A Sense of Direction: Pilgrimage for the Restless and the Hopeful by Gideon Lewis-Kraus

Apr 19, 2012 switterbug (Betsey) rated it 5 of 5 stars

The danger of reviewing a book about a secular essayist who walks the 500 mile Santiago de Camino pilgrimage with a heretic friend, then goes on a longer and more difficult one by himself in Shikoku, then plans another one in the Ukraine with his brother and his Rabbi father (the person who haunts all his pilgrimages, as he hasn't come to terms with the emotional pain his father caused when he came out of the closet when Gideon was nineteen and revealed, essentially, that his life had been, to h...more The danger of reviewing a book about a secular essayist who walks the 500 mile Santiago de Camino pilgrimage with a heretic friend, then goes on a longer and more difficult one by himself in Shikoku, then plans another one in the Ukraine with his brother and his Rabbi father (the person who haunts all his pilgrimages, as he hasn't come to terms with the emotional pain his father caused when he came out of the closet when Gideon was nineteen and revealed, essentially, that his life had been, to his son, obscure) is: relevance. I do not want to cull its deep meaning, or relate its heartfelt epiphanies (that are often the pat formula of Hollywood movies about pilgrimages), or take the act of reading this radiant memoir and subordinate it to some communal bonding experience or spiritual raison d'être. Nor do I want to press it into any subjective and universal poignancy. Well, okay, ancient roads beckon a young man.

The title of the book is the best place to start, and to be--as in, physical navigation from one fixed point to the next. It also addresses the form of the text; the title is both meditative and concrete. From the first impudent page of the book, I want to be with Gideon--temporally, actively, while it moves from here to there. At times, I wanted to whisper softly in his ear, howl, snort, and tell him that I savored every luminous passage, and adore the David Foster Wallace quote.

The one unifying experience that the pilgrim has with everyone else on a pilgrimage is movement and forwardness to the next point (and often, blisters and other bodily pains). The author's talent of shaping his odysseys into a coherent and thematic story beguiled and compelled me from start to finish.

Whatever higher ground and questions you start out with on a 790 km pilgrimage will bump up against physical exertions, discomfort, and pain that tethers you to real time as you are moving in a geographical direction. You are grounded in the present. The crises of the past and the crossroads of the future are not as urgent as putting one foot in front of the other. There are riveting moments that peel Gideon down to doubt. Lewis-Kraus avoids sweeping clichés about destiny and keeps it real. Getting a grasp of "why" he is doing this creates some arch ruminations about his journey. Part of the purpose of the sojourn is to heal the wounds with his father and move on.

Gideon's terse wit and vigorous pace steer the reader into the story, which unfolds more like a novel than a memoir. That's another reason it worked so well for me (I usually prefer fiction). I was taken by the crisp velocity of a storyline structure, and relieved by the bustling absence of earnest messages. The book opens to Gideon's disaffected years in the Berlin bars and art scene, the hearty glimpses into his profligate stagnation. He describes living in the city as "an infinitely long weekend with your parents out of town ... The old crimes licensed you to ignore the claims of the past; the low cost of living licensed you to ignore the demands of the present; and the future was something that would happen when we moved back to New York, where many of us would once more live in uncomfortable proximity to our actual parents."

His drunk decision to embark on the Camino jump-starts his triumph over inertia. Once you start reading, I can't imagine anywhere you'd rather be than on the itinerant heels of Gideon's brio and in the footfalls of his ambivalence. He has a candid, lyrical way of honoring language and worldview as partners in the fungible context of life and also of provoking you like an impish pied piper. It's a disobedient mix of irreverence and gravitas which will appeal to iconoclasts and offspring and dads of all ages.

I won this book in a lottery giveaway on Shelf Awareness. The review is not biased; it is my own true response.(less)

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Mar 11, 2013 Richard rated it 4 of 5 stars

Rating: 3.8* of five

The Book Description: In medieval times, a pilgrimage gave the average Joe his only break from the daily grind. For Gideon Lewis-Kraus, it promises a different kind of escape. Determined to avoid the kind of constraint that kept his father, a gay rabbi, closeted until midlife, he has moved to anything-goes Berlin. But the surfeit of freedom there has begun to paralyze him, and when a friend extends a drunken invitation to join him on an ancient pilgrimage route across Spain,...more Rating: 3.8* of five

The Book Description: In medieval times, a pilgrimage gave the average Joe his only break from the daily grind. For Gideon Lewis-Kraus, it promises a different kind of escape. Determined to avoid the kind of constraint that kept his father, a gay rabbi, closeted until midlife, he has moved to anything-goes Berlin. But the surfeit of freedom there has begun to paralyze him, and when a friend extends a drunken invitation to join him on an ancient pilgrimage route across Spain, he grabs his sneakers, glad of the chance to be committed to something and someone.

