["The Goshawk"], widely hailed in England with such phrases as "a masterpiece," "unforgettably interesting," and "an ornithological 'Moby Dick,'" is certainly nature writing with a difference. Ostensibly it describes how the author undertook to train a hawk for the intricate sport of falconry. Actually it is the story of a sick soul which took this unusual method of relieving its frustrations.

Mr. White never tells us what reasons other than the prevalent ones he may have had for hating the modern world, but he is almost hysterically angry from almost the first sentence and he was obviously far beyond the point where the healing presences of any Wordsworthian primroses could do him any good.

Beginning as he does in medias res, Mr. White never tells us even what first suggested falconry as an occupation but it is soon evident that falconry became for him an escape, a ritual and a vicarious participation in the cruelty of the universe. Because it has been practiced by aristocrats since before the dawn of history it represents the antithesis of the modern and the democratic. Because the hawk is fierce and bloody he represents a protest against everything which is sentimental and namby-pamby. Finally, because to train a hawk by the old-fashioned methods Mr. White used requires from the trainer sleepless nights and all sorts of exasperating hardships the trainer punishes himself at the same time that he is punishing others.

Whether or not either the experiences themselves or the writing of a book about them purged the author's soul is not clear, but at least the account is characterized everywhere by a sort of D. H. Lawrence fury in the writing and a tendency to turn aside frequently from the many technical details of falconry in order to work in obiter dicta about the loathsome depravity of our times and bloody vignettes of a rabbit's split skull or a badger torn to pieces by dogs.

That this book is written with sincerity and force nearly everyone will admit. Not everybody, on the other hand, is going to find it pleasant reading and there is bound to be considerable difference of opinion concerning its mood and intention. By its admirers it will be called strong, manly, unsentimental. Here is the story of a man who rejects modern civilization and who returns to the ancient, the primitive, and the violent, thus seeking health by contact with the ruthlessness of nature. Others will object that the cult of violence is, in its own way just as sentimental as its opposite and will suspect in Mr. White's glorification of violence something uncomfortably close to the kind of romanticism which inspired recent unsuccessful political experiments in certain parts of Europe.