Wanderlust A History of Walking by Rebecca Solnit

Wanderlust A History of Walking Reviews

• 
  Michael

  Expansive and engaging Rebecca Solnit’s Wanderlust explores the history of walking in the West Starting with Rousseau and the Romantics Solnit argues walking became self conscious and against the backdrop of the French Revolution and industrialization the act started to accrue dynamic democratic and subversive cultural meanings it had never before held in Western societies The author historicizes walking as a conscious cultural act and considers the many forms the act takes today from pilgrimages and marches to walkathons and urban strolls; simultaneously she politicizes the experience of walking uestioning how it’s impacted by the walker’s social identities All the while the author analyzes the literature of walking and reviews the role walking played in the lives of famous thinkers and activists While packed with information Solnit’s prose is lyrical and moving her work associative in structure and easy to read
• 
  Cecily

  I bought this on a whim after being stunned by the ethereal beauty and insight of A Field Guide to Getting Lost this summer which I reviewed HERE This is good but ordinarily so If you want a literate non fiction book about the history and philosophy of walking this may be for you It turns out that I don’t But it’s not her; it’s meHence this “review” is just notes on pages 1 to 103 of 291Thinking PointsWalking the way we do is uniuely human Other bipedal creatures have wings or tails or they hop or jump It frees our hands but the resulting changes to the human pelvis limit the size of a babies’ heads so could ultimately cap our intelligenceImage Evolution of human skeleton to bipedalism Source“ Walking begins as delayed falling and the fall meets with the Fall”That reminded me of a favourite line from Life the Universe and Everything that the knack of flying is “to throw yourself at the ground and miss”Walking “as a conscious cultural act” is a remarkably modern phenomenon First there were the formal gardens of the eighteenth century where those who didn’t need to work could exercise gently on land not needed for cultivating food Image Lady in a Garden by Edmund Leighton SourceIn Jane Austen’s novels“ Walking provided shared seclusion for crucial conversations”I sometimes find that true myself though it can be just as true of a car journey or a private meal Later William and Dorothy Wordsworth wrote elouently about their walkshikes in the Lake District They inspired other poets painters the start of scenic tourism and the rise of the word “picturesue” Image Inspirational daffodils at Glenconyne Bay Ullswater SourceAny sort of walking grounds us in the world than sitting or using external transport it becomes a means and an end “ Walking allows us to be in our bodies and in the world without being made busy by them”Transport technology minimises unstructured travel time but disconnects us from each other and the world“ Many people nowadays live in a series of interiors disconnected from each other”Pilgrimage is a very specific walk where the end to some extent is the means But the inherent metaphor of travel travail journey through life is one we all relate to and common to many religions especially BuddhismMemory palaces are a well worn techniue for remembering things by imagining a walk Most of us rely on books or the internet as repositories of information but the patterns are similarWalking can be a liminal state between one’s past and future identities “ A path is a prior interpretation of the best way to traverse a landscape”But there isn’t always one answer a maze has many routes but a labyrinth just one“ The maze offers the confusions of free will without a clear destination the labyrinth an inflexible route to salvation”Features A new intro where Solnit brings her nearly 20 year old book up to date with mention mass protest marches the obesity epidemic climate change and public transport It’s dense and detailed but helpfully chunked into four sections each of which comprises three to five titled subsections Comprehensive index References and sources of everyonething cited 26 small print pages of them A single line of uote after uote along the bottom of all the pages You don’t know the source until you reach the end of each one maybe several pages later
• 
  Rachelfm

