The Saga of Ring of Bright Water: The Enigma of Gavin Maxwell Review

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The Saga of Ring of Bright Water: The Enigma of Gavin Maxwell ReviewDouglas Botting has done a bang-up job here of covering one of the most wayward literary geniuses of our times. After completing this not quite 600 page magisterial opus you will have learnt everything you have ever wanted to know (and much you did not. Maxwell was not always a pleasant sort) about this rum, brilliant fellow named Gavin Maxwell, the winsome, lyrical writer of Ring of Bright Water and many other books you probably haven't heard of, but will want to read now. Really, as a point of departure, in summing up Maxwell's character, I can't do better than the quote from Dr. James McDougall cited early on here:
"Dr James MacDougall, an SOE medic who kept an eye on the psychiatric health of the instructors and trainee agents, believed that Gavin shared with Winston Churchill, the poet Robert Burns and many great artists a personality profile for which he employed the term `creative psychopath'......Overall, a creative psychopath's emotional make-up is more like that of a child than that of a mature adult; he is unable to sustain an emotion for any length of time, and though he is capable of deep feelings, they are fleeting and transitory. It follows that it is difficult for creative psychopaths to sustain mature relationships, and they tend not to get on well with people. It was Dr MacDougall's view that Gavin was emotionally retarded...." P.57
And yet, this evaluation was made during WWII when Maxwell was with the SOE (a sort of precursor to what we now call Special Forces) entrusted with training agents in the skills they would need before they were parachuted in behind enemy lines. Also, when one thinks over the great creative figures of history, especially writers of the past hundred years or so, it's well-nigh impossible to think of one who couldn't be diagnosed as a "creative psychopath." or as "emotionally retarded". Yet, even among these figures, Maxwell was a bit of an extreme.
Anyone who has read Ring of Bright Water will not be surprised to learn that, "It was poetry that was Gavin's first and last love, and he became excited by prose only when it came near to the domain of poetry, more especially the kind of poetry he most preferred - romantic, introspective, melancholy, nature mystical."p.148
Well, as I say, one will learn here all about Maxwell as the scion of aristocracy, his many near death adventures in obscure corners of the world, his love of nature, the ups and downs of his emotional life and the toll they took on those close to him, particularly the long-suffering Kathleen Raine, and his deep-rooted sexual ambiguity. ---And, of course, much about otters!
I can't convey all this in a review. All I can say is that it's a marvellous read and that Botting is a writer of the first water himself. ...Why am I the only one to pen a review of this exquisite book, which has been out for years, I wonder?
In the end, one is almost astonished that Gavin's life and this book DO end. One has become so used to accounts like that recorded here by Gavin's friend John Hillaby recounting a time when Gavin rang him up:
"He said he wanted to say goodbye. Why, I asked, was he going abroad? No, he said, his fortune teller had told him he was going to die in a racing crash and as he was racing his Bentley at Brooklands the next day he thought he would like to say goodbye to a few old friends. By this time I had got used to Gavin saying things totally beyond my comprehension, so I said, Oh yes, well, goodbye then."
Of course, he didn't die then. But he did eventually suffer the fate that is common to us all. Still, one can't help closing the covers and, half-smilingly, mutter something like: "Oh yes, well, goodbye then."
A wonderful read!The Saga of Ring of Bright Water: The Enigma of Gavin Maxwell Overview

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