I wouldn’t call it a story of terror as much as an interesting scientific and historical work.*
It certainly is not Jaws, although Peter Benchley molded his story from the tales of this particular shark, namely,Carcharadon carcharias in Latin; Great White in English; from Shurk(e) in German, for scoundrel or villain.
The Great White Shark has always been the stuff of nightmares, but, for a time, people did not believe it could be a man-eater. There was, said a leading scientist, ”practically no danger of an attack about our coasts.” Uh-huh.
Close To Shore chronicles the summer of 1916 on the Jersey shore.Edwardians were shedding their prudishness along with long woollen swimsuits, and entering the water. “To the first tremulous moderns, the shifting tides … at the seashore served as a release from the straightjackets of routine and repression.”
The New Jersey shore was a bastion of wealthy enclaves and day-tripper beaches. From Philadelphia and New York, the masses came to find relief from the summer heat.What they found on this particular summer was trepidation and change.
A rogue Great White attacked and killed a number of people up and down the shore. Enough to gain notoriety and encourage re-evaluation of the dangers.
For centuries, other countries had known the danger, but Americans, especially Easterners were complacent in their belief that sharks posed no danger to humans.
Michel Capuzzo gives a very well researched account of these beliefs. He quotes Darwin and Jack London. He shows the invincibility man believed he had at the dawn of a new age. He gives the romantic reasoning men then had for belief in our sole existence at the top of the food chain. Thomas Mann wrote “ The startling vision of a man at the edge of the sea conjured up mythologies, (and) was like a primeval legend … the birth of form, of the origin of the Gods.”
As such, the book becomes much more than its few grim depictions of the attacks.. We do, however, have some wonderfully clever depictions of the world through the shark’s eyes. He coneys the animalistic drive and ultimate confusion of this shark ,” sound ratcheted curiosity up toward urgency.” And now, “it noticed the salmon-yellow light in the sky changing and slightly darkening like the water.”
The human dynamic is far more developed and is well illustrated through many people. The victims are humanized by carefully researched personal accounts, while the doctors and scientists, who must grasp this shift in the paradigm, are rationalized. Evidence was gruesomely laid out before the disbelievers, and scientists began opening their minds.
Some few years later, U.S Navy officer-scientist, H. David Baldridge said, “ The tidelands of the sea clearly mark the boundary of (man’s) supremacy … he becomes again what he must have been so many times in the beginning – the relatively helpless prey of a wild animal.” Quite a change from the invulnerable Adonnis preening at the water’s edge.
The fearlessness of the youngsters and the reticence of the elderly are also contrasted with regard to the shark attacks and the shift in social climate. We see the political climate changing just months before our entry into the First World War. The ways of the old are being rapidly replaced by the ways of the new … socially, scientifically and politically.In “Close To Shore”, a Great White Shark seems to be the catalyst.
* Well, there is one bit about an attack 11 miles inland in a five-foot-deep creek that may crimp future swims in the EightMile. Nothing is tastier than a critic.
A few years ago I met David Handler at the Lyme Public Library. I had just finished the Stewart Hoag series and was gratifyingly entering the world of Berger and Mitry. Now, six engaging books into the series, I am, more than ever, hard-pressed to pick a favorite and write just one review … but I’ll try.
