doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Peter Hathaway Capstick

King Brown, he was a small time PH who apprenticed under one very big PH, Brian Marsh. A lot of his stuff was based on the life of Brian Marsh. However he had been a PH in his own right. What he could do was tell a story. I reckon 95% of what is in the books happened but to other people. The difference is that 80% of hunting books are badly written, his aren�t and for that reason I don�t mind if it happended to him or anyone else. It is entertaining and made many of my generation want to go there. I do not understand why people love to bad mouth him ? Bringing it up as if he claimed to have been a war veteran and wasn�t is completely cloud cockoo land ! best

I am going back to Africa this August on safari for the 7th time. I have PHC, TR, Ruark and Hemingway in that order to either curse or thank for all the money and time I have spent and will spend on these trips. There is nothing in the outdoors world to compare being in dangerous game county. Africa is a hard world of poverty, violence and death for all animals from humans on down.It always has been. But, when a buffalo snorts and alerts the herd and they shuffle off in cloud of red dust just as you raise your rifle or while sitting by the evening fire, you hear the roar of the lion not too far off in the darkness you stop as you raise a cold sweating gin to your lips and you think- this is why I am here. Only the hunter not the hunted can conjure up these abstract notions of time and place. These writers are the ones who spun that gossamer veneer of romance on Africa. Capstick could spin it better than most...

Nicely put.

Mike, pretending is . . . well, pretending. I agree that claiming military service (or war service you didn't perform) is a different order of magnitude, but it's the same principle. Some guy writes a book telling how he struck out Mickey Mantle several times back when the Mick was in the Minors, I want it to be the guy who did it--regardless of how good a wordsmith he is or isn't--not some guy who saw it happen and is claiming he's the one who did it. If I want good fiction writing, I have no trouble finding it. I don't much care for "creative" nonfiction. I'll take a lower standard of wordsmithing along with a higher standard of truth-telling.

And just like Capstick was a fine writer, Dr. Larry Cable was one heck of a lecturer on unconventional warfare. He fooled a lot of people in the military, including a lot of Vietnam vets, for quite some time. There's certainly a higher "fraud" standard there because of the "stolen valor" thing, but same principle. What it comes down to are a couple guys who were very entertaining, but didn't do what they claimed to have done. Seems I recall a newspaper reporter or two having maybe a Pulitzer yanked for stories they made up. Good writing, but if the award is for reporting and not fiction writing, then you don't get the award unless the story is true.

Writers are a sketchy group of Folks.