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Wanderlust: A History Of Walking (2002)

Wanderlust: A History of Walking (2002)

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Rating
3.89 of 5 Votes: 1
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ISBN
1859843816 (ISBN13: 9781859843819)
Language
English
Publisher
verso

About book Wanderlust: A History Of Walking (2002)

Solnit deserves a big round of applause for undertaking what seems like such a simple but at the same time very complex and ambiguous topic to write about. I know many people who have little to no interest in walking as a leisurely activity, and to have them ever consider the underbelly of walking is unfathomable. However, having absolutely loved "The Field Guide to Getting Lost' and "The Faraway Nearby", I couldn't pass by "Wanderlust", especially not when it offered such a promising look at a topic many overlook.I, generally, enjoyed "Wanderlust", but found that there were only two chapters that I particularly loved - Chapter 12, about Paris and the history of the city's architecture and how it had undergone reconstruction in the 19th century, and Chapter 14, about women and the limitations to their freedom in association with walking. These happened to also be the only two chapters that I not only gave my full and undivided attention to, but ones that I also read in one sitting because I found them to be so gripping and engagingly written. The rest of the book I could only read bit by bit at a time. It wasn't like Solnit's other essay books where I lost myself in her writing and narrative as soon as I sat down to read. Instead I was thinking a lot about what I was reading, and in some cases rereading passages several times to make sure they registered in my mind. One factor in this is the lack of knowledge I have in the field of walking. Many of the things described in this book, such as the wanderings of the Wordsworths or the alpine clubs, were completely new to me and as something that is encountered for the first time, it was as fascinating as it was confusing. I think this book is best geared towards people with some prior knowledge in the writing about walking, as well as some grasp of the philosophies that Solnit touches upon. That isn't to say that a first-time reader like myself will not enjoy this book, but it will be a slightly tougher reading experience that will take a couple of revisits to the book to fully appreciate the extensive facts and research Solnit has put into this book to enrich her writing.Also, I would say perhaps that the chapter book format is not the best suited format for this kind of writing. Many of the chapters read as separate essays, despite the visible connections to other chapters, either by mentioning the chapter number or by reiterating some of the facts or names. The book, as it is, is a very good approach to such a scattered, and what turned out to be a rather complex, topic, but it was easy for the mind to wander at certain times and I wonder if maybe a separate essay approach would have been best.Noteworthy is the last section of the book, "Past the End of the Road", which takes the ideas and facts put forth in the three previous sections and takes them further into musings and debates, albeit a tad wordy ones at times. The writing stimulated me to internally debate the argument that technology and fast transportation has turned human beings into 'parcels', as well as the nature of the contemporary art by people like Abramovic (which is a separate case for me in general, as I have a very conflicting opinion on modern art). This last section offers something more to the reader beyond the typical laid-out facts that make many essay books dry, ad will be appreciated by readers most of all I think.I am still a huge fan of Solnit despite not being madly in love with this book as I was with the two others I read. However, I am happy to add this to my personal collection and revisit it in the coming years, when I acquire more experience or simply wish to revisit the richly layered writing within the book's pages. It isn't a light book, contrary to my own assumption, and it definitely isn't a book for everyone. But it is rewarding to those who give it the time and energy.

Affirmation of PedestrianismFor those of you who don't know me as well as you think you do, I'll start by saying that I have never owned a car, and have not been behind the wheel of one in over 12 years; I bicycle in nice weather but my preferred mode of transportation is walking.So, I just finished the book Wanderlust: A History of Walking by Rebecca Solnit and think it is one of the greatest books ever written. I was partial to two of the last chapters, one about women and walking and the other about the decline of pedestrianism due to automobilization and suburbanization but really, the whole damn book is great: a work of art from start to finish.Solnit does exactly what the sub title describes: traces a history of walking from the early philosophers and romantics to modern peripatetics like myself, who are disturbingly and increasingly in decline. In this modern world we inhabit nowadays, I knew walking is considered subversive, nonconformist, and even controversial, yet until I read Wanderlust I didn't realize it was even more so back in the day: walkers were often {and still are} seen as lower and working class because, heaven forbid, why would you choose to walk among and in the filth of the city {or the mud of the country} when you could be enclosed and away from it in a horse drawn carriage or the modern carriage that is called the automobile? Women who walked were often arrested, as no respectable woman would go un-escorted into the mean streets of midnight; some women were thus victims of "surgical rape" as doctors forcibly inserted medical instruments to make sure their hymens were intact and they weren't lying about not being street walkers {throughout the book Solnit peppers her prose with numerous terms that have originated with walking, not just those relating to women who have throughout history tried to take back the night}. Members of the counterculture walked and still walk, from Whitman and Ginsberg, to prolific protesters who march for their numerous causes. Artists use walking to express themselves visually, such as Robert Smithson's 1,500-foot-long Spiral Jetty in the Great Salt Lake.Famous cities of walkers such as New York and Paris are explored, as well as the entire country of England; famous solitary walkers such as Thoreau and Rousseau are celebrated as well as companion pedestrians such as Dorothy and William Wordsworth. Urban and rural walking and their unique characteristics are covered but not contained.Inspired by this book, I have checked out books from the library by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and have continued my proud walks around the city of Buffalo, welcoming Spring and impatient for Summer, when my wandering without purpose rambles will become more frequent, as I walk with purpose daily, but it's undeniably more pleasant to walk without purpose in warmer weather.

