David Gange's The Frayed Atlantic Edge is subtitled A Historian's Journey from Shetland to the Channel. Both title and subtitle bear plain-language meanings and metaphor.
The Atlantic edge orients the reader not to the edge of the British and Irish archipelago from the land, but from the point of view of the ocean.
Frayed carries both the sense of "things come apart," but unraveling of societies and misconceptions, and suggests Gange's desire: to re-conceptualize, to knit up the liminal littoral —in a sense to extend the ancient intention to repair the world (תיקון עולם)(tikkun olam) to repair the coast (תיקון חוֹף)(tikkun khofe) and all who live there, both human and other.
The journey is not only the ten voyages by kayak and one mountain hike (no "only" there!), but also Gange's evolving understanding of history and memory, of understanding interwoven (or frayed) interactions of environment, social history, ecological devastation, and historical ideologies.
Above all, Gange is a highly effective narrator and interlocutor, with a certain audacious charm that makes me want to join him for month of evenings in a quiet pub with pint, and just listen to him. From this American's perspective, he is one of those extraordinary British characters who accomplish something truly remarkable (in this case, a lot of kayaking under very challenging conditions) with equally remarkable equanimity, even nonchalance. All this from a Ph.D. in History from Cambridge, so no slouch.
"The significance of coasts is consistently underestimated," Gange writes, and "this book sets out to put some of that imbalance right." (p. ix) Structured by region and course of 13 months, Gange's narrates both the consistent factors in the regions from Shetland to Land's End in wind, waves, and rocks, and divergence, how differently the various island and coastal cultures that have adapted to these consistent factors. The first half of the book focuses upon kayaking, and the physicality of coasts and waves, smells, sounds, sights.
Gange is distant intellectual heir to G. M. Trevelyan, who believed strongly in history informed by muddy boots, and who composed an essay Walking and called his legs his two "doctors" (meaning physicians or teachers or both?). After Trevelyan, Gange traces a line of thinking through Archibald Haldane (The Drove Roads of Scotland, etc.), although both his and Trevelyan's brands of romanticism were implicated in varying degrees in the imperialism and centralizing cultural mindset of the Anglo-Scottish aristocracy (and which sponsored the devastating enclosures across Scotland). A different set of forebears, a generation or three removed, are Alastair and Ninian Dunnett, who wrote the kayaking classic The Canoe Boys in 1934, sending serial reports to The Daily Record (newspaper) of their progress and discoveries—among which were that the vigorous communities on western coast of Scotland were not so remote and backward as the imperializing rhetoric of progress had claimed. A later, similar, intellectual and athletic example is Brian Wilson's Blazing Paddles (1988). Make no mistake: what the Dunnetts, Wilson, and Gange (and others) have done qualifies as an athletic feat: one has to be in superb physical shape to withstand the rigors of the maritime conditions. (The galleries of photographs in the book's related website bear abundant witness to the challenges.)
Gange writes more immediately in the aftermath of Barry Cunliffe's Facing the ocean : the Atlantic and its peoples, 8000 BC-AD 1500 (2001 and later). Cunliffe's book occasioned some debate among historians (earning an appraisal as "outlined more in romantic phrases . . . rather than in the measured language of science reporting the rigorous testing of hypotheses" from Malcolm Wagstaff, EHR 117:301). Cunliffe's work remains a "clear exposition" of the continuities in ancient seacoast cultures, as well as their differences, and Gange does him one better: rather than facing the ocean, Gange is on it, facing the shore.
Gange's book is neither under- nor over-theorized, and as he promises on page x, the balance shifts from kayaking, and the smells, sounds, waves, and winds of the coast to "historical research, literary criticism, and argument." Never tendentious, Gange bravely and critically reads poetry, feminist and post-imperialist theory, and socio-political argument in a fashion that might be called post-modern were it not so readable (unlike so much post-modern writing). He writes a personal journey as a historian, neglecting neither his discipline nor the personal memories and hopes, and hospitality of those he meets. (Arriving in a small community on a kayak is a great way to spark conversation at a far deeper level than any ordinary tourist or visiting scholar.)
This book's combination of history, literature, theory, environmental sciences, and physical achievement may not earn kudos from those historians focused exclusively upon documents and the "rigorous testing of hypotheses," nor those administrators and politicians who bludgeon creative academics with required impact evaluation in the Research Excellence Framework. (One might take all those ratings and throw them overboard, along with their administrators and politicians, somewhere north of the Shetlands.) Gange's graceful combination, nevertheless, achieves an uncommon synthesis and evokes in this reader a strong desire to learn more.
There is too much in Gange's book to summarize easily, and his chapters bear re-reading (or an experiment: reading the chapters in reverse order). His epilogue, "The View from the Sea," both looks forward to further study, and expresses how this journey changed him personally after a year of writing and teaching back in Birmingham.
"What I missed most was immersion in constant movement: the world view from the low of the wave. I missed the sense of being part of a vast, coherent dynamism. Indoors I was sometimes unsettled (a condition I could only refer to as 'the bends,' since it was caused by coming up from the sea) and sometimes resort to a sleeping bag in the garden among the foxes and green woodpeckers. Never before had I so welcome rain: a good cold soaking was the best medicine of all." (339)
. . . . "I wondered how much the journey had changed me otherwise and thought again of the ragged map of Britain whose every western indentation now conjured a story, an emotion or a physical sensation. I realised that immersion in these worlds had not, as I'd expected, cured me of my romanticism. . . . It isn't romanticism that needs to be cleared from perspectives on these places, but the assumption that these communities somehow below to the past, not the future, and are merely hazy places to escape to."
. . . "The journey had shown me that a romanticism which delves into the natures of humans and their fellow species, finding wonder while rooted in the real, might not be so naive after all." (346-347)
I look forward to reading Gange's future work.
Hi Gavin, a friend just drew my attention to your review. It's such a generous and close reading - exactly the kind of thing that makes writing feel worthwhile. Thankyou. I wish we could spend those evenings in a coastal pub! David.