Jamie James's The Snake Charmer
by Louis Proyect
Book Review
The Snake Charmer: a Life and Death in the Pursuit of Knowledge, by
Jamie James, Hyperion Books, 2008, ISBN-13: 978-1-4013-0213-9, 260 pages.
(Swans - May 31, 2010) Last January, while idly channel-surfing on my
television set, I stumbled across a show titled Venom in Vegas that
featured snake expert Donald Schultz spending 10 days in a glass box
with 100 venomous and constrictor snakes. Schultz is from South Africa,
where he competes with fellow snake handler and countryman Austin
Stevens for publicity.
In 1986 Stevens pulled off a similar stunt in the name of generating
awareness about gorillas, an endangered species. He set a Guinness World
record by spending 107 days and nights in a cage with 36 of the most
dangerous African snakes. On the 96th day, he was bitten by a cobra, but
refused to leave the cage after being treated with anti-venom.
Of course the most notorious of these snake handlers was the Australian
Steve Irwin who died in 2006 after being stung in the heart by an aptly
named stingray. Unlike Schultz and Stevens, Austin handled all sorts of
poisonous creatures, including the ocean-dwelling stingray.
After finding my curiosity jogged by Schultz's stunt (an excerpt is
here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARzK6Y48scI), I decided to read a
book about the late Joe Slowinski that came out in 2008. Titled The
Snake Charmer: a Life and Death in Pursuit of Knowledge and written by
Jamie James, it tells the rather sad story of a legitimate scientist --
rather than a showman -- who was bitten by a many-banded krait in
September 2001 during an expedition in Burma, just before the WTC
attacks. The many-banded krait's venom is rated 16 times more powerful
than a cobra's. Slowinski died right around the time the buildings
collapsed.
Although I am by no means fixated on poisonous snakes, I do find myself
drawn to exceptional human beings, particularly those with tragic flaws.
That described Joe Slowinski to a T. A July 13, 2008 review of James's
book accentuated the dark side:
No matter how hard James tries to make Slowinski sound roguishly
charming, how often he mentions his "disarming, gap-toothed smile," how
earnestly he swears in the epilogue that he sorely feels the loss of
someone he never met, I could not help reading between the lines:
intentionally or not, he makes his subject sound like a Class A jerk.
It isn't Slowinski's redneck genius persona -- meeting academy
donors in a baggy T-shirt, smuggling reptiles without permits, kicking
down his own door to impress a date when he forgets his keys. That was
just snake shtick. Nor is it his earlier "starving graduate student my
work is everything" ethos, even when he shouts at his not-well-off
father for offering to buy him a table so they don't have to eat while
sitting on the stairs. Nor is it the poses James puts him in: the boy
Hercules, age 5, brandishing a rat snake "as thick as his own little
arm," or the carnival man dazzling Burmese villagers just before his
death, the sun "glinting penny-bright" on his goatee as he "free-handled
the dangerous serpent they called ngan taw kyar ('royal tiger snake')
with cool bravado."
Rather, it's his ruthlessness. His toying with snakes while drunk,
terrifying friends. His treatment of his only long-term girlfriend, whom
he dumps over the phone. His theft of the prize specimens of a Brazilian
herpetologist; caught with her snakes dead in his freezer, he blames the
language barrier, claiming he thought she'd granted permission. And the
coup de grace is his final, fatal blunder. Relying on bribes and
half-truths, he smuggles an expedition of 16 scientists and 130 porters
into one of the most remote and malarial corners of the world without
official permission or a doctor -- just a first-aid kit so meager it
wouldn't have served a Boy Scout camp-out.
While all of reviewer Donald G. McNeil Jr.'s points are true, he leaves
out the more admirable sides of Joe Slowinski, not the least of which is
a dedication to the pursuit of knowledge. In an era of creationist
obfuscation and backwardness, it is necessary to pay tribute to
Slowinski as someone totally dedicated to evolutionary science.
full: http://www.swans.com/library/art16/lproy61.html
_______________________________________________
pen-l mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