Do You like book Wanderlust: A History Of Walking (2002)?

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 am.It'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 consequently conducive to sufficient treatments of subjects, something which rarely happens in ordinary, chair-bound, oft-distracted conversation.This book was given me by a cafe friend, cafes being my home-away-from-home and the primary place where I make new acquaintances--and read for that matter. She's done three (she claims more--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 consolation.Author Solnit understands all this and much more. 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 quite 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 more, a bit about arctic trudges perhaps, about the travels and travails of the disabled, about the riparian rights of strollers...Note: 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.
—Erik Graff

Combining sharp analysis and reverie is no small matter, but then Solnit is very, very good. Her rhapsodies never preclude wry intrusions of reality, and while she's evangelistic about the benefits of walking, she also includes a chapter on the various reasons of race, gender &c which can too easily make it a much less attractive proposition. I especially enjoyed the chapter on Paris, which supported my own experience that the cradle of the flaneur is now an automobile-friendly sepulchre. Reading this book inspired me to stride off on a half-baked navigation during which I almost fell into a badger sett, and there's not many books of which you can say that.
—Alex Sarll

This is not a travelogue. I thought the book would be a Bryson-esque piece of travel writing, with the author taking the reader on a set of strolls, accompanied by musings on great walkers of history, tit-bits of information, some anecdotes, and an analysis of being a flaneuse. But it's a serious history of walking – as Solnit sets out in the introduction, the history of walking is about: “religion, philosophy, landscape, urban policy, anatomy, allegory and heartbreak”, from the original bipeds who started walking upright in order to carry food and/or keep more of their bodies out of the sun, to the ancient Greeks who invented the walk 'n' talk, Jesus, whose long walk to Golgotha inspired pilgrimages and protest marches, Rousseau, the first person, pace Solnit, to walk for leisure, Wordsworth, the first person to walk for pleasure (Dorothy Wordsworth walked everywhere William did, but with shorter legs and less muscle tone). Solnit makes the point that before the 18th century, walking was for peasants, itinerants and thieves – a bit like LA now – and we may think that leisure walking is a natural activity, but she claims it as a cultural one, invented by the Romantics and picked up by the Victorians as a way of being cultured. She also covers early female explorers, the right to roam movement and the Kinder Scout mass trespass (although I did scoff at her insistence that the Lake District is near the Peak District. I'm not sure that Derbyshire folk and Cumbrians would agree), the city flaneurs: Dickens, Woolf and Walter Benjamin (there are only a few lines on Baudelaire and his flaneurie, but having read a 165 page chapter about Charles B in The Arcades Project, I think you can have too much of a good thing), the French Revolution (1.0), which, contrary to belief, didn't start in July 1789 but three months later when market women, laundresses, fishwives etc marched on Versailles, leading to Louis' leaving), and recent street walking activity: Reclaim The Streets, critical mass etc. She ends with a plea not just for space for walking, but a critique of the suburbanisation of everywhere, where there car is king, where there is no town centre for citizens to congregate or mingle, loiter or loll.To my mind, the most interesting chapter is Walking After Midnight, a discourse on solitary female perambulation, Women have always joined walking groups, walked in pairs, and so forth, but solitary walking is considered suspect, especially at night. After falling victim to a particularly nasty piece of street harassment she writes: “It was the most devastating discovery of my life that I had no real right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness out-of-doors, that the world was full of strangers who seemed to hate me and wish to harm me for no other reason than my gender...and that hardly anyone else considered it a public issue rather than a private problem. I was advised to stay indoors at night.....to take taxis, to buy a car, to move in groups, to get a man to escort me....all asserting it was my responsibility to control my own and men's behaviour, rather than society's to ensure my freedom. I realised that so many women had been so successfully socialised to know their place that they had chosen more conservative, gregarious lives without realising why.” Every time I see a single woman out on her own after dark, I want to give her the thumbs up.
—Rachel Stevenson

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