Rating: 
Summary: A Misnomer
Review: "Wanderlust" is a German word meaning "joy of walking". Nowhere in the book could the joy of walking be found. Solnit creates a thin trail that connects walking with philosophy, politics, revolution, sexism, prostitution, and literature. Her disjointed rambles sidestep the topic with dull, uninteresting anecdotes that dissuaded this reader from turning the pages. But there are pleasant intervals. The most interesting parts of the book are when Solnit writes of her walking experiences. Her first person narratives draw the reader into a lively cadence when she describes her inner-city walks in San Francisco, her pilgrimage to Chimayo and her people-watching jaunt along the Las Vegas Strip. Solnit is a gifted writer who is extremely fluent. It's unfortunate that she ambled about unrelated activities and chose the experiences and words of others when she could write much more interestingly about her own walks. As an avid walker, I was disappointed with her book.
Rating:
Summary: A Misnomer
Review: "Wanderlust" is a German word meaning "joy of walking". Nowhere in the book could the joy of walking be found. Solnit creates a thin trail that connects walking with philosophy, politics, revolution, sexism, prostitution, and literature. Her disjointed rambles sidestep the topic with dull, uninteresting anecdotes that dissuaded this reader from turning the pages. But there are pleasant intervals. The most interesting parts of the book are when Solnit writes of her walking experiences. Her first person narratives draw the reader into a lively cadence when she describes her inner-city walks in San Francisco, her pilgrimage to Chimayo and her people-watching jaunt along the Las Vegas Strip. Solnit is a gifted writer who is extremely fluent. It's unfortunate that she ambled about unrelated activities and chose the experiences and words of others when she could write much more interestingly about her own walks. As an avid walker, I was disappointed with her book.
Rating:
Summary: A Clipbook
Review: Eagerly anticipating reading this book, I found myself repelled by an endless pastiche of regurgitated "clippings" from other writers and micro-histories and interesting little facts from ever so many sources and ever so many points of the compass arranged around an artificial framework with the result that the mind is numbed by superficiality. I found myself asking why anyone should read this kind of feuilletonism rather than reading Benjamin, or Wordworth or Rousseau or Nietzsche, all of whom (and countless others) are served up in little quotes or rehashes. Why should one wade through an endless succession of tidbits doubtless collected with great industry and indicative of fine interests, when there is so much good stuff out there to read? A buffet for grazers, but no intellectual meal. And how could it be? The fruits of walking are not to be found in an anthology of interesting facts and asides about walking but in coherent works produced perhaps with the aid of the thinking walking can stimulate. This is a book magazine. I suppose we could next have a history of indigestion, or better yet a history of non-walking, with an equally edifying collection of interesting little facts and quotes. Please.
Rating: 
Summary: One of the slowest walks you'll ever take...
Review: Getting past the first chapter was extremely difficult and continuing to "walk" through the rest of the book was impossible! Slow, boring and overly ambitious in its attempt to cover miles of human history in the space of 290+ pages.
Rating: 
Summary: Really Enjoyed Solnit's Perspective
Review: I found this book to be a fascinating read because of Solnit's writing style and because of her commentary on the subject of walking. Although I have always enjoyed walking myself Solnit helped me understand some of the more philosophical reasons why. Contrary to the views of other reviewers Solnit does include her own commentary such as her experience on the Chimayo pilgrimage and as a woman walking down the streets of her own neighborhood in San Francisco. One may say Why not read the people Solnit quotes rather than Wanderlust, but the fact is Wanderlust increased my exposure to such works and helped me understand their context. Her perspective on the history of the freedom to walk is truly eye-opening; we take it for granted that these days we can pretty much walk anywhere we want to. But, it's really an extended essay.
Rating:
Summary: Pilgrimage is a liminal state
Review: The history of walking is unwritten. Walking allows us to be in our bodies in the world. The motions of the mind cannot be traced, but the feet can. The author walks us through an old Nike missile range. She protests with others at a Nevada test site. With Thoreau, Rebecca Solnit is both a poet of nature and a critic of society. Walking as a conscious cultural act begins with Rousseau. Nietzsche turned to solitary walks for recreation. In Rousseau's ideology walking is the emblem of the simple man. Rousseau portrays walking as both an exercise of simplicity and an opportunity for contemplation. Walking encourages a kind of unstructured associative thinking. A lone walker is both present and detached. Kierkegaard found himself in such a state. He proposed that the mind works best when surrounded by distraction. Husserl claimed that by walking we understand our bodies in relationship to the world. Walking upright preceded the development of the large brain in man. The pilgrimage is one of the basic modes of walking. There is a symbiosis between journey and arrival in pilgrimage. The Civil Rights Movement was tempered with the imagery of pilgrimage more than most struggles. The first fund-raising walk, a walkathon for the March of Dimes, began in 1970. On a religious pilgrimage in New Mexico the author encountered a Cadillac with the stations of the cross painted on it. The promenade is a subset of walking. Then there is the customized car and the cruise--low riders. William and Dorothy Wordsworth were vigorous walkers. Wordsworth and his peers seem to be the founders of a tradition. The English landscape garden asked to be explored. The emphasis on the pictorial and the existence of scenic tourism were invented in the eighteenth century. Walks are everywhere in PRIDE AND PREJUDICE. The garden walk provided relief form the group. Wordsworth tried to understand the French Revolution by walking the streets of Paris. Walking was Wordsworth's means of composition. Hazlitt's essay on walking became the foundation of a genre. Bruce Chatwin did not distinguish nomadism from walking. John Muir went from Indianapolis to the Florida Keys in 1867. Since English mountaineers found the Alpine Club in 1857, outdoor organizations have been proliferating. The first High Trip under the auspices of the Sierra Club took place in 1901. A taste for the wilderness is culturally determined. Everywhere but in Britain, walking became hiking. In England and elsewhere there was a problem of access to the land. The Highland Clearances,1780-1855, for one example, displaced quantities of people. In 1824 the Association for the Protection of Ancient Footpaths was founded near York. Walking focuses not on the boundary lines of land ownership but on paths, a sort of circulatory system of the whole. The YMCA was an early sponsor of walking clubs. The history of both urban and rural walking is a history of freedom. Dickens indicated the other things urban walking can be--police, detectives, criminals. Virginia Woolf, daughter of a great walker, wrote an essay on urban walking. Walter Benjamin described the Paris street, now a landscape, now a room. Hannah Arendt wrote in the 1960's one could feel at home In Paris. The book is carammed full of literary and cultural studies. The few autobiographical sections and sentences are the most moving. The reader is physically transported to mountain tops, labyrinths, and to that in-between state, the liminal state, achieved through the rhythm of walking, being situated between one's past and future identities. Citizens in the street support democracies from the time of the French Revolution to 1989 when history was made in the streets of Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany. Walking has been an established aspect of courtship. There is a dark side. Merely walking in the wrong place or at the wrong time could place a woman under suspicion of wrongdoing. Sylvia Plath wrote that being born a woman was her awful tragedy. Women are the primary targets of sexualized violence. Freedom to walk is useless without some place to go. Work and home were never separate until the factory system came of age. People cannot walk easily through suburban sprawl. Walking can become a sign of powerlessness. In the nineteenth century train travel changed perceptions of time and place. Suburbs make walking ineffective as transportation. Factories isolate, suburbs isolate: the body has ceased to be utilitarian to the upscale consumer of outdoor gear and exercise equipment, but is recreational. England remains pedestrian in scale. The contemporary artist most dedicted to exploring walking in his art is English, Richard Long. In some respects his work resembles travel writing. The book ends in Las Vegas. The city is unfriendly to pedestrians. The development of the super casinos and the automobile-free strip support the interests and the curiosity of walkers and traveliers. Bravo to Rebecca Solnit for her engaging work.