Irreverent, moving, hilarious, and thought-provoking, A Sense of Direction is Lewis-Kraus's dazzling riff on the perpetual war between discipline and desire, and its attendant casualties. Across three pilgrimages and many hundreds of miles - the thousand-year-old Camino de Santiago, a solo circuit of eighty-eight Buddhist temples on the Japanese island of Shikoku, and, together with his father and brother, an annual mass migration to the tomb of a famous Hasidic mystic in the Ukraine - he completes an idiosyncratic odyssey to the heart of a family mystery and a human dilemma: How do we come to terms with what has been and what is - and find a way forward, with purpose?

My Review: Another year-old LibraryThing Early Reviewers win, what the hell happened to me last year? Did I have a stroke and forget stuff? Damn. I hate that I didn't write these reviews on time.

This is a book by a David Foster Wallace-readin' straight twentysomething son of a gay father whose selfish and self-absorbed life erupts after he goes on the Sacred Road pilgrimage in Spain. He then goes on a Buddhist pilgrimage in Japan...alone...speaking no Japanese. What could go wrong? ::eyeroll:: And then, after Pilgrimania has fully gripped him, his pop and he (plus an ignorable sibling) go on some Hasidic hoo-rah that really sets the ducks in the shootin' gallery.

Target rich environment! Set phasers on devastate, Mr. Sulu, we're gonna skewer this kid!!

And, well, maybe I could and perhaps I should, but for all the whingeing whiney crap, the kid writes from whatever soul he has and he is honest. Sometimes to a fault. I get it, I get it, Dad coming out when you were at a delicate age had some troublesome aspects for you. But despite the fact that we dwell in Gideon's overprivileged head, we do so with a very witty host. He makes funny lines, but you know something weird? They aren't funny outside the book. Can't quote 'em. He's good for a grin, though.

I enjoyed reading this book, and I think it will be a good first book for his CV. Don't sprain anything running out to get one. (less)

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Feb 09, 2013 Bonnie Brody rated it 5 of 5 stars

A Sense of Direction by Gideon Lewis-Kraus is a report of three pilgrimages taken by the author, a man in in his 30's seeking direction, forgiveness and the gift of forgiving.

At the start, Gideon is rootless, aimless and essentially hedonistic. His divorced parents are both rabbis. His father is gay and divorced his mother when Gideon was 19. Gideon is estranged from his father. Gideon is an accomplished professional writer with attachment issues concerning places, fixed abode and his father. He...more A Sense of Direction by Gideon Lewis-Kraus is a report of three pilgrimages taken by the author, a man in in his 30's seeking direction, forgiveness and the gift of forgiving.

At the start, Gideon is rootless, aimless and essentially hedonistic. His divorced parents are both rabbis. His father is gay and divorced his mother when Gideon was 19. Gideon is estranged from his father. Gideon is an accomplished professional writer with attachment issues concerning places, fixed abode and his father. He goes from the aimless life he is leading in Berlin on the Camino de Santiago, an 800 kilometer pilgrimage in Spain, with his friend, Tom. The pilgrimage is a 1000 year old Catholic tradition, but in the present it is taken for secular reasons. Certainly Gideon, a secular Jew takes it for reasons having nothing to do with religion and everything to do with the idea of pilgrimage itself.

When Gideon finishes the Camino, he hears of an even longer and more arduous 1200 kilometer pilgrimage, the Shikoku , in rural Japan. This is a much less well-traveled route, one most generally taken by retired Japanese. It goes past 88 temples. Gideon does this one alone, although he meets and travels for short periods with other pilgrims. His isolation and unfamiliarity with Japan language and culture lead him further on the road to self-knowledge.

