The Wager (2023)

Notes

2026-09-08

Ususally, even if I don't really connect with a book, I can understand where praise is coming from or why it's successful or whatever, but The Wager, David Grann's "New masterpiece", I don't get it. It's fine, decently written and an interesting story. But I'm not sure I got much more from reading it than I would have from wikipedia's summary of the incidents it relates. (espescially as said summary has maps, a feature that's bafflingly missing from the book)

I think I have a fundamental distrust of narative non-fiction. Sure there are copious end-notes and sources and so on, but when the authour tells us how someone who lived hundreds of years ago is feeling as they trek across a swamp or look out over a view I can't help but just think "bullshit".

Most of the time I found myself just wanting more detail; an interesting discussion of scurvy through the ages, some discussion of the trends in naval battle tactics at the time etc. but the "plot" demands we move on. I think there's something deeper to my reservations though; I think imposing a neatly structured plot, a begining, a middle and an end, on a slice of history just feels at odds with how I experience the world to be. I find not just the detail (see above) but the whole structure dishonest, at odds with the idea of non-fiction.

Deep down I'm just not a narrative person. I don't mean that I don't enjoy narrative in fiction -- I do! (though i've definately come to realise that my interests, broadly speaking, don't lie in that area.) What I mean is that I don't experience my life or the world in general as a story * and so when people present history or factual stuff in to storyish a fashion it doesn't sit right with me.