IMPOSSIBLE MONSTERS: Dinosaurs, Darwin and the Battle between Science and Religion by Michael Taylor starts in the late 1700s when “fossilists” such as Mary Anning and her family were digging up skeletons of what natural historians assumed were some amazingly ginormous crocodiles. As more fossils turned up, it became obvious they were beasts never seen before (Ms. Anning found the first plesiosaurus) which stunned everyone.
How come nobody had seen any of these animals in the present? How could they have gone extinct when Noah saved every living creature? How did they wind up buried up under so many feet of rock? Questions such as these smashed headlong into England’s faith in an inerrant, literal Bible, a consensus belief backed up by social and legal sanctions for those who dissented. Nevertheless, as more fossils accumulated, the consensus unraveled.
The early chapters dealing with the initial astonishment over fossils are the best. As the book progresses it becomes more about the general philosophical fight over scriptural authority and loses some of its punch. Also Taylor buys into a couple of myths, one about a famous Thomas Huxley debate (one of Stephen Jay Gould’s later books shows the standard version is probably baloney) and that Anning, whose contributions were written out of history, was the inspiration for the “she sells sea shells by the sea shore” tongue twister (nope).
MS. TREE: Skeleton in the Closet by Max Collins and Terry Beatty is the follow-up volume to One Mean Mother, collecting the remaining stories from Ms. Tree Quarterly. In the introduction, Collins pats himself on the back for the way they work current events into the adventures of the “female Mike Hammer,” but he probably shouldn’t have. The first story tries to be fair and balanced about the late 1980s Satanic panic but there’s no balance — the fears of Satanism were bullshit pure and simple. The rape story has Ms. Tree grumbling that campus feminists protesting date rape are just using the crisis to advance their own agenda. A story about Vietnam War POWs is clear that no, there aren’t lots of POWs over there but does accept the Vietnamese are warehousing American remains to sell off. Sure, none of this is nonfiction but it still bugs me, much as I like PI Michael Tree.
The drama comes with THE RESURRECTION OF FULGENCIO RAMIREZ by Rudy Ruiz, which I picked up because the book jacket describes it as magical realist. And it opens well, with Fulgencio scanning the paper every day to see if the husband of the Anglo woman he loved and lost has finally died. And today he has! This launches us into the backstory of how the protagonist, coming from a hardscrabble Latino family, struggled to make it and win his dream girl despite his inner demons dragging him down. The magical realist elements — a curse on the Ramirez family from generations past and Fulgencio’s efforts to break it — are minor compared to the mundane elements and those didn’t engage me (of course, mainstream literature isn’t my thing).
#SFWApro. Cover by Beatty, all rights to images remain with current holders.
