Wanderlust: A History of Walking

by Rebecca Solnit

Paperback, 2001

Status

Checked out

Publication

Penguin Books (2001), Paperback, 336 pages

Description

"In Wanderlust: A History of Walking, Rebecca Solnit draws together many histories -- of anatomical evolution and city design, of treadmills and labyrinths, of walking clubs and sexual mores -- to create a portrait of the range of possibilities for this most basic act. Arguing that walking as history signifies walking for pleasure and for political, aesthetic, and social meaning, Solnit hones in on the walkers whose everyday and extreme acts have shaped our culture, from the peripatetic philosophers of ancient Greece to the poets of the Romantic Age, from the perambulations of the Surrealists to the ascents of the mountaineers." "Solnit's book finds a profound relationship between walking and thinking, walking and culture, and argues for the necessity of preserving the time and space in which to walk in an evermore automobile-dependent and accelerated world. Book jacket."--Jacket.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member thorold
An interesting demonstration of how a publisher can create a ludicrously overblown subtitle without including a single adjective. You clearly don't need to assert that a story is "extraordinary", "incredible" or even "true" - the simple, unadorned word "history" is already enough to make an
Show More
extraordinary, incredible (but not, alas, true) claim for the subject-matter of the book that lies behind it...

But that probably isn't the author's fault, and other than on its front cover, this book doesn't make any real claim to be anything other than what it is, an interesting and worthwhile collection of essays grouped around the cultural (mostly literary) significance of Anglo-American attitudes to getting about on foot over the last couple of centuries. Solnit looks at obvious topics like the relationship between recreational walking and garden design; the importance of walking in nature for the Wordsworths and Thoreau and how that led to the later development of access and conservation movements; walking as a political act in parades, pilgrimages and protest marches; and travel-writing and the rise of mountaineering and challenge-walking. And, as a dedicated subversive and feminist, she also looks at some less obvious socio-political aspects of walking - walking and prostitution, exclusion of women and minorities from public spaces in which walking is possible, US cities built without any no provision for getting around on foot, and so on. Most of the essays bring together material from literary sources with reflections from her own personal experiences, and very often lead her to non-obvious insights into the ideological framework within which very familiar texts on walking are actually operating.

I enjoyed sharing Solnit's insights, but I'd (unrealistically) been expecting more, and found it a bit disappointing that so many "obvious" topics didn't get a look in. Wordsworth's walk to Italy gets detailed coverage, but there's no mention of Thomas Coryat, who did much the same walk (and subsequently walked from England to India!) two centuries earlier. One of my favourite 19th century travellers, George Borrow (admittedly, a rider as much as a walker) is also overlooked. Nor is there anything about Heine, Novalis, and the rest of the German romantics with their core idea of the Wanderer - which is particularly odd, because the Naturfreunde and Wandervogel movements they inspired get discussed quite extensively. And given the amount of literature it's inspired, it's surprising how little attention she pays to refugee-walking. Primo Levi's walk home from Auschwitz is mentioned only in passing, and there's nothing much about all the many books about being forced to leave your home on foot in wartime.

A good start, but someone really should write "A history of walking" one day!
Show Less
LibraryThing member MeditationesMartini
After some early meandering, Solnit hits upon a "walking's greatest hits" kind of approach and takes us through the effects of walking on the human anatomy, the Wordsworthian ramble, the walk in Classical philosophy, the 19th-century mania for alpinism with its superheroes and the various politics
Show More
of the clubs it inspired in the Teutonic and Anglo worlds, distance walking as extreme sport and site of self-investigation, women's walking as threat and patriarchy-regulated activity, walking as revolutionary activity, walking as space of dissent, walking as reclaimation of public space for the public and the tension with the urban walk as process of consumption, walking as blow against the tyranny of property. The death of walking, espied through the Las Vegas strip.


Lots of good thinking, lots of fun trivia. A little bit too much airy abstraction, when surely just telling stories is the point of this thing, but enjoyable overall.
Show Less
LibraryThing member msf59
“The history of walking is an amateur history, just as walking is an amateur act.”

“Walking, ideally, is a state in which the mind, the body, and the world are aligned, as though they were three characters, finally in conversation together, three notes suddenly making a chord.”

“Exploring
Show More
the world is one of the best ways of exploring the mind, and walking travels both terrains.”

“Walking is, after all, an activity essentially unimproved since the dawn of time.”

