Lonesome Rangers: Homeless Minds, Promised Lands, Fugitive Cultures

by John D. Leonard

John Leonard, "the fastest wit in the East" ( The New York Times Book Review ), is back with the offbeat, wide-ranging style that earned his last book, When the Kissing Had to Stop , a place among the Voice Literary Supplement 's "25 Favorites of 1999." Now, with an eye to the social and political experience of writers, Leonard adopts a broad definition of exile. He addresses Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone , where exile manifests itself in solitary bowling, a reflection of a declining sense of community. He considers Salman Rushdie as rock'n'roll Orpheus, who―after ten years in fatwa-enforced exile―bears a striking resemblance to his continually disappearing characters. And Leonard also explores Primo Levi's exile of survival, Bruce Chatwin's self-imposed exile in travel, as well as the work of Saul Bellow, Ralph Ellison, Phillip Roth, Barbara Kingsolver, and Don DeLillo, among others. As always, Leonard's writing jumps off the page, engaging the reader in what the Washington Post calls his "laugh-out-loud magic with words."

Genres: Essays

352 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 2002

Reviews

[VJ · Rating 4 out of 5]

John Leonard's use of the English language is inspiring, but I was particularly intrigued by the essay on Primo Levi. Also covered are Mary McCarthy, Arthur Koestler, Rimbaud, Podhoretz, Bellow, and a host of other wordsmiths.

I especially liked learning the particulars of Levi's suicide. What a heart the man had.

The essays included in this compilation are often good introductions to works no longer discussed today.

[carriedaway · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked up this book because John Leonard had a chapter on Bruce Chatwin, one of the few people that have written about Minaret of Djam (the other is Freya Stark). (If you know of more, please let me know, it's a new current obsession.)

While it shed no light on the Minaret of Djam, and it probably says something telling about me that I had no idea who John Leonard was and have never actually read more than half the authors he reviewed, the essays were pretty fascinating. Primo Levi was the first and the best (and also someone I have read) but I enjoyed his riffs on Mary McCarthy, Ralph Ellison, Saul Bellow and a really lovely smackdown of Bob Dylan, as well as some of his mash-ups.

But Part three, titled Lost Causes was where he really got rolling. Why Socialism Never Happened Here, Red, White, Blue Glitz.

He does write in the style I equate with Tom Wolfe and Herb Caen and his habit of appending everything with "-head" (greedhead, wisehead, etc)got on my nerves but it was a great read.

[John Orman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wanderings of the literati, mostly alone. Profiles of quite a few writers, such as Saul Bellow and Philip Roth.