⋙ PDF The Peregrine New York Review Books Classics J A Baker Robert Macfarlane Books

The Peregrine New York Review Books Classics J A Baker Robert Macfarlane Books

Download As PDF : The Peregrine New York Review Books Classics J A Baker Robert Macfarlane Books

The Peregrine New York Review Books Classics J A Baker Robert Macfarlane Books

Purchased this after listening to an interview with director Werner Herzog, who stated that this is the only book that he *requires* all of his film students to take. He writes:

"I’m Werner Herzog, I’m a filmmaker normally but I do read. The book I would really recommend is an obscure book published in 1967: “The Peregrine,” by J.A. Baker, who is somebody about whom we know nothing, literally nothing. He wrote in Great Britain when the last peregrines were dying out—now they have bounced back a little bit. He observes peregrines and it’s a most incredible book. It has prose of the caliber that we have not seen since Joseph Conrad. And an ecstasy—a delirious sort of love for what he observes.

The intensity and the ecstasy of observation is something that you have to have as a filmmaker or somebody who loves literature. Whoever really loves literature, whoever really loves movies, should read that book.

In a way, it’s almost like a transubstantiation, like in religion, where the observer becomes almost the object—in this case the falcon—he observes. He writes, for example, about the falcon soaring high up, and then higher and higher until the falcon is only a dot. Then he writes, “and then we swoop down,” as if he had become a falcon himself. And there’s a variety of moments where you can tell that he has completely entered into the existence of a falcon. And this is what I do when I make a film, I step outside of myself into an ekstasis in Greek, to step outside of your own body, a point outside. Baker steps into the fog and in an ecstasy of observing the world it is unprecedented."


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The Peregrine New York Review Books Classics J A Baker Robert Macfarlane Books Reviews

Ordered it because I was mesmerized by seeing Werner Herzog holding it in his hand during an interview about his online film tutorials, and also based on critical reviews. Sparklingly clear prose. I wanted to love it--I really did, but could never get to the transformational moment in the book that the critics praised so highly. You may love it for the writing alone, and it might move you deeply.
Just gorgeous. Read it slowly and savor it like a box of rare and rich chocolate.

If you're looking for an actual story with plot and tension and conflict and enemies, you're not going to get that.

What you will get is prose that is so delicious and and new and perfect that you'll be highlighting every other line. And you'll get birds and nature up to your eyes and beyond, you'll get imagery so lush you'll drown in it in the most wonderful way.
J. A. Baker's "The Peregrine" is a remarkable achievement in nature writing for both its style and substance, easily among the finest ever in the category. The book, in diary form, details the author's extensive viewing and tracking of peregrine falcons, but more accurately, his obsessive stalking of these birds of breathtaking speed and predatory skill, in the Essex countryside outside London during the fall of 1962 through the spring of 1963.

Baker's singular style is the very model of concision. It is stark and stunning prose, often more like preternatural poetry, exceptional in its beauty. He is not simply reporting the activities of the peregrines, their prey, and their surroundings, he is fully within the action and its environs, and so, therefore, is the reader. It is an unmatched reading experience. Baker displays an uncanny ability to describe color, movement, landscape, and weather with brilliant clarity and nuance.

Though less than 200 pages, this is not a quick or easy read. Best digested in small bites, I found it too intense for long sessions. Also, there are many passages, individual sentences, and striking word combinations which must be reread a time or two and lingered over in order to fully appreciate.

There is a somewhat lurid focus on the peregrines' kills, unflinchingly described with a certain admiration. Indeed, as the seasons progress, the author increasingly identifies with the peregrine, simultaneously grousing a growing disdain for the human species a thoroughly fascinating narrative posture. This is essential reading; an altogether unforgettable book.
No other way to put it This book is a treasure of the English language.

In The Peregrine J.A. Baker describes how he tracked and trekked over months and miles in his native England to watch and record in language like you've never read how peregrines hunt and feed and fly and play and rest. The language he uses to construct his sentences is like none other I have ever read. It's a vivid mix of nature writing and the best poetry. The text is so dense, the sentences are so packed with words bringing life to action--there really is no reading experience I can compare this to. I could only stand to read a few pages at a time; "relish" not "read" would be the better word there.

This is more than "nature writing," too. Baker gets under the very surface of life to expose what lurks. Just a few excepts to illustrate

"The hardest thing of all to see is what is really there."

"Terror seeks out the odd, and the sick, and the lost."

“There is no mysterious essence we can call a 'place'. Place is change. It is motion killed by the mind, and preserved in the amber of memory.”

“Whatever is destroyed, the act of destruction does not vary much. Beauty is vapour from the pit of death.”

I cannot give The Peregrine anything less than 5 stars. It's more than a book, it is a reading experience. Reading it will expand your senses. It will enliven you and enrich you as a human being. I think that's the greatest thing we can expect from any book.
Purchased this after listening to an interview with director Werner Herzog, who stated that this is the only book that he *requires* all of his film students to take. He writes

"I’m Werner Herzog, I’m a filmmaker normally but I do read. The book I would really recommend is an obscure book published in 1967 “The Peregrine,” by J.A. Baker, who is somebody about whom we know nothing, literally nothing. He wrote in Great Britain when the last peregrines were dying out—now they have bounced back a little bit. He observes peregrines and it’s a most incredible book. It has prose of the caliber that we have not seen since Joseph Conrad. And an ecstasy—a delirious sort of love for what he observes.

The intensity and the ecstasy of observation is something that you have to have as a filmmaker or somebody who loves literature. Whoever really loves literature, whoever really loves movies, should read that book.

In a way, it’s almost like a transubstantiation, like in religion, where the observer becomes almost the object—in this case the falcon—he observes. He writes, for example, about the falcon soaring high up, and then higher and higher until the falcon is only a dot. Then he writes, “and then we swoop down,” as if he had become a falcon himself. And there’s a variety of moments where you can tell that he has completely entered into the existence of a falcon. And this is what I do when I make a film, I step outside of myself into an ekstasis in Greek, to step outside of your own body, a point outside. Baker steps into the fog and in an ecstasy of observing the world it is unprecedented."