Wanderlust by Rebecca Solnit (2000)

A History of Walking

In 2006, I was astonished by Solnit's River of Shadows. It had come highly recommended from the blogosphere, but it exceeded my expectations nonetheless. What impressed me about the writing was not the content, but the form. So, I was interested in reading more of Solnit's work, and this earlier "history" of walking seemed appealing enough.

What she accomplished in River of Shadows seemed to me a nearly continuous stream of overlapping topics. She would introduce one idea in order to explain another, then proceed to explore that idea once the first was complete. It was enlightening for me, because I had always struggled with embedding in my own writing. I would try to expound upon a complex idea in the middle of a sentence about something else. It was always awkward, and the results were often terse to a fault. Reading my own words sometime later, I would often scratch my head trying to work out what I meant. I still need a lot of practice before I will approach Solnit's mastery of the method, but just knowing that there is such a technique seems a victory, however small.

Wanderlust is similarly dense with ideas from distant realms of thought, and the mixing of them is likewise adept, but the method is completely different. This book is structured in four named parts, a total of seventeen named chapters, and they are only loosely tied together. Subject matter ranges from Wordsworth and Muir and the invention of walking as leisure, English and American right-of-way laws, and pilgrimages, to walking as art, prostitution, and laws against women.

The number of topics makes it hard to write a coherent review more than two months after completion. I'm glad to be catching up. But I do think I will continue to follow Solnit's work. She seems to be one of those special writers who can keep the reader interested in whatever she pleases.