Watership Down By Richard Adams Macmillan, 429 pp., $6.95 I’m writing my seventh novel: it’s called Herbert Cunningham Gnu. I know a bandwagon when it runs me over: 1971, dolphins; 1972, seagulls; 1973-74, rabbits. From the land of Beatrix Potter and nationalized strikes, has come Watership Down, Richard Adams’ lapine odyssey. Believe me, nothing depresses the spirit more surely than a sententious rabbit. Yet Watership Down has had “unanimous praise from England.”
“An exceptional book, a true original.” “It doesn’t fit any known formula, thank goodness.” Nonsense: it fits five or six. This bunny squad could be a John Wayne platoon of GIs. The foresighted, tactful rabbit leader. The fast rabbit. The clever rabbit. The blustery, hard-fighting noncom rabbit. Athos, Porthos, and D’Artagnan on a diet of grass. Watership Down is pleasant enough, but it has about the same intellectual firepower as Dumbo. “Refreshes a reader’s feeling for the world of man.” Apparently more than one reviewer has been rabbited out of his critical faculties. After all, if your dog started speaking French you’d be loath to criticize his pronunciation. Yet if Hazel and Bigwig and Dandelion were men, they’d make very commonplace characters. What seems a moral, an insight, is just a novelty.
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