December 3, 2000
English 680: Ecocrit.
Van Noy
Book Review 2
Pyne, Stephen J. The
Ice: A Journey to Antarctica. Iowa
City: University of Iowa Press, 1986.
Imagine a lifeless plain of ice stretching for thousands of miles. To your right, steep mountains jut from the glaciers like the sails of ships rising above the distant horizon. To your left, a seemingly endless sheet of ice slides slowly to the sea. At any moment, you are just as likely to sea a beautiful natural ice structure as you are to fall into a crevasse that will take you days to climb out of. Mixed with beautifully constructed images are inherent dangers that constantly threaten to lose you in an inhabitable island of blinding snow and insufferable cold.
Is this an apt description of Antarctica as presented by Stephen J. Pyne in his book, The Ice: A Journey to Antarctica? No, it is in fact an analogy of the book itself. Passages of beautifully constructed descriptions of the extraterrestrial-like landscape of Antarctica float within seas of confounding scientific facts, statistics, and jargon that freeze the reader in blocks of Antarctic ice. Although many of the images created are magnificent, the reader feels like a viewer watching a three-hour banana slug documentary on the Discovery Channel: the beauty of the scenery is overshadowed by the monotony of the topic.
What do you think of when you think of Antarctica? Ice? Of course you do. What else is there? If I had a nickel for every time Pyne said the word “ice” in this book… The sheer redundancy of the idea permeates his entire work. I realize that Antarctica is the land of ice, but how detailed a description of this idea is necessary? For example:
Out of simple ice crystals is constructed a vast hierarchy of ice masses, ice terranes [sic], and ice structures. These higher-order ice forms collectively compose the entire continent: the icebergs: tabular bergs, glacier bergs, ice islands, bergy bits, growlers, brash ice, white ice, blue ice, green ice, dirty ice; the sea ices: pack ice, ice floes, ice rinds, ice hummocks, ice ridges, ice flowers, ice stalactites, pancake ice, frazil ice, grease ice, congelation ice, infiltration ice, undersea ice, vuggy ice, new ice, old ice, brown ice, rotten ice; the coastal ices: fast ice, shore ice, glacial-ice tongues, ice piedmonts, ice fringes, ice cakes, ice foots, ice fronts, ice walls, floating ice, grounded ice, anchor ice, rime ice, ice ports, ice shelves, ice rises, ice bastions, ice haycocks, ice lobes, ice streams; the mountain ices: glacial ice, valley glaciers, cirque glaciers, piedmont glaciers, ice fjords, ice layers, ice pipes, ice falls, ice folds, ice faults, ice pinnacles, ice lenses, ice aprons, ice falls, ice fronts, ice slush; the ground ices; ice wedges, ice veins, permafrost; the polar plateau ices: ice sheets, ice caps, ice domes, ice streams, ice divides, ice saddles, ice rumples; the atmospheric ices: ice grains, ice crystals, ice dust, pencil ice plate ice, bullet ice. The ice field is organized into a series of roughly concentric ice terranes [sic], like the ordered rings comprising the hierarchy of Dante’s cosmology. (3)
I guess that pretty much covers it. I don’t include this lengthy description for effect but rather to force you to suffer as I did stumbling through this book. The problem is that aside from this introduction to the Antarctic ice lexicon, the author provides little description of terms. Since the book lacks a glossary, this becomes a problem for the reader. I quite often found myself in the literary equivalent of an Antarctic night.
The problem seems to be Pyne’s perspective: he is a scientist who was astounded by the beauty of Antarctica on a three-month visit. He then set out to scientifically describe the root of this beauty. What results is a series of descriptive passages followed by scientific explanations, statistics, and terms like “thermal spalling” and “frazil ice” with little supporting definition of the ideas presented outside of their merit as “scientific” ideas.
Perhaps the basis of my confusion comes from an idea presented by Pyne:
[Antarctica’s] simplicity is stupefying. Contrasts, comparisons, analogies, metaphors—all vanish before the pure immensity of the ice monolith. Antarctica mocks the belief that the essence of art—or of life or of civilization—is simplicity. (19)
The very ideas that Pyne attempts to address are so complex that deep scientific analysis is necessary, and the results from the resolution of these ideas leaves the reader wondering why he asked the questions in the first place. Is it really important to know the temperature at which Ice Crystal X forms? Maybe to a geological scientist seeking to uncover the frozen secrets of Antarctica, but it certainly is not to me.
Aside from the monotony of the subject matter, the audience of this text never becomes clear. Does Pyne hope to address the scientist or scholar interested in the study of this location? If so, why are the descriptions of Antarctic-related art and literature necessary? Does Pyne want to capture the literature/ecocritical/artistic scholar who is intrigued by the beauty of this foreign land? If so, why are the scientific ideas so poorly supported with information that could help such a reader comprehend them? The basis for this confusion is partially addressed in the Afterword. Pyne states that time was a constraining factor concerning the completion of this book, and he seems to suggest that any discrepancies can be attributed to this factor.
The layout of the book covers nearly every aspect of Antarctica that anyone could ever want to know. Chapters 1 (“The Berg”), 3 (“The Shelf”), 5 (“The Glacier”), 7 (“The Sheet”), and the Epilogue (“The Source”) describe Antarctica geologically beginning with the more familiar icebergs and coast moving towards the more unfamiliar interior. Intertwined between these chapters are histories of Exploration (chapter 2), Literature (chapter 4), Earth Science (chapter 6), and Politics (chapter 8).
Most interesting to me was Chapter 8, “The Cold Peace: The Geopolitics of Antarctica” which was basically the story of the land-grab that ensued when countries from Chile to Norway staked their claim in the new world of Antarctica. The problem was that to hold rights over a landmass in the world, one must occupy that landmass. Otherwise, it’s like staking a claim on the Moon: how do you really enforce your claim? The armed occupation of Antarctica is nearly an impossibility, so these land claims degraded into a treaty of shared space rather than owned land. However, the attempt to own land you can’t utilize is interesting. It really says a lot about the greed of society when you consider that many countries (including the U.S.) dropped their land claims from airplanes (literally flinging them out the door) as they flew over the interior of the continent.
So, who should read this book? If you are interested in Antarctica and already possess a great deal of knowledge about the geological aspects of ice, glaciers, and snow, you could appreciate the descriptions of the beauty of the continent dispersed throughout the text. If you hope to write a story about the continent, Pyne offers an interesting perspective on its terrain. However, if you want to be entertained by a gripping description of natural beauty, stay home and watch the banana slug documentary; it’s more interesting.