Baboon shamed

One thing I'm envious of that other writers have, but that I don't think I really have, is their ability to talk about things in detail. Whereas I might say there was a dog walking down the street, they'd say there was an auburn cocker spaniel walking down the street. While I'll give the generic, they'll give the brand, and this goes to things such as fabrics, types of clothing, cars, types of metal or other solid material, etc. etc. The list goes on until I hang my head in shame.

I'm really hanging my head in shame today over my inability to name the sort of simian that appears in one of Gladiator II's fight scenes.

In my review -- which I am not willing to go back and change -- I described these creatures as "these sort of man-sized, hairless monkeys fed with a dose of the rage virus from 28 Days Later." And while I regain some little bit of pride from the apt cinematic reference, I can't shake the awkward way I described this animal while lacking the vocabulary, or at least the recognition, to explain what it actually is.

Which is a baboon. 

I discovered this while randomly reading another critic's review, and then I thought "Well duh, of course it's a baboon." (I also discovered from this review that I had spelled "Colosseum" wrong -- for some reason believing, without any inclination to even check it, that it was spelled "Coliseum." This I did change in the review.)

But it wasn't like I could just note my failure and move on. Oh no. The next day, while listening to a podcast, I heard a random ad that made mention of a baboon. Not only that, the ad specifically made mention of it in the context of the person, a child, not knowing what the "monkey with the funny butt" was called. That might give me comfort, or it might mean that I have a child's inability to parse the taxonomy of primates. (As you might guess, it had the latter effect.)

It could just be that I don't think about baboons very much. I must think about orangutans more. If Lucius Maximus Aurelius (I think that's his name) was fighting an orangutan in Gladiator II, I would have named it as such. Plus there's the whole thing where these digital baboons are such insane, artificially enraged creatures that any link to real creatures in the animal kingdom was severed.

The larger point, though, is not that I failed to identify a baboon as a baboon. It was that I lack one of the tools in the writer's toolbox.

I feel like I am observant, which I share with most writers. What I don't have is the ability to name things. Whereas I see a sweater, they see a cashmere sweater. Whereas I see something as metal, they see it as an aluminum-copper alloy. The rule of three dictates I give another example, but frankly, it's just too depressing.

If I were a fiction writer creating scenes from whole cloth -- though don't ask me what kind of cloth -- this might be a bigger problem than it is. The finer details are not always required in a review, and if you notice a moment where you think the writing would benefit from it, you can always google to find out what material it actually is, and look like you knew it all along.

Still, it makes me feel dumb that I can't do this better, though I also don't know how to improve it. As I collect items from the world in my head, like anybody does, do I need to make more of an effort to evaluate their core properties and store that away too? But how can I decide something is a cashmere sweater if I never knew what cashmere was in the first place?

I'll survive this. A baboon is just a baboon. But I would like to get better at it, somehow.

Editor's Note: I posted this on Wednesday morning, and Wednesday night I attended a talk by cultural commentator Jon Ronson, in which a baboon was also mentioned. I can't escape.