  I really wanted to like this book much than I did and kept waiting for it to get good I want to also acknowledge at the outset that it languished on my Kindle for about 8 months as I got through it 1% of the time at a very plodding pace Whenever I'd be stuck someplace with nothing else to read and go Ugh fine I'll work on the dang walking book again I'm not sure I'd have been so committed if it hadn't been one of my Your Next 5 Books at the Seattle Public Library I originally got it because one of my subgoals last year was to read 60 books written by women Also as one who has been car free or car lite my whole life I've got some pedestrian street cred and often want to literarily bump fists with my peeps as it wereI guess my issues with under enthusiasm are these1 The history of walking seems to start with romanticism I have uneven feelings about that time and so it's hard to really jam on that point2 There are times when an author's personal experiences and observations on a subject her own personal encounter with the matter at hand truly enhance the narrative In fairness most of the author's experiences walking describe Paris San Francisco and the deserts in the American West I'm not sure that there are three places that I would connect with less on an imaginative level but I'm sort of a crank At any rate I found it a bit distracting to dip into her life after I'd been chewing my cud on the Lake District so to speak a Writing about walking in Paris almost inevitably results in the injudicious overuse of the word flâneur b Some of the writing about the desert walking was pretty interesting especially the AFL CIO strike in Las Vegas and the walk to Los Angeles However cranky I'm always hyperaware of anything American desert y that strays into the crystals led me to a spirit uest with the Hopi because OMG the people you run into in hostels in Santa Fe3 One of the author's main points is that walking can be a political and feminist act There was a lot of discussion of reclaiming public space at the pedestrian scale and to move beyond the idea of women who walk are streetwalkers That's rad But this book had SUCH as western perspective I can't help but think that for the majority of the world's women walking is NOT an empowering act because the loads of water and firewood that need to be trekked back home have to be done under the power of women at the exclusion of their own economic and intellectual development The only really non western examples that come to mind are some eastern European artists who were walking the Great Wall of China aUgh also Philistine alert but I'm rarely moved by post modern minimalist performance art Probably because I'm one of the sheep But reading about post modern minimalist performance art about walking was a bit excruciating for my Cro Magnon brain bIsn't this where you'd get some serious mileage pun intended waxing poetically about the Montgomery bus boycotts?4 Some biology about how walking affects us and the differences in bodies of walkers vs non walkers would have been interesting I remember reading a kinesiology study about how the gaits and strides of African women are different ostensibly because of carrying heavy loads on their heads5 It's also possible that when this book was published nearly 15 years ago that ideas about sidewalks and cul de sacs and not driving half a mile to do something and public spaces were a bit fringe y than they are todayI'm sure I'll give Rebecca Solnit another chance; it's possible that this subject has so many ways to be handled that the path she chose didn't appeal to me Also she coined the term mansplaining so I'm interested in her cultural commentary
• 
  Doreen

  I expected a lot from this book and turns out I was terribly disappointed at how superficial and reductive her views of walking are I don't understand the title where's the history? It's of a crib note guide and encomium to the theme of walking as found in Great Books of the Western canon As soon as I found myself interested in a topic she covered whether it was the perils of women walking or the role of walking and thinkingwritingphilosophizing I was whisked away like a harried mother navigating her child through a crowded supermarket yes she seems v well read but where's the substance the argument the understanding of why we should care about conceptstheoriesaestheticsproblematics of walking as seen through the eyes of Western writers predominantly race and class privileged men of letters? She only touches on how not everyone gets to be a wanderer or even the notion that walking can be used to oppress torture and shame The author's own perambulations also lack depth development of character and understanding of place they are tableau oriented rather than visceral exploratory dirty gritty shocking wondrous or real They seem all to be placed in retrospect as a method of writing herself into the Western canon Descriptions are glossy brochures they tease only to reveal a shallowness of actual experience of place Well read she is but Solnit seems to rely on other writers' ideas to coast her through all the varied topics she takes on The vignettes of her own walking seem completely separate and whimsical and don't ground the reader as they should in the experience of walking; insteadthe prose style obfuscates and dis orients because it is trying too hard to be lyrical and meaningful I also dislike the pejorative attitude she has toward the suburbs communication technologies car culture and treadmills Does she realize what a classist she is? It is an easy target to scoff at people who walk in malls as exercise or go to the gym and use treadmills but it might be better to turn the lens back on one's own freedom to experience walking in Paris as a runaway or camping out in the desert to protest nukes and examine one's own entitlement Not everyone can live in urban environments nor do they want to Many new immigrants and working class Americans move to the suburbs to provide better education and opportunities for their chilren yes it may appear as if the suburbs lack 'culture' in a Matthew Arnold kind of way but surprisingly there are also opportunities for walking and exploring as my own childhood in northern New Jersey attests to If you read this book beware of the broad stroke assumptions that underlie much of the discussion Preferred walking spaces being urbanrural is one of them that we should take what we know as a walking tradition primarily from canonical writers is another
• 
  Marc

