Stan, I’m certainly not a Ruark scholar and would readily admit that he could have said a thing in different ways in different places but in studying Fracassi’s work on Cape Buffalo and especially the buff he created 30 years ago on a small oval belt buckle I found myself seeing through one man’s art what another man was saying through his. I did have to check to be sure that memory migration was not in play as what I’d read was long ago. In the first edition hard back version of Ruark’s “Use Enough Gun” (p. 96) he says of “mbogo”, he is, “… big and mean and ugly and hard to stop, and vindictive and cruel and surly and ornery. He looks like he hates you personally. He looks like you owe him money.”
For Ruark to be able to see and then say this and for Fracassi to be able to profoundly express the same thing (and so much more) through his medium surely touches Jordan Peterson’s observation that true art “…opens your eyes to the domain of the transcendent.” And by way of application, “…unless you can make a connection to the transcendent then you don’t have the strength to prevail.”
Personally, the difficulties of this year have borne witness to the validity of this.
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