Having bushwhacked through Wild, a not-overlong book packed with history, literature, gossip and a smattering of environmental science, I think Beard’s estimation of himself as being in the same league as one of the great masters of the 20th century [Pablo Picasso] seems premature at best, overblown at worst ... Perhaps because of copyright issues, Wild shows only a few items from his immense catalog, at a distance. But it also suggests the old cliché, that the man’s greatest work of art was himself ... You start to sympathize with that angry elephant who crushed his pelvis and ruptured his spleen ... The next-level enablement of Peter Beard...is one of this book’s great unsolved mysteries ... Affectionate and a little bemused, with plenty of recent interviews hot off the tape, Wild is fresh meat, sometimes delectable, sometimes hard to chew. Unclear how it will age.
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