  I can imagine that some people are disappointed in this book because it offers no conventional overview of the history of walking It's a collection of musings and digressions about all kinds of cultural historical aspects of our civilization that are directly or indirectly linked with hiking protest marches as secular successor of pilgrimages the care for the environment the harmful effect of suburbanisation the relationship between female emancipation and hiking the relationship between democratization and hiking and so on In between you'll indeed find elements that make possible a reconstruction of the history of walking but you need to put the puzzle together yourself I'm sure that Solnit has done this on purpose her favorite hiking trail is the labyrinth which she describes as an artificial wilderness and where the final objective also is much less important than the activity of looking and searching itself I enjoyed this book because it is so broad and philosophical with plenty of interesting critical comments on our culture from a clearly progressive stance But at the same time I also regularly was annoyed with the very specific Californian accents and the sometimes very uirky opinions for example about the hypocritical attitude of postmodernist artists On my Kindle I have marked tenths of valuable uotations of which I offer one of the most interesting “Walking itself is the intentional act closest to the unwilled rhythms of the body to breathing and the beating of the heart It strikes a delicate balance between working and idling being and doing It is a bodily labor that produces nothing but thoughts experiences arrivals” Not everything by Solnit is solid but she has become one of my favorite contemporary authors
• 
  Debbie Zapata

  This was my second time reading this book and I feel as ambivalent about it as I did the first time through There is just so much in here that it feels a bit overwhelming Here are two of the notes I made while reading June 9 First chapter was about philosophers and walking A bit dull Second was about how and why humans began to walk in the first place and the debate was still raging at the time she wrote That was interesting Now I am on a chapter about pilgrimages which is another type of walking altogether And she complains that at a slow pace or just standing still her feet hurt I hear you girl The hardest thing to do is walk at someone else's slower paceJune 12 Chapters on walking and philosophy Chapters on how we began to walk in the first place and what it meant Chapters on pilgrimages Chapters on Wordsworth and the beginning of walking as a leisure activity And yet another chapter about Wordsworth who seems to have been responsible for many things regarding that movement But honestly it is all a bit dryI am a walker Have been since I was a kid and used to zip down to the corner store on Sundays to buy a paper and lug it home Three mile round trip and wonderful fun Since then I have walked many miles for fun in competitions to explore and to keep myself healthyAnd while I can appreciate the author's general idea here it was very hard to slog through all the information she shared It was like doing a 6 Day Ultramarathon in an area where the course is a little rockier than is good for you At first you try to miss the stones but after a time you are tired and end up stomping on them every few strides It hurts It's work And I don't always like to work when I'm walking or when I'm reading I have to be in the proper frame of mind to exercise my brain as much as I needed to do for this book So if I wait until Someday when I am feeling scholarly and intellectual and high browed would I like this better? I did enjoy seeing names of some authors I recognized and others who are on my reading lists This is a very literary walking book tracing the history of walking by the writing that has been done about it over the centuries I cannot imagine the amount of research it took to dig up all of this information and tie it all together So kudos to Solnit for the work And thanks are due also because I have been introduced to Dorothy Wordsworth William's sister who kept journals of all the walking she did Apparently he swiped many ideas and images from her pages for his poetry and even though I am not as familiar with his work as I probably should be if I were a true intellectual I am very interested to read Dorothy's journals and see if I can recognize anything there I also appreciated the introduction to New York poet Frank O'Hara and I have his poems on my lists now too So I feel I did get some rewards for keeping myself staggering along to the finish line here Well almost to the end my feet and my brain hurt too much to face the rocky fields of those last few chapters Maybe Someday I'll give this book one walk through Or I might just send it off on a walkabout of its own We'll see
• 
  Erik Graff

