Litnet

Finding Finding Endurance: Shackleton, my father and a world without end by Darrel Bristow-Bovey. Available: Jonathan Ball Publishers.

Finding Endurance
Darrel Bristow-Bovey
Jonathan Ball Publishers
ISBN: 9781776192861

Finding Endurance is not just a book but a festive exploration of life, literature, history, geography and self – the face we show the world in pretence of who we are, or who we would like to be, despite our failings and foolish quests. As such, the book is a beautiful meditation on unspoken but unbreakable bonds of family also, its loves and silent resentments. The book is the saving grace manual for those who never sever their faith on their loved ones.

Like the ancient historian Herodotus, Darrel Bristow-Bovey sometimes blurs reality in a fantastic way; this is something he obviously inherited from his father, who told him stories, sometimes from invented memory, as if they were true – like having met Shackleton, the leader of the polar expedition on the ship Endurance, which sunk near Antarctica in 1916. The remains of the ship were finally found by the South African Agulhas II during her exploration of the Waddell Sea in 2022. Bristow-Bovey weaves into the story his family history and some speculation about why these Edwardian men chose expedition to the southern seas – especially those who were unable to join the Great War of the West. Bristow-Bovey says he lived with the story of Endurance for over 35 years, even though writing it gushed from his pen during the shadowy days of the lockdown in 2021.

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When the remains of Endurance were found, Knowledge Bhengu was the captain of Agulhas. Bristow-Bovey tells, in a sympathetic way, how a young black boy from rural KZN ended up being a marine captain of note.

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When the remains of Endurance were found, Knowledge Bhengu was the captain of Agulhas. Bristow-Bovey tells, in a sympathetic way, how a young black boy from rural KZN ended up being a marine captain of note. The book is researched comprehensively, its narrative style topically eclectic and lyrical tonally. The book is a mixture of natural sciences, geography, polar adventures and historical facts that are told in accessible language, in interleaving chapters with personal memoirs and other curiosities. It somehow invokes Montaigne – the use of ordinary life impressions to explain philosophical vision and to pay attention to life, towards cultivating mindfulness while maintaining a kind of learned, naive amazement at the core of human existence. It has Plutarch’s panache of invoking the heroic ages of the sometimes flawed motives of larger-than-life characters. I also identified in Bristow-Bovey, Bloke Modisane's skill of personalising family history with national and global history. Finding Endurance is indeed a tour de force par excellence.

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It somehow invokes Montaigne – the use of ordinary life impressions to explain philosophical vision and to pay attention to life, towards cultivating mindfulness while maintaining a kind of learned, naive amazement at the core of human existence.

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One of my favourite chapters of the book is when Bristow-Bovey comically records his difficulties in explaining what the book is all about to three of his friends. One, rather a little gatvol, hoped it was not about climate change, because he was not prepared to pay good money to be told about melting ice again: “Can someone just tell me an old-fashioned story for a change?” The second friend was horrified that a book whose other character is the ice of Antarctica was not going to talk about climate change. The third, with disdainful looks, tried to bring him down from his philosophical pedestal by a peg or two: “There’s no meaning to nature,” she said. “It just is.”

From all of that, Bristow-Bovey learned a very valuable lesson: keep your mouth shut when writing a book. Well, in a way, all his friends got their wishes. The book is told almost fable-like, around a fire, drawing on personal life and natural history. And, well, it does mention climate change – after all, it had to touch on the melting of the ice in the Arctics – but is not preachy about all of it, just pragmatically steadfast in its belief in human capabilities while dispelling the exaggerated Armageddon anxieties of the overly pessimistic, and shaking off the naïve optimists out their ostrich mentalities or Peter Pan syndrome. It does seek meaning in the vast expansiveness of the unending white beauty at the end of the world without end, if only to examine the minds of men who go on invented and actual expeditions, with their bitter rivalries, their comedy of errors, their worldviews and their drive into the brink of madness.

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I very much appreciate his use of the techniques of historical fiction: the authorial licence of speculating where facts fall short; the recreation of the historical atmosphere by an informed imagination to expand impressions; the imposition of psychological insight into facts; etc

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Bristow-Bovey's father, a quintessential storyteller, told him that his Uncle Gerry always had his priorities wrong, blaming him for not finishing the novel he was reading, while making sure he finished the brandy bottle, before committing suicide. Bristow-Bovey says his father basically left him only his stories, which, being a tireless storyteller himself, he feels was enough. Sometimes he feels guilty about his mother, with her more serious character, the family’s unappreciated sole provider. As much as this work is classified in the genre of creative nonfiction by book sellers, to me and to writers like Geoff Dyer, that definition is meaningless, because genres and forms are always “bleeding into each other”. I very much appreciate his use of the techniques of historical fiction: the authorial licence of speculating where facts fall short; the recreation of the historical atmosphere by an informed imagination to expand impressions; the imposition of psychological insight into facts; etc. More fascinating is that he could still manage to come up with something original to say about the Endurance, whose story has been told in numerous ways in several journals, books and blogs. This is one of the things that distinguishes Bristow-Bovey’s writing talent.

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We often demonstrate this Peter Pan syndrome, choosing escapism rather than dealing with the issues directly. I suppose what informs this childish behaviour among us is the fact that, as the book says: “Growing up is to make terms with your loss”.

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Bristow-Bovey uses an interesting metaphor for the Peter Pan syndrome, regarding those who, instead of facing up to real challenges, prefer to be perpetual children through escapism. He mentions Elon Musk as an example, but I think it applies to most tech billionaires and, in general, to those who, though having resources to put their shoulders to the yoke of fighting possible environmental disaster, choose the escapist route and the futility of wishing to resettle in space. I would extend this metaphor to most of us, particularly some white South Africans, when it comes to the failings of the ANC governance. We often demonstrate this Peter Pan syndrome, choosing escapism rather than dealing with the issues directly. I suppose what informs this childish behaviour among us is the fact that, as the book says: “Growing up is to make terms with your loss” (163).

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Coming to terms with your loss and resolute optimism about the future is an important message of this book, which is so obviously written from a lifetime of wisdom and learning.

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Coming to terms with your loss and resolute optimism about the future is an important message of this book, which is so obviously written from a lifetime of wisdom and learning.