After Gideon completes the Shikoku, he enlists his brother and father to go to Uman, Ukraine for the mass Rosh Hashanah gathering of 40,000 hassidic disciples of the Bratslaver Rebbe, Nachman. Uman is the site where thousands of Jews were slaughtered during pogroms and Ukraine is a country that exceeded all others in the slaughter of Jews during the Holocaust. This is a pilgrimage of yet another sort, one in which Gideon grows further and comes to better understand forgiveness.

Gideon chooses to go on this pilgrimage with his brother and father in the hopes that there can be some resolution of their long-standing issues.

When I started the book I was impressed by the writing and thought that Gideon was bright, gifted and aimless, completely filled with himself and his own problems. I braced myself for a well-written exercise in "i'm more intelligent than you; I'm more ironic than you, I'm more alienated than you. I could not have been more wrong. Gideon grows by first mindlessly following the arrows pointing the way on the Camino and then by the more circuitous and ambiguous directions of the Shikoku. He comes to a sense of completion with the Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year where iin Jewish tradition is said that we are written in the Book of Life for the New Year. Gideon becomes that work in progress that marks a real mensch.
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Jul 24, 2012 Susan rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: arc-edition, religion-spirituality, personal_memoir_biography

Subtitled “Pilgrimage for the Restless and the Hopeful,” this memoir sounded like one that would appeal to me. And the first couple of pages promised good things to come. Unfortunately, I found the next 50 or so pages so boring that I almost chucked the whole thing. But because I was given a copy for review, I plodded on.

The book got better as the pilgrimages began. Early on, it reminded me of Eat, Pray, Love but with testosterone and not as interesting as that one. Then I turned to the blurbs o...more

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Jul 02, 2012 Tinker rated it 3 of 5 stars

i was lent this book by a friend because of its relevance to my recent experiences on the pacific crest trail. after i read it i found online a rather brutal but accurate review of this by choire sicha in slate magazine, to which i have very little to add. pretty transparently, he went on the pilgrimages desperate to generate a book. the second pilgrimage, in japan, was a mistake because he didnt know the language and went alone. the third, a hasidic outing (and not really a pilgrimage), was the...more

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Jun 29, 2012 John rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: biography-memoir, general-nonfiction

A Great Travel Memoir on One Young Man’s Search for Himself

One of the best examples of travel memoir which I have read over the last few years, Gideon Lewis-Kraus’s “A Sense of Direction” is a fine literary debut that ranks alongside great travel memoirs like Susan Gilman’s “Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven”. Hoping to escape a most banal existence as a young American expatriate living in Berlin, Gideon teams up with a friend on a series of treks across Europe, starting with their epic journey...more

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Jun 22, 2012 Betty-Anne rated it 2 of 5 stars

I received an ARC in e-book format from the publisher in exchange for reading and reviewing it.

Gideon Lewis-Kraus writes a travel memoir about pilgrimages. He undertakes three very different ones. The first is the Camino de Santiago in Spain, a more traditional style pilgrimage, during which he is accompanied by a friend and meets many people along the way. The second is to 88 temples around the perimeter of Shikoku, Japan, which he undertakes mostly alone. Then the third is a single event in a...more I received an ARC in e-book format from the publisher in exchange for reading and reviewing it.

Gideon Lewis-Kraus writes a travel memoir about pilgrimages. He undertakes three very different ones. The first is the Camino de Santiago in Spain, a more traditional style pilgrimage, during which he is accompanied by a friend and meets many people along the way. The second is to 88 temples around the perimeter of Shikoku, Japan, which he undertakes mostly alone. Then the third is a single event in a Ukrainian village for the celebration of Rosh Hashanah, where he is accompanied by his father and brother.

While I generally tend to enjoy travel memoirs, it’s very possible that this book just wasn’t for me. Part of the reason for that was that the travel part of the book is more of a backdrop for the author to work out all the issues troubling him about his life. Lewis-Kraus certainly seemed to have been searching for a sense of direction. He clearly didn’t have one at the start of the book, but unfortunately didn’t seem to find one at the end either – at least not as far as I could tell.

His style of writing mostly irritated me, and I definitely did not like the author at all. The world is made up of all types, but this restless, disaffected, tired-of-the-hedonistic-lifestyle sense of entitlement that the author appears to have made me spend most of my reading time annoyed by him. He seems very proud of his ability to write long, self-indulgent, convoluted sentences. However, he doesn’t do it very well. For that kind of style to work, you have to be engaging enough to keep the reader captivated throughout and wanting to read more. Lewis-Kraus does not do that for me at all.

