El Dorado and Other Pursuits

by Evan S. Connell

Evan S. Connell explores the quixotic obsession with the new, the hidden, the unattainable that burns in us all. Each essay is an extraordinary account of passionate pursuit by legendary explorers, visionaries, and seekers compelled by a singular desire. Here we find Marco Polo, El Dorado, Paracelsus, Columbus, the thousands of children in the Innocents' Crusade, Magellan, Mary Kingsley (a Victorian naturalist, ethnologist, sailor, scholar, and guest of cannibals, and Ibn Batuta (an indefatigable explorer of the fourteenth century whose travels in the Arab world and beyond made 'the journey of Marco Polo look like a stroll around the block'). 'There's no end to the list, of course,' Connell adds, 'because gradually it descends from such legendary individuals to ourselves when, as children, obsessed by that same urge, we got permission to sleep in the backyard.'

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays

Paperback

First published February 7, 2002

About the author

Evan Shelby Connell Jr. (August 17, 1924 – January 10, 2013) was a U.S. novelist, poet, and short-story writer. His writing covered a variety of genres, although he published most frequently in fiction.

In 2009, Connell was nominated for the Man Booker International Prize, for lifetime achievement. On April 23, 2010, he was awarded a Los Angeles Times Book Prize: the Robert Kirsch Award, for "a living author with a substantial connection to the American West, whose contribution to American letters deserves special recognition."

Connell was born in Kansas City, Missouri, the only son of Evan S. Connell, Sr. (1890–1974), a physician, and Ruth Elton Connell. He had a sister Barbara (Mrs. Matthew Zimmermann) to whom he dedicated his novel Mrs. Bridge (1959). He graduated from Southwest High School in Kansas City in 1941. He started undergraduate work at Dartmouth College but joined the Navy in 1943 and became a pilot. After the end of World War II, he graduated from the University of Kansas in 1947, with a B.A. in English. He studied creative writing at Columbia University in New York and Stanford University in California. He never married, and lived and worked in Sausalito, California for decades.
(Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Martin Mulcahey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyable but uneven. Essays on various explorations, the majority of which center upon the new world. I found the chapters on The Northwest Passage, Seven Cities, Prestor John, and Innocents Crusade (which I had never heard of before) very entertaining and informative. However, I thought the writing got bogged down with the story on The Aztec Treasure House, which dealt more about the writer then the explorers. But if any chapter bores you just move on the next, there is no string of thought or pacing tying them together. Overall it is a fact filled read, it lacks a bit of emotive writing but makes up for it in detail and obviously thorough research.