Pretty fly for a White guy

I bought a used copy of this book from a third party seller. My copy came with the following hand-written note on one of the blank pages: "I read a review of this book in Science and was led to believe it would be a treasure trove of scientific information about dipteran flies. But it is a compilation of flies in literature, in poetry, in art and very little about the biology of flies. Very disappointed".

We can't say we haven't been warned...

But no, "Fly" isn't really a book about flies. The author, Steven Connor, is a professor of modern literature. He seems pretty well versed in ancient literature, too. The book is part of an apparently never-ending series on the cultural significance of animals, published by Reaktion Books. The series is very uneven, and should probably be taken with a large grain of salt...

"Fly" is an undigested compilation about how flies (mostly house flies) have been looked upon by various authors, poets, painters and even church fathers throughout the centuries. There is no real analysis of what all this means, probably because no real analysis is possible. Flies, it seems, always had a (surprisingly) mixed reputation. Sometimes they have been seen as evil or demonic, at other times as merely irritating, and still another angle is to look on them as proof of God's intelligent design of the universe.

In Christian culture, the fly was often connected to the Devil, no doubt because of Beelzebub, the Lord of the Flies, a pagan god once worshipped by the Philistines. Beelzebub, of course, is mentioned in the Bible. Connor points out that this god might really have been an anti-fly deity. He was "lord" of the flies in the sense of being able to control them and make them go away! However, the reference was later misunderstood by Jews and Christians. However, Connor have also managed to find examples of a more positive view of flies within Christendom. When the French attacked the Spanish town of Girona in 1285 and desecrated the tomb of a local saint, a host of aggressive flies flew out of the tomb, repelling the invaders. Or so the story goes. Still today, the good people of Gerona celebrate the event by making fly-shaped chocolate candy.

Connor also mentions an unintentionally humorous conflict between the Christians and the Manicheans, a competing religion. The Manicheans believed that the material world was evil and therefore denied that it was created by God. They used the fly as an obvious example of an annoying, disgusting and useless creature with nothing godly about it. This put the church father Arnobius on the defensive. Like the Manicheans, he couldn't believe that God created the fly. However, he couldn't admit that the Devil created them either, since that would be conceding too much to his opponents. Arnobius was check mated. Augustine, on the other hand, took the bull (or fly?) bravely by its horns (or antennae?), declaring that the fly was indeed a divine creation. Later, the Muslims beat him to it, creating a legend about a fly that bore into the head of the evil ruler Nimrod, eventually killing him. When the fly emerged, it recited: "There is no God but God, Abraham is the apostle of God and his friend". That's *very* hard to believe...

From "Fly" we also learn that Goethe (!) studied the house fly scientifically, that the fly has been a symbol of everything from decay to sexual licentiousness in Western painting, or that the Hessian fly was used as a metaphor for unwanted alien immigration by the early American republic. There is also a reproduction of a poster from the Philadelphia Department of Public Health, boldly proclaiming "The fly is as deadly as a bomber". Or what about the following quotes from a 1915 pamphlet on the house fly: "Arise! and slay the Fly, and by so doing conquer this mighty Microbe Army. A human being is dying every second of time somewhere in the world, stain by microbes carried by House Flies. Arise, ye slaves! and gut your ire." And further: "Therefore, Arise and Smite - slay without mercy. Let your battle cry be: Death to the Fly". Since the same author also gutted his ire against Blacks and poor Whites, one wonders what he was really after...

As I already pointed out, "Fly" isn't a particularly deep or analytical book. Still, if you have a friend who is an amateur entomologist and have the right sense of humour, it might still be a perfect birthday gift. I'd say Steven Connor is pretty fly...for a White guy!