Ironically, the author writes extremely well about other people. When he was describing interactions with people during the Camino and Uman sections, there were moments when I found myself quite caught up in the narrative. However, just when I found myself actually interested, Lewis-Kraus once again began to ramble about himself, and I lost interest … again

A single, bright gem of a sentence pops out here and there, but in the end, that turned out not to be sufficient. I only finished the book out of an obligation to review it, and it’s not something to which I will ever return.
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Jun 10, 2012 David Withun rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: biography

“A sense of direction,” it seems, is what all of us are looking for these days. We live in a world that has made self-consciousness and self-interest our primary preoccupations. As a result, we spend most our lives in a state very near disorientation, simply moving from one place or person to the next without any impetus to our movement other than desire and whimsy. As a result, each of us tries to locate ourselves in a variety of ways, through adopting the structure of the traditional American...more “A sense of direction,” it seems, is what all of us are looking for these days. We live in a world that has made self-consciousness and self-interest our primary preoccupations. As a result, we spend most our lives in a state very near disorientation, simply moving from one place or person to the next without any impetus to our movement other than desire and whimsy. As a result, each of us tries to locate ourselves in a variety of ways, through adopting the structure of the traditional American family, through dedication to business interests, even through constantly running from distraction to distraction.

Gideon Lewis-Kraus's search for “a sense of direction” took him around the world and back again, literally. In his disaffection with life in the United States, he decided to move to Germany. There he fell in among other young people with a similar disaffection for life in their home countries and pursued the pleasures of the new art and literature scene, which included visits to secret raves and bizarre performance-arts, the indulges of the young and bored. With a friend, he decided to walk the Camino de Santiago, the famous medieval pilgrimage route in Spain.

The meaning and motion he discovered on the Camino led him to other pilgrimages, one in Japan and the other in the Ukraine. In his pilgrimage among pilgrimages, Lewis-Kraus begins to acquire “a sense of direction.” He brings himself to confront the underlying factors in his strained relationship with his father, a gay rabbi, and the mangled relationships he has had with others throughout his life. Most importantly, he begins to come to terms and to form a relationship with himself.

I recommend this book primarily as a simultaneously humorous and intelligent meditation on the existential state of modern man. The most important feature of the directionlessness of modern man, what is really at the root of his simultaneously self-love and self-hatred coupled with boredom, is his sense of the absence of God. The attentive reader is constantly painfully aware of this absence throughout this book, which gives such a reader a unique perspective. It seems that even as Lewis-Kraus, and all of us through him, craves meaning, direction, and purpose, he actively avoids it in his active avoidance of anything that might bring him closer to God: the pilgrim masses in Spain, the sutra-reading in the temples in Japan, the fasting and prayer in the Ukraine.

Lewis-Kraus's story is perhaps best summarized as the tragic reality of Nietzsche's proclamation of the death of God: the Overman will not arise from the ashes, only a lonely and bored, hypercritical generation of selfish self-haters, looking for “a sense of direction” but never able to see what is right under their noses.(less)

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Jun 04, 2012 Eleanor rated it 2 of 5 stars

This book gets a resounding "meh" from me. I picked it up because a friend had gotten an advance review copy, and since both of us studied Medieval Lit and have wanted to do the walk to Santiago de Compostela, the book sounded promising.

And, truthfully, the parts of Lewis-Kahn's memoir that are more travelogue than navel-gazing are really, really great. He's got an eye for detail, and a sharp ability to capture the essence of a scene with the sketch of a few words. (There's a fantastic image ear...more This book gets a resounding "meh" from me. I picked it up because a friend had gotten an advance review copy, and since both of us studied Medieval Lit and have wanted to do the walk to Santiago de Compostela, the book sounded promising.

And, truthfully, the parts of Lewis-Kahn's memoir that are more travelogue than navel-gazing are really, really great. He's got an eye for detail, and a sharp ability to capture the essence of a scene with the sketch of a few words. (There's a fantastic image early in the book where he finds himself at a party with an artist who became famous for his "cave of dicks", which Lewis-Kahn describes as being a cave with multiple penises dangling from "unsuckably distant" glory holes.) I really enjoyed his portraits of his companions on both the Camino and the Shikoku pilgrimages, and I thought he captured the day-to-day rhythm of a long backpacking trip beautifully.

Where the book really fell down, however (and you couldn't go more than a few pages without coming across this) was in Lewis-Kahn's obsessive narcissism. He spends most of the book holding a tremendous grudge against his gay father for being an imperfect human being -- coming out late, cheating/not cheating on his mom with men, being kind of weird as he got older because he has to make everything "gay". Lewis-Kahn is sure that he has been profoundly damaged by his dad, and wants nothing more than a line-by-line accounting of every mis-deed, and an apology for each, without recognizing that maybe he owns some of the douchebaggery in the relationship too.

I just got so fed up by the end. I wanted to shake him and say, "grow the eff up." Parents aren't perfect, and we don't usually get to choose to have a perfect relationship with them, and sometimes the best possible relationship is still a far cry from what you want to have. Deal with it. Life's too short to be holding grudges for decades for imagined slights.

If you can handle the personal melodrama, the travelogues in the book are great. If you can't, save yourself the desire to bash in Lewis-Kahn's head, and read something else instead.(less)

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Jul 03, 2012 Chris Craddock rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: self-help, contemporary-fiction

A restless young writer takes three pilgrimages in search of a direction for his life. The first one is in Spain, next, Japan, and finally the Ukraine. He also spends time in Berlin, San Francisco, Shanghai, and was last heard of in Brooklyn. The ancient alongside the contemporary, as he searches for a place to log in and check his email along well worn pilgrim paths.

He complains to his grandfather, Max, that his father never reads his email. Max, one of the few who do reliably read his long dis...more

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Sep 05, 2012 Christine rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: peregrinations, spain

Gideon, a thirtyish writer who has been drifting along in places like Berlin and San Francisco, goes on three pilgrimages, in Spain, Japan, and the Ukraine. He goes (initially because of a drunken promise) to figure out what to do next, how not to act, and how to reconnect with his father.

I'm feeling generous, so I'm giving Gideon five stars. I think it's probably only worth a 4.98. I loved this book for two reasons.

Like Gideon, I find myself a pilgrim from time to time, and I appreciate that h...more

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Jun 23, 2012 Andrew rated it 4 of 5 stars

A quote on the back cover described this book as, "...a mix between David Foster Wallace and Eat, Pray, Love. I think to some degree this is quite an accurate observation, though certainly lacking in some very important ways. Gideon Lewis-Kraus is an incredibly gifted, intellectually-minded secularist with an ability to pull from his (and others) experiences to find fundamental "truths" about the ways in which we go through life, searching for purpose, direction, and meaning, all functioning in...more

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Apr 10, 2012 Lisa rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: advance-readers, memoirs, religion, spiritual, travel

Lewis-Kraus's pilgrimage might have been yet another young man in search of himself, a modern Kerouac with more direction, but I had the sense that the author was more in search of something other than himself. As Huston Smith warned in his work on the world's religions, "The self is too small an object for perpetual enthusiasm." After a few years caught up in the live for the moment decadence of Berlin, Lewis-Kraus craved something more, something that would at once take him inward and outward....more

Lewis-Kraus's pilgrimage might have been yet another young man in search of himself, a modern Kerouac with more direction, but I had the sense that the author was more in search of something other than himself. As Huston Smith warned in his work on the world's religions, "The self is too small an object for perpetual enthusiasm." After a few years caught up in the live for the moment decadence of Berlin, Lewis-Kraus craved something more, something that would at once take him inward and outward. For one, he deals with a long simmering discontent with his relationship with his father, a gay former rabbi whose "coming out of the closet" left his son with a sense of abandonment, possibly of even never having been wanted. I do not want to reveal what the author finds out on his journeys since these unfolding revelations, along with his trenchant often self-deprecating humor, are the glories of this book. His new found sense of self, family and kinship with the world outside himself is hard fought for and seems to have cost him about a pound of flesh, mostly from his feet. Of the pilgrimages, the one he makes to Uman with his father and brother delighted me the most, but all are well pace, funny and thoughtful. Lewis-Kraus is by terms endearing, obnoxious, generous, bigoted, peevish, but always searching. Odd thing happened when I was reading the Uman section, though this really says more about another book than this one, I am sharing it since shows what really good writing can do. As Lewis-Kraus and his father deal with the mass of Hasidic Jews I wondered if he knew Cass Seltzer since they were both writers who had dealt with the theme of messianic Judaism. Mind jogged on a bit to remember that this was impossible since Seltzer was the ficitonal creation of Rebecca Newberger Goldstein. I was so wound up in the very real account of Gideon's bewilderment with all that was around him that my brain lapsed into that space were the real and imagined collide. And of course, ever since I first met him, Cass Seltzer, despite his non-existence, has always been a real to me as if he were so.

