The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore by Benjamin Hale

In a book where the word “amanuensis” is on page one, there is no surprise that you are going beyond Hands, Hands, Fingers, Thumb, in which millions of monkeys drum on drums. Why does Bruno talk so much? Because now he can.īruno’s excitement for language is clearly aligned to Nabokov’s, whose English as a Third Language worked out fairly well. The chimp’s tale is close to six hundred pages. Bruno’s narrative isn’t the simple, direct language you’d expect from a talking monkey-this is lyrical play, an anti-humble Humbert Humbert handling: “With some prodding I have finally decided to give this undeserving and spiritually diseased world the generous gift of my memoirs.” And it is generous. Think Harold Bloom with baser instincts and a higher passion for peaches. In fact, he doesn’t just learn to speak he becomes more erudite and elitist than most humans. The rise, of course, is that Bruno Littlemore, chimp extraordinaire, learns to speak. We may not have dished out nine dollars to see the movie (nor did we rent it for five), but the fact that it exists makes us feel better.īenjamin Hale’s frisky first book, The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore, details the rise and fall of the world’s first speaking chimpanzee. The 1998 film Mighty Joe Young reintroduced the world to 1949’s Mighty Joe Young, a gigantic freak gorilla.

The Monkey King of Chinese mythology is sort of a super monkey, who cast spells, is an expert at wielding his compliant rod, or staff, and who can leap something like 30,000 miles in one awesome somersault. Since the dawn of man, humans have always enjoyed a good monkey story.

The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore by Benjamin Hale