The Voyages of Tomlinson and His Pipe

THE SEA AND THE JUNGLE

by HM Tomlinson

Reviewed by Aaron DeWeese

Never having heard of H.M. Tomlinson, and never having read a travel book, it was Time Life's meager introduction which compelled me to purchase this volume for 75 cents.  I both liked that it took place mostly on a ship, the Capella, and that the Amazon was visited.

The prose of Tomlinson was not at all that which I had expected it to be.  I don't understand why he isn't more recognized.  His writing is hauntingly poetic, eloquent, and descriptively detailed.  He is never boring.  His personality, his most intimate thoughts, his humor, are all offered to us.  He gives us the illusion that he holds nothing back from us, hides nothing.

Here is an audio sample of his prose:

http://netherletterlog.blogspot.com/2011/01/introduction-to-tomlinson-read-by-aaron.html

I admire Tomlinson's rebellious spirit, which was an Orwellian (Orwell wouldn't write 1984 for another 39 years) result born of his eyes being opened to the chains of modernity.  I can't help but notice that Tomlinson was ready to reemerge into society with a new spirit, after having been witness to the desolation of peril-haunted equatorial forests.

He often relates to us that he felt as if within the Amazonian foliage something dark and sinister and nameless sat in wait; that it could afford to wait, being timeless.  He sees the building of the railway as futile, but praises the men who carelessly sacrifice their lives in the joint endeavor.

Back in England, Tomlinson notes that the trees seem as toys to him; all greenery seems blunted in contrast to the swelling Jungle.

I felt that Tomlinson was a very empathetic man—he tells us much of animals, and their treatment.  Many had "pitiful ends".  He tells us too of the "pitiful ends" of many of the workers who had been duped into coming to the Amazon by "the Company".  It's postmodernist puerility to think that the cruelties Tomlinson reveals to us are a thing of the past.  Horror goes on daily; and unlike many 'evil philosophies', I believe they are collective horrors.  It is a defensive mechanism which supposes that the world is not tragic, that tragedy can only happen individually—that the holocaust was no more significant than the event of a single Jew being tortured by the Nazi doctors.  I believe that this is the reason why Nietzsche's mind snapped at the moment he saw the old horse being beaten in the street; the reason Tomlinson saw himself reflected in the terror filled suffering eyes of the mortally wounded monkey which was to be dinner.  Tomlinson was a Darwinian evolutionist, but no materialist, which explains the despairing beauty of his prose.