![]() ![]() A member of Mensa, Auel also earned an MBA and pursued a successful career in a technology firm. Married at 18, she had five children by the age of 25. The idea for the Earth's Children series struck in 1977, when Auel was 40 years old. ![]() If I could have used that directly, I would have," Auel adds rather wistfully. "That was the tribe's way of dealing with a selfish man. Because polar bears are so carnivorous, their livers are rich enough in vitamin A to be poisonous. A question about Cro-Magnon crime and punishment inspires a ghoulish tale of an Eskimo found guilty of selfishness: the miscreant stole strips of meat from his tribe's store of liver the tribe's solution was to swap their usual liver with cuts from a polar bear. It isn't always clear, however, where the anthropologist ends and the novelist begins. Auel's conversation combines an academic's pedantic passion for the arcane corners of her specialist subject with a storyteller's desire to communicate them as dramatically as possible. She might look like a hippy ideal of grandmotherhood, but her years spent investigating primitive humankind ensure that our conversation heads down several esoteric avenues: markings on horses' teeth, prehistoric attitudes towards disability, and arguing competitions in the Arctic. It's safe to say that Jean Auel is not your average author. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |