Cheryl Strayed is not the type of author I read willingly, but I'm glad that I picked up Wild.
I'll start with what I didn't like. Strayed's tone reads...moreCheryl Strayed is not the type of author I read willingly, but I'm glad that I picked up Wild.
I'll start with what I didn't like. Strayed's tone reads a bit too dramatic and conversational for my taste, and the import of her anecdotes tends to get blown out of proportion. A friend and I were discussing how creative non-fiction writing--especially when done for popular magazines and memoirs like this one--is "constructed"—tales too conveniently tellable. Wild is certainly constructed, which doesn't necessarily bother me per se, but in this case the construction is utterly transparent. Strayed's journey along the Pacific Crest Trail was, save a few wrong turns, linear. Her concurrent emotional journey, however, was looping and circular at times, racing ahead or lingering behind at others. When the two journeys crossed paths, Strayed's attempts to connect them was on occasion not exactly subtle or momentous.
But like Strayed, I've been struck by a spell of wanderlust and stung by a shifting emotional matrix. Though I quibble with some of the nuts and bolts of her writing, I find her tale inspiring in small and potent ways. The vantage she found on her identity, her family, her lovers, her history, and her future is enviable. Though her foolishness on the first few miles of her journey is part of the "construction" I've already mentioned I didn't like, the chronicle of toils and dangers, and how she learns from them, is alternately admirable, horrific, gruesome, tragic, or suspenseful. Her description of the landscape of California and Oregon is evocative and welcome in the narrative's landscape, if not as poetic as John Muir.
I'm not sure taking class- or feminism-based potshots at this book is constructive or, ultimately, that interesting—though the shots are there to take. I guess I don't care much that Strayed is an attractive woman who neglected her family, did hard drugs in Portland, cheated on her husband, and had the economic capacity to drop out of society while she "found herself." For me, it was rewarding to find that she did come to terms with her life, and made a few friends along the way.(less)
A collection of sweet and surprising essays chronicling a year living in Portugal. Although it's obvious that Graham is enamored with the landscape an...moreA collection of sweet and surprising essays chronicling a year living in Portugal. Although it's obvious that Graham is enamored with the landscape and the culture of the country, his writing is most beautiful when he connects the musings of a traveler cast adrift to the worried tremblings of his quirks and anxieties.
Through the art, food, and friends he finds in Lisbon, he questions his own place as a father, husband, writer, and American--all with a precise, insightful, often funny voice. (less)
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