This is a strange and intense book.

The library had it filed as a novel; the publisher called it travel writing; but it seems to me more a series of ramblings about the author's uneasy relationship with just about everything.

And we're back into the territory of "truth". How many of these stories are true? It's not presented as being autobiographical, really, even though it's totally self-centered. So it probably doesn't matter. In his mind, Bowden has lived many different lives. And it seems the workings of his mind are more real to him than what goes on outside. He samples, uses, dismisses, watches, but never really connects.

Which is odd in a way, because he seems to be obsessed with merging into some kind of universal consciousness, something he calls "saying yes." Sometimes it seems a Zen-like quest, but he has a lot of anger which does not seem Zen-like at all. He elevates animals but degrades women. He tries to block out the world, but not by merging with it. I never could quite figure out what he meant to convey.

Still, there's a lot of good writing in the book, sharp and thoughtful observation. His animal obsessions include snakes, elephants, cardinals, and Moby Dick. He correctly sees that our symbolic preoccupations with other species have nothing to do with them, and everything to do with our own fears and desires. We cannot pretend to really know them. They "cannot be superior or lesser". They do not live by rules, by explanation, by question.

Bowden would like to experience that way of being. Or something close to it. I think he finds it more pure, truer to life.

"...there is never a promised land because we are already in the land, the only land."

Sound a lot like "Be Here Now". Except Bowden hasn't quite figured out how to "be" and where "here" is.