Conversations With a Pocket Gopher, and Other Outspoken Neighbors

by Jack Schaefer

Book by Schaefer, Jack

128 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1978

About the author

Schaefer was born in Cleveland, Ohio, the son of an attorney. He graduated from Oberlin College in 1929 with a major in English. He attended graduate school at Columbia University from 1929-30, but left without completing his Master of Arts degree. He then went to work for the United Press. In his long career as a journalist, he would hold editorial positions at many eastern publications.

Schaefer's first success as a novelist came in 1949 with his memorable novel Shane, set in Wyoming. Few realized that Schaefer himself had never been anywhere near the west. Nevertheless, he continued writing successful westerns, selling his home in Connecticut and moving to Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1955.

In 1975 Schaefer received the Western Literature Association's Distinguished Achievement award.

He died of heart failure in Santa Fe in 1991. Schaefer was married twice, his second wife moving to Santa Fe with him.

Schaefer's novel Monte Walsh was made into a movie in 1970, with Lee Marvin in the title role, and again in 2003 as a TV movie starring Tom Selleck. Shane was also made into a movie and a series.

from Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Sch...

Reviews

[Joe Stack · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an interesting exercise in what you might hear if you listened carefully to animals. It is a unique combination of mammalogy and philosophy by which the reader learns facts about the pocket gopher, shrews, bats, kangaroo rats (which really isn’t a rat), and pumas & jaguars while also learning how humans can be viewed from the animals’ perspective. It’s the animals’ views where the philosophizing occurs and takes the reader to the point of view why we humans “are one of evolution’s mistakes . . . THE major mistake.”

Published in 1978, the author’s path of reasoning to humans being evolution’s biggest mistake is as applicable to the 21st Century as it was when these essays were first published.

The animal facts are presented in an entertaining manner and used to support the strengths of each animal in comparison to that of human beings. This reader found the chapter about the kangaroo rat (which is not actually a rat) the most interesting.

[Annette Lyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such a quick, pithy read. I loved the grab-bag-of-animal-facts aspects of the book, as well as the philosophy.

Got a bit misty with the passing of the shrew.