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Apr 19, 2012 Waven rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: first-reads, historical, international, humor, non-fiction

In a book on pilgrimage, I expected religious blather and arrogant piety ... but what I found in A Sense of Direction was a lot of sore feet and humor. It begins with a somewhat listless existence in Berlin, then during a drunken weekend the author agrees to embark on a 600 mile pilgrimage across Spain with a friend. It becomes a sort of vacation from the care-free Berlin scene, a chance to find purpose yet avoid responsibility. While on that pilgrimage, he hears of another - longer, more treach...more

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Nov 30, 2012 D'face rated it 2 of 5 stars

They say you should give a book 50 pages before you toss it away, it is just as well I gave this one 53 because it improved thereafter.

The first section deals with the author's dissolute life in Berlin about which we hear far too much before he starts on his pilgrimages. Then we hear of his three pilgrimages in Spain, Japan and Ukraine together with intermissions in Shanghai and elsewhere between pilgrimages. Unfortunately we learn very little about the places he visits or the routes he follow...more

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Sep 10, 2012 Christopher rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: travel

I liked this book a lot. I hope I run in to Gideon Lewis-Kraus at Tartine Bakery one of these mornings to thank him in person.

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Jun 27, 2012 Heather rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction-adventure

I have to admit, reading about Gideon’s pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela made me wish I was the kind of person who’s tough enough to go on a pilgrimage. However, I would probably want to quit after the first day or two, so I enjoyed going on Gideon’s pilgrimages from the comfort of my couch. I’ve said it here before, and I’ll say it again: I love nature, but from a distance. So I really enjoyed reading about Gideon’s experiences during all three of his pilgrimages, and although he got on my...more

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May 22, 2012 Brin rated it 1 of 5 stars

Gideon Lewis-Kraus arrives with the potential of any young writer-- that he'll write work that transcends his own experience, that he'll illuminate something about the larger world. This book attempts that, but ultimately becomes an act of immature self-indulgence and immense ego (which would match his persona, if his author appearances are any indication). The "restless and hopeful" mentioned is, predictably, himself, and the book reads like another flimsy MFA thesis about ME ME ME, which resul...more

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Feb 08, 2013 Don Sommers rated it 3 of 5 stars

This was a tough one. Summary: I wanted to love this more than I could. Interesting, given the son-father relationship at its core.
The writing is good; the idea of these pilgrimages is compelling; I found it easy to relate to his attitude towards the travels. The thread running throughout is his complicated relationship with his father, who is gay and came out later in life - and the complications aren't around moral judgements on his father's homosexuality, which is refreshingly no big deal, bu...more This was a tough one. Summary: I wanted to love this more than I could. Interesting, given the son-father relationship at its core.
The writing is good; the idea of these pilgrimages is compelling; I found it easy to relate to his attitude towards the travels. The thread running throughout is his complicated relationship with his father, who is gay and came out later in life - and the complications aren't around moral judgements on his father's homosexuality, which is refreshingly no big deal, but about the specifics of their father-son relationship as manifested in his father's eventual coming out and how that process went. That part of it felt unique, timely, honest, and very heartfelt. Then there's his obsession with a woman who, in an age other than the Facebook/social media/digital communications era, seemed bound for her taking out a restraining order. It felt creepy, and tied to the general sense of entitled listlessness and lack of purpose. This is a guy too allowed and encouraged to nurture his obsessions, and sometimes these seem healthy (issues with dad) and sometimes you want to shake him and tell him to get a life. That brings it back to the title - seeking a sense of direction, the author undertakes these pilgrimages in hopes that the focus on reflection will net insights and results (this is a really broad summary). But he isn't really in need of more time to think and obsess, he has that in shovels, which he acknowledges in the book. And he winds up immersing himself in the same milieu as ever anyway. What he needs is something for which he's responsible when he wakes up in the morning...and ideally that would be something that doesn't suck or is pointless (e.g. filling the bank accounts of others).
Parts of it were squirmy. A directionless young guy who intentionally squanders a Fulbright because he thinks it would be fine to hang out in Berlin and knows how to work the system isn't cool and ironic, he's a dick. Sometimes the dickish point of view is amusing, but mostly it's infuriating. And yet I ended the book with a sense of sympathy for the narrator and his take on life in these ridiculous times and hope that, with some overdue sense of direction and purpose, he will produce great things.(less)

