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The White Lantern
Never has master storyteller Evan Connell been more enthralling than in these incandescent pages - tales of real-life adventure ranging from the archaeology of Olduvai gorge to the exploration of the Antarctic; from Viking voyages to an Ice Age xylophone. Never has reality so far surpassed mere fiction or fantasy than in this magnificent volume.
286 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1980
About the author
Evan S. Connell
65 books159 followersEvan Shelby Connell Jr. (August 17, 1924 – January 10, 2013) was a U.S. novelist, poet, and short-story writer. His writing covered a variety of genres, although he published most frequently in fiction.
In 2009, Connell was nominated for the Man Booker International Prize, for lifetime achievement. On April 23, 2010, he was awarded a Los Angeles Times Book Prize: the Robert Kirsch Award, for "a living author with a substantial connection to the American West, whose contribution to American letters deserves special recognition."
Connell was born in Kansas City, Missouri, the only son of Evan S. Connell, Sr. (1890–1974), a physician, and Ruth Elton Connell. He had a sister Barbara (Mrs. Matthew Zimmermann) to whom he dedicated his novel Mrs. Bridge (1959). He graduated from Southwest High School in Kansas City in 1941. He started undergraduate work at Dartmouth College but joined the Navy in 1943 and became a pilot. After the end of World War II, he graduated from the University of Kansas in 1947, with a B.A. in English. He studied creative writing at Columbia University in New York and Stanford University in California. He never married, and lived and worked in Sausalito, California for decades.
(Wikipedia)
In 2009, Connell was nominated for the Man Booker International Prize, for lifetime achievement. On April 23, 2010, he was awarded a Los Angeles Times Book Prize: the Robert Kirsch Award, for "a living author with a substantial connection to the American West, whose contribution to American letters deserves special recognition."
Connell was born in Kansas City, Missouri, the only son of Evan S. Connell, Sr. (1890–1974), a physician, and Ruth Elton Connell. He had a sister Barbara (Mrs. Matthew Zimmermann) to whom he dedicated his novel Mrs. Bridge (1959). He graduated from Southwest High School in Kansas City in 1941. He started undergraduate work at Dartmouth College but joined the Navy in 1943 and became a pilot. After the end of World War II, he graduated from the University of Kansas in 1947, with a B.A. in English. He studied creative writing at Columbia University in New York and Stanford University in California. He never married, and lived and worked in Sausalito, California for decades.
(Wikipedia)
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
February 11, 2020
Picked up this book because Dud was reading it on "Lodge 49", and I'd read Connell's "Son of the Morning Star" previously. Really enjoyed "The White Lantern". Historical essays on less mainstream stuff like Vikings, South Pole Exploration, and Astronomy. There's an undercurrent of wry humor (borderline sarcasm) throughout the book that I think I misunderstood initially. Connell pokes fun at a lot of the blunders and missteps explorers and scientists have made in their efforts to understand our world and our universe. But I think, ultimately, he's making the point that, as much as we think we've learned and are certain of, we probably still don't know the half of it.
August 25, 2009
I have to give this 5-stars because Connell somehow managed to write an educational, historical book of essays (something I would normally never touch for leisure) and made it all thoroughly entertaining, interesting and enjoyable. The man can write. Whether science is his topic or science-fiction, history or literature, the dude can write...
April 3, 2026
From "Olduvai and All That"
"After that it was downhill all the way, or uphill--depending on your estimate of mankind--from omnivorous thighbone-wielding assassins to those erect Ice Age people with whom we can sympathize, who felt a previously unknown need to worship, to make music, to dance, and paint pictures" (41).
From "Vinland Vinland"
"After you have contemplated the homeliness and innocence of such epitaphs you are even less apt to be persuaded by that wild Minnesota drama. Still, one wants to believe. THORE ERECTED THIS STONE TO HIS FATHER GUNNER. All right, but who cares? A fight between Vikings and Indians does more for the imagination" (97).
"What all of this means is that you are at liberty to follow the mooring holes of imagination as far as you care to. Through the Saint Lawrence waterway, for example, to the Great Lakes and beyond. After all, nobody can prove that a party of Norse adventurers did not reach the Mississippi and follow it to the Gulf, and from there sail west, following the downward coast.
The Mexican legend of Quetzalcoatl says that a bearded white man appeared out of the east on a raft of snakes and later departed in the direction from which he had come, promising to return in 500 years. So you may imagine a Viking ship with a carved serpent head on the prow, with a fair-haired bearded Norwe.gian in command. And when five centuries had passed a bearded foreigner did arrive, not exactly commanding a raft of snakes, although many people swear he had a complement of snakes aboard. He was, of course, much darker than a Norwegian; his name, Hernando Cortes, is not unfamiliar.
You will get a chilly reception from anthropologists if you attempt to relate Quetzalcoatl to a Viking, or any other such fabulous theory. But the alternative is to join the conservatives, in which case you will have to be satisfied with a spindle whorl, a bone needle, and some furnace slag" (103).