^Yes, I love these quotes, but these four all happen, in the first twenty pages. The rest of the narrative, is more hit or miss. I had to keep reminding myself, that this is a history of walking and all the events mentioned here do not fit snugly into, everything I like about this basic mode of transportation, (I am a mailman for crying out loud!). That said, I found much of this history of walking, a bit dry. Yes, I can be selfish. Sue me, but please, do not get me wrong- Solnit is a fine writer, super smart and has really done her homework here, with meticulous precision. She did leave out bird walking, which has really helped spark my interest in strolling through various meadows and woods but there I go again, being self-absorbed.
To her credit, she does close it out, beautifully:

“This constellation called walking has a history, the history trod out by all those poets and philosophers and insurrectionaries, by jaywalkers, streetwalkers, pilgrims, tourists, hikers, mountaineers, but whether it has a future depends on whether those connecting paths are traveled still.”
Show Less
LibraryThing member Othemts
I like walking and a history of walking intrigued me. It was not quite what I expected as Solnit takes a philosophical and metaphysical approach to the concept of walking. The book includes ruminations on the biology of walking, pilgrimages, famed walkers like Peace Pilgrim, meditative walking,
Show More
poets who walk (Wordsworth), walking clubs, hiking, climbing, walking in the city and the affects of sexual discrimination and racism on walkers, among many other topics. The last chapter is an interesting contrast of Las Vegas, a notoriously unfriendly city to walkers, developing a pedestrian core. Solnit insisted that her own story be part of the history by necessity, but I wish she hadn't as she comes across as preachy and didactic. Her voice appears throughout the text as one of nagging disapproval and it hampers my enjoyment of this book.

Favorite Passages:
"We talked about the more stately sense of time one has afoot and on public transit, where things must be planned and scheduled beforehand, rather than rushed through at the last minute,and about the sense of place that can only be gained on foot. Many people nowadays live in a series of interiors -- home, car, gym, office, shops -- disconnected from each other. On foot evertything stays connected, for while walking one occupies the spaces between those interiors in the same way one occupies those interiors. One lives in the whole world rather than in interiors built up against it." - p.9

"The new treadmills have two-horsepower engines. Once, a person might have hitched two horses to a carriage to go out into the world without walking; now she might plug in a two-horsepower motor to walk without going out into the world. ... So the treadmill requires far more economic and ecological interconnection that does taking a walk, but it makes far fewer experiential connections." - p. 265
Recommended books: The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs, Outside Lies Magic: Regaining History and Awareness in Everyday Places by John R. Stilgoe, Lights Out for the Territory by Iain Sinclair and Snowshoeing Through Sewers: Adventures in New York City, New Jersey, and Philadelphia by Michael Aaron Rockland
Show Less
LibraryThing member bookomaniac
I can imagine that some people are disappointed in this book, because it offers no conventional overview of the history of walking. It's more a collection of musings and digressions about all kinds of cultural-historical aspects of our civilization that are directly or indirectly linked with
Show More
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. 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 quirky opinions (for example, about the hypocritical attitude of post modernist artists). On my Kindle I have marked tenths of valuable quotations, 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.”
Show Less
LibraryThing member amelish
The book brings up many interesting subjects, but it feels unfinished and unfocused as a result, like it's trying to do too much with too little. A promising premise that might have worked out better as an article, or a series of articles. Trying to pad for book length causes a lot of
Show More
repetition.

Also, printing quotations about walking along the bottom of every single page? Bad idea.
Show Less
LibraryThing member steve.clason
There’s plenty to like here — a chapter reviewing the anthropology of bipedalism, little bit on Rosseau, Kierkegaard, a mention of Kant (unimportant because he walked for exercise: “Frail Immanuel Kant took his daily walk around Königsberg after dinner — but it was merely for exercise,
Show More
because he did his thinking sitting by the stove and staring at the church tower out the window.”). A little Husserl. A paragraph, actually, followed by a condemnation of the entire sweep of postmodernists because they don’t treat walking. A good, lengthy treatment of Wordsworth, some stuff about walking clubs, including the Sierra Club. Most memorably some personal essays about her own excursions.

Although there’s plenty to like, I didn’t like it. I kept hearing a tone of smugness throughout (like in the bit about Kant) that constantly put me off. I’m not a fan of the Personal Essay and that may be behind my irritation, but the author doesn’t seem to enjoy walking much, except to the extent that the practice marks her moral superiority her to condemn people who don’t walk. The book reminded me of a joke my (vegan) daughter tells:

Q: How many vegans does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: I’m better than you.

I ride a bike for transportation and often notice a “cone of smugness” that surrounds some bicyclists, mostly recreational riders in Spandex. This book reminded me of them.
Show Less
LibraryThing member ritaer
Interesting as history of walking as recreation, nature appreciation escape from city life, etc. Feminists will be appalled by chapter on women--the assumption that any woman on the streets is there for sexual purposes backed up by laws allowing women to be arrested on mere suspicion. Also history
Show More
of walkers associations in England enforcing traditional right of way across private property to maintain network of trails.
Show Less
LibraryThing member Steve38
A cliché is inevitable to describe how Ms Solnit take her time to get into her stride and tails off a little tired and disoriented at the end. In between times she scales the heights and has wonderful views of the landscape. A history of walking is in reality a political manifesto. An
Show More
environmentalist's call for a slower, more human scale world. To her credit she refuses to look back for a rose tinted future. Good at describing the walking done by others surprisingly incoherent and disjointed when it comes to her own perambulations. A writer who walks rather than a walker who writes.
Show Less
LibraryThing member stephengoldenberg
If there's one thing I enjoy as much as reading, it's walking, so a book about the history of walking is right up my street. Although, this is not so much a history (at least in chronological terms), more a gently meandering wander through both the highways and bye ways of the subject. And you are
Show More
travelling with a very erudite enthusiast. So, we go by way of walking philosophers (Rousseau and Kierkegard), obviously Wordsworth and the romantics, a con side ration of the various theories of how, when and why Homo sapiens began to walk upright, walking in Jane Austen novels, a history of formal garden design, walking in cities like San Francisco, New York, London and Paris and so much more. Just like a really good walk, at almost every turn of the page, there's something new and interesting to experience.
Show Less
LibraryThing member Bodagirl
The first couple of chapters were engaging, but the constant skipping of topics slowed down my reading.

Stopped reading August 4, 2018, p. 77
LibraryThing member mykl-s
Wanderlust: A History of Walking by Rebecca Solnit (2001)
LibraryThing member MattMackane
One of the best books on the history of walking. Solnit does it again!
LibraryThing member varielle
Rebecca Solnit makes the reader think of walking as much more than the means to get from one place to another. The restrictions placed on walking by property rights, gender, politics, occupations, attire and a multitude of other human constructs will make one consider walking in a new light. The
Show More
freedom to walk where and when you want will never be taken for granted again.
Show Less
LibraryThing member feralcatbob
Sort of a history/sociological look at the simpliest of acts that most take for granted(unless you're one of those who will spend 5min searching for that spot closest to the door). A very enjoyable read. Would go hand-in-hand with Thich Nhat Hanh's "Long Road Turns To Joy: A Guide To Walking
Show More
Meditation". Read this several years ago (2004).
Show Less
LibraryThing member heggiep
As with most Solnit books (and appropriate for its subject), a meandering journey. Wide-ranging and thought-provoking.
LibraryThing member japaul22
In [Wanderlust; a History of Walking], Rebecca Solnit creates a series of essay-like chapters that explore walking and what it has meant in human history. Everything from walking for pleasure, exercise, to conquer, as a form of protest, who has the right and luxury to walk, and walking in
Show More
literature is represented. As might be expected with a book of this nature, I loved parts of this and was bored by other parts. I even skipped a chapter here or there if it wasn't grabbing me. But Solnit's writing is always excellent and overall I found a lot here to think about and enjoy.

Original publication date: 2001
Author’s nationality: American
Original language: English
Length: 324 pages
Rating: 3.5 stars
Format/where I acquired the book: purchased paperback
Why I read this: like the author and the topic grabbed my interest
Show Less
LibraryThing member RajivC
In the first place, this is not a book that is a history of walking. She does cover the fascination of walking, the links between mind and body while walking. Additionally, she speaks about how our relationship with walking has changed in the urban sphere.

Yet, this is not a history of walking.
Show More
First, she does not cover anything of the traditions of walking in Africa, Asia, and Australasia, for instance. Second, she focussed excessively on Western authors and stuff they have written.

For the most part, the book is an exercise in tedium.
Show Less
LibraryThing member grandpahobo
A terrific exploration of both the history of walking and how it affects our psychic as well as physical lives. I have already added several books she references to my to-read list.

Language

Original publication date

2000

Physical description

336 p.; 6 inches

ISBN

0140286012 / 9780140286014
Page: 0.8848 seconds