Very clever, Mr Winchester. Under the guise of an entertaining book, you have taught us stuff. A Crack in the Edge of the World is a course in Geology 101 that is informative and unforgettable in its gravity. Wrapped into these geology lessons are classes in world history and you have tied it all into a rolling travelogue of seismic hotspots on the American continent covering more than 8,000 miles. Page by page you have pulled your readers into the world of earthquakes and tectonic plate volatility, packaged around the tragedy of the San Francisco earthquake and its aftermath. Genius!
While admittedly his topic is spectacularly enormous, and the depth and breadth of his research staggeringin its scope, Winchester's use of staggering/staggeringly and spectacular/spectacularly to qualify descriptors is something his editor really should not have let slide. But he is forgiven. His ability to communicate and explain complex scientific concepts while holding the attention of his non-scientific readers makes him a master of the creative non-fiction genre, quite enough to convince me to overlook his occasional lapses into hyperbole. Winchester researches his books thoroughly and travels the world in this pursuit. Along the way, he becomes an expert in his field of the day, although, in the case of A Crack in the Edge of the World, it cannot hurt that his undergraduate degree was in geology. The book pivots around the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906, and Winchester takes the time to place this singular event within a geological, historical, and human context and, in doing so, he enchants, informs, and horrifies in varying degrees. An example of enchanting: in 132 A.D. during the Han dynasty, a Chinese astronomer and mathematician, Chang Heng, invented the world’s first seismograph, the hou feng di dong yi, aka the earthquake weathercock. Winchester’s description made me want one. Brass and jade. Dragons and toads. I want to spend time with one, sitting outside my room on a balcony in, oddly, Venice, contemplating the jade frogs and the brass dragons and the da’Vinci’esq’ness of it all.
After finishing his research in San Francisco, Winchester sets out in a jeep on what has to be the longest
detour in the world. He leaves San Francisco for the east coast via the Alaska
Highway, adding 4,000 miles to his journey. He drives to Milepost 1,314, where
he “turns left for Anchorage.” He is looking for the Alaska oil pipeline and he
finds it wandering unprotected through the pristine wilderness, built “high off
the ground to allow migrating caribou to pass beneath it.” 800 miles of
Mitsubishi-made steel tube on Teflon-coated sliders. He thinks of explosives
and how easy it would be! But what really interests Winchester is the care the
builders have taken in their design which allows the pipeline to flex when
needing to deal with seismic activity. Because it sits on the Denali Fault,
which is an intrinsic part of that aforementioned Pacific Ring of Fire.
Another Winchester detour. Another 4,000 miles, this time to Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming which, he writes, “is ready for an eruption almost any day.” There have been indications but all that is known is that “when it happens, itwill almost certainly be vast. It is that 'almost certainly' that gives us permission to continue to ignore the inevitability of what Winchester is saying. If we don't talk about it, it may not be true. It's not totally certain, after all, only almost. Lynn Truss (author of Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation) has a simple rule about qualifying absolutes. Don't! However, considering Winchester's superior command of English, I think he was being deliberate. This is 'benefit of the doubt' stuff. He is giving us permission to suspend our belief to that little bit of the story. I'm in and I'm sure Truss probably would be too.