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Oct 31, 2012 Elyse rated it 5 of 5 stars

Transcends traditional travelogue -- NOT a run-of-the-mill memoir either.

I LOVED this BOOK! It was REFRESHING-- INSPIRING -- ENTERTAINING!!

I don't read tons of 'travel' type books to begin with (I prefer Paul Theroux over Bill Bryson) ---
but if more 'travel/memoir' books were THIS much fun --I might read more.

I couldn't help but fall in love with the author of this book -- I enjoyed his humor, his intelligence, his wisdom, his compassion, his very soul as a human being. I also will extend that...more

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Oct 28, 2012 aarthi rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: book_club

I often like to use these review spaces to keep track of quotes from the book that I really want to remember or be able easily to re-read. This book articulated a lot that I have been thinking about in the past few years. While the author went on three pilgrimages to exhume these epiphanies, I have been making my own road by walking through a series of unfortunate events, but I feel now like I have reached the sea. Isn't it wonderful that there are wonderful writers in the world, who can sum up...more I often like to use these review spaces to keep track of quotes from the book that I really want to remember or be able easily to re-read. This book articulated a lot that I have been thinking about in the past few years. While the author went on three pilgrimages to exhume these epiphanies, I have been making my own road by walking through a series of unfortunate events, but I feel now like I have reached the sea. Isn't it wonderful that there are wonderful writers in the world, who can sum up for you exactly what it is you want to keep at the forefront, especially when times are good and we're liable to forget?

"time...counts for precisely something because its quantity is fixed" p. 20

"Emilie...got done during the day what she had to get done and she did at night what she wanted to do. She was comfortable with her desire for some things because she was obligated to do others; she was able to oblige some things because she desired others." p. 29

"The main problem with desires...is that they're not nearly as authoritative as we wish they were...How can you find some structure that allows you to begin to understand what you want without forcing you to pay constant attention to the fluctuation of endlessly conflicting desires? ANd how can you realize that, whatever the situation, you're probably already getting what you want on some level, whether you know it or not?" p. 45

"I wondered...if the difference between people who believed in preparation and those who believed in proof...wasn't the difference between those who worked constantly for something that would endure and those who sought to capture something that occurred once." p. 47

"My dad sent me dozens of texts to the effect that he was ready to forgive me for my 'outburst' and that if I met him for dinner he would act as if nothing had happened. Which was, of course, precisely the problem, or one of them: his willingness and ability to go on acting as though nothing had ever happened." p. 89

"my mom...is...almost maddeningly reasonable...'On the one hand, you want to be open to forgiveness; on the other, you don't want to get wounded again and again.'" p. 99

"'The thing that has brought me back to the Camino so many times...is the solidarity of affliction.'" p. 108

"This is perhaps what we lose in the absence of calendrical rite: We lean too heavily on the fantasy of one salvific ordeal, just like we lean too heavily on the fantasy that the right person will finally make us happy or whole." p. 111

"breaks from the ordered configurations of everyday life...'anti-structures.' The chief characteristic of the anti-structure...is...'communitas' - a spontaneous, rich, classless, nonhierarchical association of people who have stepped out of their routine lives and into a liminal passage like a pilgrimage...The pilgrim could step outside of all roles and just be a person" p. 118

