of my reaction and where this book sits critically. In the meantime, I say, plunge into this strange jungle, and enjoy.