This first installment reads like the work of a man who has already written abundantly about himself. He often tells stories that, he acknowledges, he has told before. He includes the texts of speeches he has made. And he puts particular emphasis on the evolution — yes, he’d approve of that word — of “The Selfish Gene,” the 1976 genetics book that established his reputation (and put the word “meme” on the map). With the benefit of hindsight, and with a dearth of other compelling material, he wonders if “The Immortal Gene,” a title suggested to him by a London publisher, might have been better than the one he used. “I can’t now remember why I didn’t follow his advice,” he writes. “I think I should have done.” Anyone expecting an incisive account of Mr. Dawkins’s growth as a scientist may be surprised by the meandering path he takes here. True, his lineage is impressive, and his boyhood was uncommonly adventurous, so both warrant attention. He takes his time explaining that his great-great-great-grandparents eloped more cleverly than most couples do. Henry Dawkins and Augusta Clinton made their getaway in a coach, but not before the groom-to-be had planted half a dozen decoy coaches near Augusta’s home so that her father, Sir Henry Clinton, could not prevent the marriage. As the British commander in chief in America, he could not win the Revolutionary War, either. The family history also includes Clinton George Augustus Dawkins, son of the eloped couple, who earned his place in family lore during the Austrian bombardment of rebel Venice in 1849, when a cannonball hit his bed. “A cannonball penetrated the bed covers and passed between his legs, but happily did him no more than superficial damage,” reads the inscription that accompanies a cannonball in Mr. Dawkins’s possession. The story may not be 100 percent true, but it does underscore this family’s staying power. Mr. Dawkins’s forebears had scientific leanings of all kinds. Since many were posted to remote corners of the British Empire, those leanings are more exotic than most. One cousin wrote major books about the birds of Burma and Borneo. Other relatives held the post of chief conservator of the forests in India and Nepal. Another relative is credited with persuading Aldous Huxley to take mescaline and open the doors of perception. As Mr. Dawkins has already written in a brief and more obscure memoir: “For generations, sun-browned Dawkins legs have been striding in khaki shorts through the jungles of Empire.” He himself was born in 1941 in Nairobi, Kenya. Growing up in Nyasaland (now Malawi), he led what sounds like a charmed early life. This book includes a lovely, whimsical painting, made by his mother, illustrating the family’s idyllic-looking African life, which included a pet chameleon and a pet bush baby, a squirrel-size, big-eyed mammal. Mr. Dawkins recalls his father’s bedtime stories (“often featuring a ‘Broncosaurus,’ which said ‘Tiddly-widdly-widdly’ in a high falsetto voice”) and reading about Doctor Dolittle, whose love of animals made him one of the great fairy tale naturalists. But the tone turns sharper once this budding atheist is sent to a school where the pupils are compelled to say a good-night prayer. He says this was learned in “parrot fashion” and evolved into “garbled meaninglessness,” then adds tartly, “Quite an interesting test case in meme theory, if you happen to be interested in such things — if you are not, and don’t know what I’m talking about, skip to the next paragraph.” This is not a book that runs on charm. The second half of “An Appetite for Wonder” follows Mr. Dawkins back to England, and into an educational system that he harshly denounces. He writes about bullying, mortifying embarrassment, sadistic punishment and an absence of critical thinking, which, by his lights, is worst of all. He still bristles at having unimaginatively been called “a very inky little boy” when forced to have an open ink pot on his desk and keep dipping a pen into it. Mr. Dawkins’s memories briefly take him to Berkeley, Calif., where he lived long enough to protest American involvement in the Vietnam War. They finally arrive at Oxford, and to the beginning of his serious career in science. He presents detailed descriptions of some of his early experiments in animal behavior, like an analysis of newborn chicks’ pecking patterns. Then he moves on to what appeared to be his calling, computer science and the creation of computer language. He sought computer-based methods of analyzing hierarchical patterns in nature, and the specifics of such material, like his Mutual Replaceability Cluster Analysis Program, are not for amateurs. We’re a long way from the sun-browned little boy who caught butterflies. Mr. Dawkins treats the publication of “The Selfish Gene” as the dividing line between the first and second installments of this memoir. It’s a good place to pause, and it suggests strongly that the second volume will be heftier and more focused than this one. Mr. Dawkins’s memory for his work is much more vivid than his more personal stories. And the work has been far-ranging enough to support autobiographical study. But, for now, we have the kindling of Mr. Dawkins’s curiosity, the basis for his unconventionality and some very odd glimpses of professorial behavior. Mr. Dawkins describes one teacher who would begin by saying, “Oh, dear” and “I can’t hold it” and “I’m going to lose my temper,” before warning his students to hide under their desks. And then the ink pots flew. “He was a kind gentleman provoked beyond endurance — as who would not be in his profession?” writes Mr. Dawkins, himself no stranger to provocation. “Who would not be in mine?”
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