  Thanks to my upbringing to summers in the woods and weekend forest walks all year long with Father and the dog I've always enjoyed walking particularly in nature especially over new terrain but even through the neighborhoods of cities Thanks to the ageing of my peers and with such their increased responsibilies and increasing incidences of disability I've had less opportunity to do so in company and so less inclination A dog a good dog would help but I live in an apartment in a city the cabin in the woods is gone and having the kind of dog who'd be a good companion would not be appropriate for these urban environs Thus I borrow dogs and children if I can get them and try to find new friends as interested in adventure as I amIt's not just the walking nor is it simply the adventure of new routes and new sights it's also conversation One can listen to almost anything on a good walk and not become bored and if the conversation flags there are always the sights the impulsive decisions to alter direction or duck into a new storefront Besides a good walk is a matter of hours even a whole day and is conseuently conducive to sufficient treatments of subjects something which rarely happens in ordinary chair bound oft distracted conversationThis book was given me by a cafe friend cafes being my home away from home and the primary place where I make new acuaintances and read for that matter She's done three she claims see note walks with me both purposive neither long enough but still most appreciated Out of pity perhaps with some sympathy she gave this book to me as a consolationAuthor Solnit understands all this and much Wanderlust ends with an appreciation of walking and indictments of atomized suburban car culture but the bulk of it consists of meditations on themes related to walking There's a history of a sort of one aspect of environmentalism a history of sorts of parks of street demonstrations of street walkers of peripatetic philosophers and of mountaineering none of them exhaustive none of them uite long enough but all suggestive I hadn't when I received this book thought to expect much of it Walking? What is there to say about walking? I wondered Now I wish Solnit had said a bit about arctic trudges perhaps about the travels and travails of the disabled about the riparian rights of strollersNote In Woody Allen's Annie Hall there's a representation of the respective visits of himself and his girlfriends to their therapists He complains about the lack of sex She complains of the constant sex
• 
  Michael Morris

  I know I gave this five stars but I do have to get my one problem with this book out of the way Wanderlust in all that it manages to cover does not even mention Japanese haibun a literary form that merges short prose and haiku This is important because many of these writings came out of long walking tours and travel accounts Not mentioning Basho's Narrow Road to the Interior seems a crime to meThat omission out of the way I can still say that this is a terrific book covering a lot of ground surprising even to me as a walker From the English walking gardens to Las Vegas' disappearing public space Solnit manages to weave history literature politics and on the subject of walkingSolnit shows that walking was than a mode of transportation back then but part of the method of meditation and rumination for many philosophers writers and artists; a form of protest; and the way one most intensely experiences the world She also looks at the politics of walking and argues persuasively that walking has been denigrated over the years and much rests on the fight not only for public space but for the time to pursue this simple but important actBut Wanderlust is not a manifesto It is filled with fascinating stories about the people and places where this history continues to be written And even for me one who has found great value in the simple walk has inspired me to make it not just part of the exercise routine but an integral part of lifestyle
• 
  Thomas

  I labored through it I am a walking addict and expected a personal connection with the author While Ms Solnit did include numerous examples of personal walks I was not able to hang with her and see the countryside inner or outer This is a book about philosophers and famous literary and artistic personalities that just happened to be walkers
• 
  El

  I don't believe much in New Years' Resolutions as I prefer to do my self improvement periodically throughout the year and not limit myself to a specific time in which to accomplish a goal However we are about 25 days away from moving into a new neighborhood a safer neighborhood and I am looking forward to being active again my boyfriend bought me a bike for Christmas 2007 and I have yet to be able to take it out we'll be a few blocks away from a dog park we can walk to the tennis courts and not have to drive and I'll be walking distance from everything I need which is ideal as I am a non driverRebecca Solnit's history of walking drew me in She took a cultural historical philosophical literary social political feminist green and eco friendly approach to the dying art and experience of walking When put in contexts such as those I found it to be very interesting and I am even eager to move and begin walkingAt times her lengthy essay seemed to be a bit of a stretch in order to flesh out her thesis though the individual chapters were fascinating in and of themselves Unfortunately as a whole in the light of walking I felt myself zoning out mentally from time to time Still I mostly forgive her thanks to her references to Dante Edith Wharton Emma Goldman and the Prague Spring revolution of 1968 If she would have thrown in Bon Jovi my heart would have been hers wholly