Hard Travel to Sacred Places by Rudolph Wurlitzer

Hard Travel to Sacred Places Reviews

• 
  Cathal

  This is one of the most difficult, but ultimately rewarding books, I have ever read. There is nothing I can say about it that will not ruin it for anyone reading this review, so I will say only that it is a meditation on loss, love, and the meaning of life. The insight Wurlitzer gains is hard won, hence the title, which is why this is so superior to the hundreds of New Age tracts offering easy answers for the inexorable dilemmas of which our lives are full, not least of which is why do the people we love leave us, why do they die, or disappear, far sooner than we are ready? Wurlitzer has no answer for these questions, or these different permutations of the same question, but he has the courage to say so, and the courage to go on living, trying to understand.
• 
  Jamil

  a rough diamond, this path of grieving, seeking escape, understanding, illumination. to forget & to remember. to be haunted by & spirited on a journey towards something, some end.
  
  "This existence of ours is as transient as autumn clouds. To watch the birth and death of beings is like looking at the movements of a dance.
  A lifetime is like a flash of lightning in the sky.
  Rushing by, like a torrent down a steep mountain."
  
  a map of the soul, of heartbreak, of the world always never ending.
  
  "I'm not a prophet
  or a stone age man
  Just a mortal
  with the potential of a superman
  I'm living on
  I'm tethered to the logic
  of Homo Sapien
  Can't take my eyes
  from the great salvation
  Of bullshit faith
  If I don't explain what you ought to know
  You can tell me all about it
  On, the next Bardo
  I'm sinking in the quicksand
  of my thought
  And I ain't got the power anymore"
  
  it's brave and honest and true, a tale of a hard travel to sacred places, without and within.
• 
  Emily

  There is no way to really write what this book is about, you have to just read it. Kind of like when you travel to places you can never truly convey those experiences to others. It is a profoundly interesting, thoughtful, and thought-provoking book about death, grief, life, and buddhism.
• 
  Andy

  I didn't enjoy Wurlitzer's "Drop Edge of Yonder" very much, but I'd heard this was his book not to miss. This follows him and his partner on a trip through Thai, Burmese, and Cambodian Buddhist shrines. Throughout, they mourn the loss of her young adult son, whilst paying for the trip ostensibly through Wurlitzer's dealings on a new film project and her photo journalist gig. The plot is simple enough, they travel through the 3 countries, things get worse, and things get sort of resolved in a tidy way. He tries to have this resolution, or cycling through of their grief Bardo, achieved through a collage of incidents from their trip and through quotes of Buddhist thought and local historical texts. The heights of thought and feeling in some of the religious material elevate this story to the journey of spirit that Wurlitzer attempts. However, this source material does the heavy lifting. Without, this novel is so brisk and so weirdly shallow, I can imagine it being a magazine piece, at best. I don't think Wurlitzer knows how to write at the level of his spiritual goals, who could? I wouldn't sweat it if he just told the straight story.
  
  Perhaps someone who had a relationship to the Buddhist writing excerpted so heavily in this book could relate to his footnoted journey. There are some interesting ideas here. The most appealing to me was that this book used the Bardo as a structural device much more effectively than "Drop Edge". Finally, this book may not seem shallow at all to someone who has experienced his sort of loss, but this really, really feels like a remainder book from Transitions Bookstore over by Whole Foods.
• 
  Rebecca

  This is a searing portrait of grief and a painful exploration of religion, spirituality, and travel in the midst of changing political and personal worlds. Rudolph Wurlitzer and his wife Lynn are on a journey to sacred sites in southeast Asia - specifically in Thailand, Burma/Myanmar, and Cambodia. Lynn is a photographer and has an assignment to photograph these sites. Rudy is an author who was supposed to meet with some Italian film guy, but that quickly falls apart and he's moreso along for the ride. Rudy and Lynn are both still deep in grief from the devastating loss of Ayrev, Lynn's son and Rudy's stepson. This grief accompanies them on their travels, blurring and crystallizing what they see and what it means to them:
  
  "Six months ago Lynn's twenty-one-year-old son, Ayrev, was killed in a car accident. To forget the wonder, the terror, the utter finality of this fact, even for a moment, is to experience it again as if for the first time - one of the perils of traveling which we would learn over and over again."
  
  Rudy and Lynn both seem to have a strong Buddhist background, with Rudy interspersing the narrative with quotes from Dharmic texts and Buddhist leaders, speaking several times about his own spiritual background, and telling how he and Lynn chanted for hours in their meditation room to help Ayrev's spirit travel through the bardo (the state between life and death in Buddhist philosophy). This personal spirituality lends a deeper level to their travel, as it's not just a work assignment but also a pilgrimage as they visit these sacred sites which are mostly Buddhist & Hindi, meet practicing monks, and talk with their tour guides and the occasional friend they see along the way. In fact, they cling to the purposeful photo shoot as a way to stay afloat amid their new and painful circumstances:
  
  "But we are nailed to fulfilling Lynn's photo assignment. Perhaps it is just as well; without obligations we would be no more than matchboxes on the ocean. Rather than being on a pilgrimage, even a failed one, we would be on a vacation or, worse, an adventure. And going back will be as arduous and melancholy as going forward, because most of the time we both know there isn't any difference."
  
  Wurlitzer attempts to navigate his grief through a Buddhist lens, but doesn't shy away from showing the true difficulty of that goal:
  
  "I am attached to my suffering, which is so inextricably wound up with pleasure and compensation"
  
  Wurlitzer provides very interesting and vivid details about the places they go and the things they see, while also delving into the inner world of grief and suffering, as he and Lynn are in emotional and physical pain for almost their entire journey. As often as they are out on the assignment, admiring Angkor Wat or contemplating the conflict between capitalism and progress, they are also crying in their hotel rooms. There are no illusions here that this is an objective travel narrative ("...my own subjectivity, which threatens, at times, to overwhelm me" and "the endless subjectivity of a mind that jumps through its habitual hoops like a rat in a cage"). I also appreciated how Wurlitzer himself questions the morality of non-attachment in a world that desperately needs people to care about and invest in it and be attached to a better outcome ("Is enlightenment more important than saving the world? Or is enlightenment the only way of saving the world?").
  I have never read a book like this, which manages to be a travelogue, a critique of capitalism, consumerism, and western globalization, and a meditation on grief and suffering all at once. It was also fascinating to read the account of visiting these three countries in 1994, when there was so much civil unrest and uncertainty, especially in Cambodia and Burma/Myanmar. Wurlitzer was such an honest, unpretentious narrator, very self-aware about his perspective as an outsider:
  
  "Lynn and I, each in our own way, are ripping off images and Dharma experiences and bringing them back to the reductive shredder of our own culture. It is up to us to assimilate and transform these experiences, not to exploit or showcase them."
  
  I really admire what Wurlitzer was able to pull off here, and the pain and strength it must have taken to document this inner and outer journey and then share such a vulnerable insight with the entire world.
• 
  Teri

  I am unsophisticated, Inexperienced and much less traveled. While I am amazed at the lives these two lead, I am kind of disgusted. Every person suffers grief, joy, questions their existence, their purpose. Much ado. Two words jumped out at me near the end “spiritual narcissism”. Thats kind of how this writing left me. On the up side I believe the author is sincere just to self absorbed. This causes in my mind an imbalance that leads to a decline. I find it very interesting that until near the end when the author recounts that the natural world takes back the jungle so to speak, we are reminded that we are a part of the natural world and when we accept that we can learn from it. For all things there is a season. Of course the book was written 25 years ago. Maybe this was just a trend. We don’t hear much about what Lynn believes. But she had a mission that perceivable was about things other than her mortal self. Why didn’t they get out when she was getting sick! Really can not fathom this.
• 
  Micha

  I was set for this to be a magical kind of book. It belonged to my predecessor at the library. I never knew her, but I encounter her sometimes. I know her handwriting, her travel habits, her taste in books. This book had been discarded, but she kept it in the office on a shelf above a filing cabinet with a few other books--antiques guides, histories of Ancient Egypt, and the like.
  
