Events like this put me off Richard Dawkins because, to put it bluntly, he can be so fucking condescending. Being an arsehole is a surefire way to discourage people from, well, liking you (let alone coming around to your way of thinking), and Dawkins's relentless, supercilious intellectual aggression makes me want to set his hair on fire.
However, for, oh, months now, I've been reading The Greatest Show on Earth, and slowly, slowly over the course of the book I've come to love Dawky's writing, and perhaps his brain, if not the man himself.
What on Earth is happening to me?
Really, I pretty much loathe him in person. But The Greatest Show is a joy to read. A joy. Whatever my personal objections to the man's MO, his writing is easy, charming, human, amusing and clear. It gives the impression that Dick Dawkins (as I like to think of him) would be a great person to sit down and have a chat to, even though when I see him in action I want to throw the viewing device of the moment through the nearest window.
How is this possible? How can someone's natural writing style be so different from their actual persona?
For the better part of this year I've used The Greatest Show to entertain myself on planes, stave off torrid wee-hour emotional debacles, and indulge my still sleep-addled brain on many a weekend morning. No matter how crap you're feeling—how sad, how sleepy, how distracted, how disgruntled—DD somehow manages to whisk you away to a beautiful, intriguing, and captivating world of beautiful, intriguing and captivating sense. And it is our world, our sense. And he tells it so well.
I'm up to the last chapter. Which raises a new question:
What the fuck will I do when I'm done?
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