From "The White Lantern"
About Sir Douglas Mawson:
"It would be an ignoble, humiliating departure, but what troubled him most was the thought of the food on the sledge that he might have eaten. He had starved himself because there was practically nothing left, now even that little bit was going to be wasted. So, dangling in his harness, looking down and looking up, his palms bleeding, he tried to decide whether he should just wait for the end, or untie the rope and get it over with, or try once more to haul himself out. Then, if you can believe this, he remembered a couple lines from Robert Service:
Just have one more try--it's dead easy to die,
It's the keeping-on-living that's hard.
You might expect him to think of something by a major poet. Donne, for instance. Or Coleridge or Milton or Blake. No, not at all. He was inspired by Robert Service.
Apparently this wretched poetry saved his life. The incredible man again scrambled to the top. He emerged from the hole feet first...." (134).
"Needless to say, as we say, he got back alive, curiously bald, and somewhat under the weather as he might express it, but he did return. He got back because, first of all, he was Mawson. That's the principal reason. Secondly, he was no amateur. He knew the Antarctic. In 1908 he and the gentlemanly fifty-year-old Professor Edgeworth David had been members of an expedition led by Ernest Shackleton. Shackleton meant to reach the South Pole. nobody had done this, therefore Shackleton wanted to do it" (137).
From "Syllables Here and There"
"Those of us who are not overly familiar with the nuances of Ugaritic, Luvian, Hittite, Mesopotamian cuneiform, Palaic, or Creto-Myceneaean Linear B, do know a little something, nevertheless, about the Rosetta stone. Ah, yes! -- the Rosetta stone! Of course, of course. Haven't thought about that in years. Let's see know, they dug it up someplace. The thing was covered with hieroglyphics. Yes indeed, the old Rosetta stone" (156).
"The young genius who unraveled Egyptian hieroglyphics, Jean-Francois Champollion is altogether as engaging and neurotic as our British exhibitionist. One appealing thing about him, which has been nearly overlooked because of his success with hieroglyphics, is the title of his first scholarly paper, written when he was twelve: "A History of Famous Dogs." Information of this sort should be preserved" (162-163).
From "Abracadastra"
"Admittedly this sounds odd, though certainly no more so than a lady with a tattooed rump or a gentleman wearing a diamond in his teeth. But let it pass" (236).
"You might think very few people would care about Tycho's nose after three centuries, but in 1901 the citizens of Prague were so nagged by curiosity that they dug him up. Lo and behold! -- the metallic bridge had vanished.
Now, if we assume that somebody -- let's say the mortician -- pocketed this curious item, we are entitled to ask what became of it. Presumably it was melted. After all that's not the kind of souvenir you want around the house. Although I once knew a man in Chicago who had an impressive collection of walrus and whale penises, which proves that just about anything will appeal to somebody. But let us assume that Tycho's baroque appendage was cast into negotiable form. Then who can say what coins were minted from it? -- perhaps that old gold florin your grandmother was given on her wedding day.
But there is another possibility" (236).
"How can it be? How is it possible? Schroter, Herschel, Lowell, the astronomers of King Louis, and any number of others--these must all have been intelligent, judicious men.
There's no answer. No answer except that we live in a world of drifting shadows" (270).
"After that it was downhill all the way, or uphill--depending on your estimate of mankind--from omnivorous thighbone-wielding assassins to those erect Ice Age people with whom we can sympathize, who felt a previously unknown need to worship, to make music, to dance, and paint pictures" (41).
From "Vinland Vinland"
"After you have contemplated the homeliness and innocence of such epitaphs you are even less apt to be persuaded by that wild Minnesota drama. Still, one wants to believe. THORE ERECTED THIS STONE TO HIS FATHER GUNNER. All right, but who cares? A fight between Vikings and Indians does more for the imagination" (97).
"What all of this means is that you are at liberty to follow the mooring holes of imagination as far as you care to. Through the Saint Lawrence waterway, for example, to the Great Lakes and beyond. After all, nobody can prove that a party of Norse adventurers did not reach the Mississippi and follow it to the Gulf, and from there sail west, following the downward coast.
The Mexican legend of Quetzalcoatl says that a bearded white man appeared out of the east on a raft of snakes and later departed in the direction from which he had come, promising to return in 500 years. So you may imagine a Viking ship with a carved serpent head on the prow, with a fair-haired bearded Norwe.gian in command. And when five centuries had passed a bearded foreigner did arrive, not exactly commanding a raft of snakes, although many people swear he had a complement of snakes aboard. He was, of course, much darker than a Norwegian; his name, Hernando Cortes, is not unfamiliar.
You will get a chilly reception from anthropologists if you attempt to relate Quetzalcoatl to a Viking, or any other such fabulous theory. But the alternative is to join the conservatives, in which case you will have to be satisfied with a spindle whorl, a bone needle, and some furnace slag" (103).
From "The White Lantern"
About Sir Douglas Mawson:
"It would be an ignoble, humiliating departure, but what troubled him most was the thought of the food on the sledge that he might have eaten. He had starved himself because there was practically nothing left, now even that little bit was going to be wasted. So, dangling in his harness, looking down and looking up, his palms bleeding, he tried to decide whether he should just wait for the end, or untie the rope and get it over with, or try once more to haul himself out. Then, if you can believe this, he remembered a couple lines from Robert Service:
Just have one more try--it's dead easy to die,
It's the keeping-on-living that's hard.
You might expect him to think of something by a major poet. Donne, for instance. Or Coleridge or Milton or Blake. No, not at all. He was inspired by Robert Service.
Apparently this wretched poetry saved his life. The incredible man again scrambled to the top. He emerged from the hole feet first...." (134).
"Needless to say, as we say, he got back alive, curiously bald, and somewhat under the weather as he might express it, but he did return. He got back because, first of all, he was Mawson. That's the principal reason. Secondly, he was no amateur. He knew the Antarctic. In 1908 he and the gentlemanly fifty-year-old Professor Edgeworth David had been members of an expedition led by Ernest Shackleton. Shackleton meant to reach the South Pole. nobody had done this, therefore Shackleton wanted to do it" (137).
From "Syllables Here and There"
"Those of us who are not overly familiar with the nuances of Ugaritic, Luvian, Hittite, Mesopotamian cuneiform, Palaic, or Creto-Myceneaean Linear B, do know a little something, nevertheless, about the Rosetta stone. Ah, yes! -- the Rosetta stone! Of course, of course. Haven't thought about that in years. Let's see know, they dug it up someplace. The thing was covered with hieroglyphics. Yes indeed, the old Rosetta stone" (156).
"The young genius who unraveled Egyptian hieroglyphics, Jean-Francois Champollion is altogether as engaging and neurotic as our British exhibitionist. One appealing thing about him, which has been nearly overlooked because of his success with hieroglyphics, is the title of his first scholarly paper, written when he was twelve: "A History of Famous Dogs." Information of this sort should be preserved" (162-163).
From "Abracadastra"
"Admittedly this sounds odd, though certainly no more so than a lady with a tattooed rump or a gentleman wearing a diamond in his teeth. But let it pass" (236).
"You might think very few people would care about Tycho's nose after three centuries, but in 1901 the citizens of Prague were so nagged by curiosity that they dug him up. Lo and behold! -- the metallic bridge had vanished.
Now, if we assume that somebody -- let's say the mortician -- pocketed this curious item, we are entitled to ask what became of it. Presumably it was melted. After all that's not the kind of souvenir you want around the house. Although I once knew a man in Chicago who had an impressive collection of walrus and whale penises, which proves that just about anything will appeal to somebody. But let us assume that Tycho's baroque appendage was cast into negotiable form. Then who can say what coins were minted from it? -- perhaps that old gold florin your grandmother was given on her wedding day.
But there is another possibility" (236).
"How can it be? How is it possible? Schroter, Herschel, Lowell, the astronomers of King Louis, and any number of others--these must all have been intelligent, judicious men.
There's no answer. No answer except that we live in a world of drifting shadows" (270).
October 11, 2020
My favorite author....Time-spanning studies of man's insatiable desire for knowledge enter the realms of anthropology, astronomy, linguistics, and archaeology, recounting adventures of inquiry, exploration, and discovery that confirm humankind's wondrous capabilities. Connell weaves stories about historcal events like no one else.
December 25, 2025
4.5 stars. A little dated now in terms of some of the science, but as the author might have predicted, this study of the search for knowledge in the face of the sturdy opposition that ignorance puts up is absorbing--and still depressingly relevant. A series of long essays on a variety of topics. Beautifully written.
January 29, 2026
Just loved all of these essays. Human, hilarious and insightful.
May 1, 2024
This book is a gem that I return to every couple of years. It is a collection of historical essays covering the breadth of human history. Evan Connell is the ultimate autodidact and his knowledge about obscure but important events is encyclopedic. He writes with a wry style that makes his books a joy even though some of his points are angry. A rare gift.
I was sorry to hear of his death earlier this year. If you are interested in making his acquaintance pick up this book and its companion The Long Desire.
I was sorry to hear of his death earlier this year. If you are interested in making his acquaintance pick up this book and its companion The Long Desire.
Read
October 30, 2012A sequel, of sorts, to Connell's A Long Desire (http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16...), every bit as mind-blowing to anyone unfamiliar with its subject(s) -- the exploration, often by eccentrics, of forgotten, ignored, or misunderstood realms -- and perhaps a tad more tedious, given that its essays are, with a single exception, longer than those in Desire. Still, it's more than worthy of a read. If only there were more books like it!
June 29, 2009
This is a pretty cool book of sprawling essays on obscure but interesting history... stuff like the Vikings in Greenland, early anthropology and the many hoaxes and misapprehensions it overcame, and the nastier details of Antarctic exploration.
May 30, 2011
A great book. A Long Desire was mostly about man's desire and find more. This one focuses on what e know enough about to KNOW but have lost enough of to never know for sure. The Mayans, the Etruscans, et. al. The essay is a lost art and Connell was a master of it.
decided-not-to-read
April 24, 2010Almost rambling in the way it jumps from topic to topic.
July 16, 2012
Excellent essays covering a wide range of science and history.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews