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"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
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!
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.
“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
“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.”
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
Also, printing quotations about walking along the bottom of every single page? Bad idea.
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.
Stopped reading August 4, 2018, p. 77
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
Yet, this is not a history of walking.
For the most part, the book is an exercise in tedium.