"On the divine model, sin is a bad decision in the eyes of God. Penance is the expiation of sin through suffering in the service of God, or the mortification of the worldly desires that put us in conflict with God's plan. Redemption, the goal of penance, is forgiveness in the eyes of God - God's acceptance of our sins. In a secular vocabulary, these concepts might look something like this: anxiety is regret over a past bad decision, or of a future bad one, either in the eyes of our future selves or in the eyes of our community. Austerity...is the expiation of anxiety through suffering in the service of simplicity. It is the mortification of the human desires that put us in conflict with ourselves, the world, and the people we love...Forgiveness is an acceptance of the inevitability of conflict, of the costs of our decisions...On pilgrimage, privation is endured, shared, and collectively encourage as part of the aspiration to want less, at least for the moment - and not only to want less for ourselves, but perhaps even more important, to need less from others and, at the same time, to be able to recognize their suffering and give them more. The experiences of wanting less, needing less, and giving more allow us to withdraw from the psychic conflicts that cause so much pain for ourselves and those around us." p. 123

"As long as we keep moving, time is kept at bay; when we stop, it catches up in a rush." p. 136(less)

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Jun 22, 2012 Amy rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: biography-memoir

This book did not make me want to walk the Camino or go to Shikoku (I gave up before his third pilgrimage to Uman). It did not make me want to meet the author. There are some flashes of good writing, and some passages about history and philosophy that appeal to my geeky/wanna-learn-something side. A bit like a college undergrad trying to write like Alain de Botton.

But mostly I felt like I myself was plodding along a trail for no apparent reason. I wanted to tell the author to calm down, get some...more

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May 24, 2012 emily added it

Shelves: first-reads

I got really excited when I saw DFW comparisons, forgetting that, for guys of my age give or take a decade, a desire to be compared to DFW is sort of a sickness unto death.

The whole thing, in general, was more the experience of reading someone precious and privileged hang out with his supercool friends, then consider that maybe it is hard to be precious and privileged and that people who are less precious or less privileged (or both!) are *authentic.*

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Jun 01, 2012 Rob Gall rated it 3 of 5 stars

Having seen "The Way" about one man's pilgrimage on "Camino de Santiago", I found this segment on Gideon's book the most interesting for its contrast to the film. By the time I got through Shikoku I was getting a bit tired of his whining about his sore feet (seems like he could've trained a bit more these efforts). As I'm neither Jewish nor was ever estranged from my loving father, I found the last event in Uman a bit tiresome. Gideon is, however, a good enough writer to hold your interest.

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Sep 22, 2012 Judy Mayhew rated it 3 of 5 stars

Best account I've read yet on pilgrimage in general and the Camino de Santiago in particular and I've read a lot on that subject. Less interesting was his report on The Shikoku, an even longer pilgrimage that seemed to be fueled by his anger toward the writer of the guidebook he carried, and his father. His overall ill-humour, which began when the Camino ended,lessened my enjoyment of this book.

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Apr 13, 2013 MariMel rated it 3 of 5 stars

I'm glad I bothered to finish the book, as it got better; for the first half, I was just annoyed with the self-absorbed, somewhat vacuous writer. But he does get a little deeper as the book progresses and actually says some interesting things about pilgrimages in general and the ones he did specifically (although most of the book is about him, him and more him). I can't recommend this book, as it was mostly a tour of this neurotic guy's daddy issues, but there is some good travel writing in betw...more

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Jul 14, 2012 Katherine rated it 2 of 5 stars

Description of "pilgrimaging" is interesting since I'm planning to walk the Camino myself. Thankfully author's account is not nearly as whiny, annoying and tiresome as Eat Pray Love. Still a pretty self absorbed account of own directionless. Little take away or conclusion.

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Jun 14, 2012 Katie rated it 2 of 5 stars

This book had its moments. I really enjoyed the sections describing the author's travels, particularly the experience on the Camino, but honestly, it was whiny. I felt like there was far too much expostulating about pilgrimage and philosophical ideas. That might be appropriate for some readers, but it was not what I had hoped for.

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May 28, 2012 Durhamthonert rated it 1 of 5 stars

A friend got a copy, had it signed, was bored with it, passed it on to me, and I was bored too. Self-indulgent, no sense of emotional depth. Speaks of his travels as though he's the only person who's ever traveled. A total turn-off, a complete snooze.

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Jun 21, 2012 Lu Ann rated it 1 of 5 stars

This was the most incredibly boring book I have ever read.
Too much wording without really ever making a point to all the ramblings.
I was going to at least give a star for "clean" writing but after several pages
that was even null and void.
The only thing I can think to praise is literary accuracy and vague interest
in places visited.

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