Rating:
Summary: Pilgrimage is a liminal state
Review: The history of walking is unwritten. Walking allows us to be in our bodies in the world. The motions of the mind cannot be traced, but the feet can. The author walks us through an old Nike missile range. She protests with others at a Nevada test site. With Thoreau, Rebecca Solnit is both a poet of nature and a critic of society. Walking as a conscious cultural act begins with Rousseau. Nietzsche turned to solitary walks for recreation. In Rousseau's ideology walking is the emblem of the simple man. Rousseau portrays walking as both an exercise of simplicity and an opportunity for contemplation. Walking encourages a kind of unstructured associative thinking. A lone walker is both present and detached. Kierkegaard found himself in such a state. He proposed that the mind works best when surrounded by distraction. Husserl claimed that by walking we understand our bodies in relationship to the world. Walking upright preceded the development of the large brain in man. The pilgrimage is one of the basic modes of walking. There is a symbiosis between journey and arrival in pilgrimage. The Civil Rights Movement was tempered with the imagery of pilgrimage more than most struggles. The first fund-raising walk, a walkathon for the March of Dimes, began in 1970. On a religious pilgrimage in New Mexico the author encountered a Cadillac with the stations of the cross painted on it. The promenade is a subset of walking. Then there is the customized car and the cruise--low riders. William and Dorothy Wordsworth were vigorous walkers. Wordsworth and his peers seem to be the founders of a tradition. The English landscape garden asked to be explored. The emphasis on the pictorial and the existence of scenic tourism were invented in the eighteenth century. Walks are everywhere in PRIDE AND PREJUDICE. The garden walk provided relief form the group. Wordsworth tried to understand the French Revolution by walking the streets of Paris. Walking was Wordsworth's means of composition. Hazlitt's essay on walking became the foundation of a genre. Bruce Chatwin did not distinguish nomadism from walking. John Muir went from Indianapolis to the Florida Keys in 1867. Since English mountaineers found the Alpine Club in 1857, outdoor organizations have been proliferating. The first High Trip under the auspices of the Sierra Club took place in 1901. A taste for the wilderness is culturally determined. Everywhere but in Britain, walking became hiking. In England and elsewhere there was a problem of access to the land. The Highland Clearances,1780-1855, for one example, displaced quantities of people. In 1824 the Association for the Protection of Ancient Footpaths was founded near York. Walking focuses not on the boundary lines of land ownership but on paths, a sort of circulatory system of the whole. The YMCA was an early sponsor of walking clubs. The history of both urban and rural walking is a history of freedom. Dickens indicated the other things urban walking can be--police, detectives, criminals. Virginia Woolf, daughter of a great walker, wrote an essay on urban walking. Walter Benjamin described the Paris street, now a landscape, now a room. Hannah Arendt wrote in the 1960's one could feel at home In Paris. The book is carammed full of literary and cultural studies. The few autobiographical sections and sentences are the most moving. The reader is physically transported to mountain tops, labyrinths, and to that in-between state, the liminal state, achieved through the rhythm of walking, being situated between one's past and future identities. Citizens in the street support democracies from the time of the French Revolution to 1989 when history was made in the streets of Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany. Walking has been an established aspect of courtship. There is a dark side. Merely walking in the wrong place or at the wrong time could place a woman under suspicion of wrongdoing. Sylvia Plath wrote that being born a woman was her awful tragedy. Women are the primary targets of sexualized violence. Freedom to walk is useless without some place to go. Work and home were never separate until the factory system came of age. People cannot walk easily through suburban sprawl. Walking can become a sign of powerlessness. In the nineteenth century train travel changed perceptions of time and place. Suburbs make walking ineffective as transportation. Factories isolate, suburbs isolate: the body has ceased to be utilitarian to the upscale consumer of outdoor gear and exercise equipment, but is recreational. England remains pedestrian in scale. The contemporary artist most dedicted to exploring walking in his art is English, Richard Long. In some respects his work resembles travel writing. The book ends in Las Vegas. The city is unfriendly to pedestrians. The development of the super casinos and the automobile-free strip support the interests and the curiosity of walkers and traveliers. Bravo to Rebecca Solnit for her engaging work.
Rating: 
Summary: Other reviewers lost their way
Review: The worst that can be said of this piercing inquiry is that the broad forest of walking it depicts -- walking's effects on the pilgrim, the protester, the gawker in Las Vegas; its evolution from garden to countryside to modern city; its relation to writing and thinking itself -- left some readers bumping into the trees, and seeing only stars and not the bigger picture. But the bigger picture is here, laid out in stunning detail (she doesn't just say that labyrinths have made a recent comeback, but describes their makers and impacts in a variety of disciplines(art, garden design, spirituality) and countries, and what it feels like to walk on a replica of the Chartres labyrinth). I cannot recall reading a work that so seamlessly melded personal experience with a broad but profound reading of literature and history. Reminds me of Terry Tempest Williams, and in some of the same terrain. I'm headed back to read Solnit's earlier work "Migrations," about Irish history. I'll bet it's another forest well worth meandering through.
Rating:
Summary: A lovely idea
Review: This book fulfils that vital function of art to make you re-evaluate something that might have seemed simple and ordinary. For a few days after reading this book, I could not stop thinking about walking - its history, implications, value etc. For my taste, I would have wanted the author to tell me more about what she thought of walking, rather than always relying on great names (Wordsworth, Benjamin, Long etc); but I love the idea of the book and the personality of the author that comes through - radical, humane, witty, sometimes wonderfully dandyish, at other times, impassioned and serious.
Rating:
Summary: An Interesting Outlook
Review: This book made me want to walk accross country. The author makes walking seem exciting and exotic. Our bipedialism makes us superior to our primate cousins on the evolution scale. Read this book if you hate sitting in traffic or car commercials. Walk to your nearest bookstore and buy it!
|
