Indeed, about two-thirds of the way through The Feather Thief, Johnson turns anorak himself, chasing down stolen 19th-century plumes as relentlessly as Herbert Mental stalked the eggs of birders. Kirk Wallace Johnson’s new book The Feather Thief is a veritable Mental ward of anoraks-explorers, naturalists, gumshoes, dentists, musicians and salmon fly-tyers. The term derives from the hooded raincoats favored by trainspotters, those solitary hobbyists who hang around railway platforms jotting down the serial numbers of passing engines. “Anorak” is the colloquialism they use to describe someone with an avid interest in something most people would find either dull (subway timetables) or abstruse (condensed matter physics). The British generally adore and honor eccentrics, the barmier the better. He reaches in a third time and carefully withdraws two hard-boiled eggs, which he keeps.Īs it turns out, Mental collects eggs. He pulls out another bag and discards it, too.
He pulls out a white paper bag, examines the contents and discards it. Sneaking up behind him, Mental stretches out a hand, peels back the flap of the man’s knapsack and rummages within. Presently, he gets down on all fours and, with great stealth, crawls to a small rise on which a birder is prone, binoculars trained. In a memorable TV sketch, the character zigzags through a scrubby field, furtively tracking something. Of all the eccentrics cataloged by “Monty Python’s Flying Circus,” the most sublimely obsessive may have been Herbert Mental.
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