  I started and finished it in airports, book-ending a small vacation to Vancouver, which I thought would be apt. It seemed promising at first, but didn't meet my desire for something more deeply transformative. It's a bit about travel, a bit about religion, a bit about grief. It came close at times to the edge of something that would've been profound, but never made that last step over. Already I'm sad to lose my idea of what I thought it would be, an image that fades out as the mediocre reality of the book overtakes it.
• 
  Sara

  A combination of travelogue and dharma, this spare little book chronicles the process of grief as well as the author's difficult travels in the mid 1990s through Cambodia, Thailand, and Burma to look at Buddhist ruins and temples. If you're looking for a gloriously described travelogue about Angkor Wat and other ancient Buddhist wonders, I wouldn't look here. But if you're grieving, there is some wisdom here.
• 
  Nick LeBlanc

  I’ve read two books by Wurlitzer this year and they have both been home runs. Ostensibly, this is a nonfiction travel book wherein Wurlitzer and his partner, photographer Lynn Davis travel to Thailand, Burma (now Myanmar), and Cambodia on a combination work/spiritual journey after Lynn’s 21 year old son is suddenly killed in an auto wreck. Both practicing Buddhists, the book becomes Wurlitzers trips through SE Asia and his own mind where he reckons with the forces (natural and otherwise) which guide and influence our lives. In it, he asks some hard questions about action and inaction and wrestles with his own ability to stay true to his own Buddhist teaching. Unlike many books about spiritual journeys, he fails consistently, all the while writing lucidly about both the beauty and horrors of each of the three countries they visit. Wurlitzer is a great writer, clear short sentences, very obviously a smart and deep thinker, and there’s no aggrandizing of his personal belief system or any holier-than-though bloviating. You are left with the distinct feeling that Wurlitzer has let you in on a deep personal struggle for he and his wife. Just read through those passages I posted along with the cover, you’ll quickly see what I mean. Throughout, he interpolates Buddhist texts and bits and pieces from newspapers he comes across. After a while they start to feel like evidence for the eventual (sort-of) conclusion he comes to while on the way to the airport leaving SE Asia. In reading two of his works for the first time this year, I am starting to feel like Wurlitzer is a real gem, an author who deserves far more recognition than the “cult classic underground” status under which he lives. I’m not a huge fan of non-fiction, especially of the “spiritual journey” variety which can often come off as little more than unjustified grandstanding and cultural appropriation. This book is certainly not that, and I can’t wait to dive into the next work by him
  -
  -
  tl;dr—an affecting account of a personal journey by a very bright and lucid writer. Read it, especially if you’re into “spirituality” or non-fiction—two areas I seldom recommend to people.
• 
  Ben Padilla

  It is hard for me, reading books like this. The purposelessness and sadness that pervades his “Buddhist” pilgrimage and musings are depressing. As a Christian who believes in the truth and power of Jesus it is heartbreaking to see such brokenness.
• 
  Cleo

  Portions seem overlong but overall an interesting lense on Wurlitzer’s other work
• 
  Josh

  Wurlitzer is the screenwriter of two of my favorite 1970s movies, Peckinpah's Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid and Monte Hellman's Two-Lane Blacktop, and he co-wrote and co-directed one of my favorite 1980s movies, Candy Mountain, with the photographer Robert Frank, so I've been interested in checking out his books for a long time. This is Wurlitzer's only non-fiction book, and it's about his trip to Thailand, Burma, and Cambodia in the early 1990s shortly after the death of his stepson in a car accident. Wurlitzer's wife, photographer Lynn Davis, was shooting Buddhist holy sites in these countries for a magazine assignment, and the practicing Buddhist couple thought the trip would help them come to terms with their grief. It's a quick, enjoyable read full of painterly, detailed images, but sometimes Wurlitzer's criticisms of Western values, capitalism, corporatization, and environmental destruction come off as sanctimonious and preachy. I agree with what he says about these things, but he doesn't bring anything new to the table other than self-satisfied complaints. His approach to Buddhism, on the other hand, is thoughtful and deeply felt. He's hardly a Western dilettante when it comes to his faith, and I feel like I learned some things about Buddhism from his writing. I'm such a hardcore secular agnostic that I feel distanced from most discussions of spirituality, so I might not be the ideal reader of this book, but I'm still looking forward to reading Wurlitzer's novels.
• 
  Roniq

  This was a really good read, sad as well as it concerns a couples tragic loss of there son and a working trip for a photographer to capture the sacred sites of Cambodia, Burma, and Thailand while coming face to face with grief and all that Southeast Asia has to offer. Each chapter is titled by Country and gives a very detailed account of each location's culture, politics and historical accounts. The authors deal with their grief in different ways: She uses her camera and he pulls from his years of Buddhist studies to help cope with the loss as well as the exhaustion that they both feel. This book is also flavored with various Buddhist teachings throughout. A great read, and a real in-your-face slice of Thailand,Cambodia and Burma.
• 
  Derek

  In the '60s Rudolph (Rudy) Wurlitzer wrote a bizarre underground novel called "Nog" (at the time Pynchon said that this bk "signaled that the Novel Of Bullshit is over"- I'm having trouble finding a copy) and then went on to have a pretty successful career as a screenwriter in Hollywood; his credits include the screenplay for my favorite movie, "Two-Lane Blacktop." For much of his life he has studied Zen and other Buddhist/Eastern spiritual traditions.
  
  In other words- Rudy Wurlitzer is a top-tier American badass. This bk, however, has a perfunctory feel to it, despite the emotional intensity of the subject matter. This is my introduction to his writing and I am kind of disappointed. I'm still a huge fan of this guy and will read everything else I can get my hands on.
  
  
• 
  Molly

  This book was good, interesting. It's a memoir of sorts, detailing a couple's trip to Asia. This couple has recently lost their 21 year old son in a car crash, and go to Asia under the guise of the wife's photography assignment, although they are both looking for spiritual relief. The couple are students of the Dharma, so the author's look at the sacred Buddhist places they visit is really perceptive. I loved all of the quotes from different Dharma teachings, Sutras etc...that accompanied the writing. It's definitely worth the read, especially if you've just gotten interested in Buddhism and the Dharma.
• 
  Paul Glanting

  I found this book while browsing the travel-writing section, trying to satiate my own travel bug.
  
  The premise of this memoir is a writer and his wife go on a trip across Southeast Asia on a Buddhist pilgrimage after the death of Lynn's son. Intermingling with the narrative of sweaty and congested Asia are Buddhist musings on life, loss and perception.
  
  The experience of reading this book is rather meta, as just as the narrator begins to grow frustrated with his Buddhist teachings inability to bring him to a cathartic state, I the reader also grew frustrated with the onslaught of quotations. Nonetheless, a good quick, albeit melancholy read.
• 
  Alexandra

  It is a wonderful story but one that you need at the right time. It isn't a book to read if you're looking to escape and at times can be tough emotionally to get through, as the author and his wife are very much at the mid-way point in their grieving process for their late son. Still, very much worth the read.
• 
  Maurice

  A tough read. Very emotional at times, but also very analytic. Delves deep into Buddhist understanding and practice.
  Upon reading this book a second time, I enjoyed it more than the first, and would recommend it as a metaphor for understanding various aspects of our crazy world.
• 
  Kristen

  I need to read this again. I recall it being tragic yet the couple's travel through Asia was enlightening.
• 
  Lucy

  Great journal of a trip to Asia by a writer and his journalists wife after
  the death of a child.
• 
  Jessica

  Sincere without being moving.
• 
  Candice Walsh

  Sad and enlightening and beautiful and brief.
• 
  Summer

  A short but deep look at love, loss, grief, and suffering.
• 
  Richard Trice

  Read this while I was in Peace Corps, and it lingers with me still, sixteen years later.
• 
  Sara

  Heartbreaking.