(She also mentions a play that she wrote at nineteen. The intertextuality of her unwritten world becomes a bit confusing.) And then, suddenly, Solnit goes on to narrate a story that she writes upon leaving the desert and returning to the city. “A happy love is a single story, a disintegrating one is two or more competing, conflicting versions, and a disintegrated one lies at your feet like a shattered mirror, each shard reflecting a different story, that it was wonderful, that it was terrible, if only this had, if only that hadn’t.” In a thought that echoes Solnit’s perpetual emphasis on story and also recalls Tolstoy (who should be quoted in all discussion of hermit-dating) she says: I recommend reading it, should you ever find yourself abruptly romantically untangled in the harsh landscape of a vast nothingness (which is what all break-ups feel like, whether you’re in the middle of nowhere or not). Then there is a break-up which is so beautifully described. The beginning of the chapter is a dreamy stream-of-consciousness meditation upon that love (her love of the desert and its “hermit”) and love’s narrative path in general. There are animals, and many changes of color, and when you set that quiet circus into the stark desert setting you get something that seems like a bunch of Chagall surrounded by Georgia O’Keeffe. It wasn’t particular things but the space between them, that abundance of absence, that is the desert’s invitation.” “Once I loved a man who was a lot like the desert, and before that I loved the desert. So, in line with both themes, she begins the essay “Two Arrowheads” with this totally killer passage: It’s also a book about distance: where you are vs. Geographically, mentally, spiritually, etc. The premise of the book is that there are many ways to get lost. What follows turns out to be an examination of what intellectual probing (in the particular way of the essayist) may or may not offer the writing of fiction, based on a moment in the book when Solnit offers a somewhat detailed plot treatment of an imaginary novel.
And as I am a big believer that significant lessons may be learned by parsing out one’s own irritations, I wanted to jot it down here. Every couple of days I think back to how irritated I was when I read it and then I try on different reasons to explain why it bothered me so much. And it’s got that perfect Solnit touch that walks the line between universal and individual, abstract and personal.īut there is one weird section I’ve been struggling with. In between, I picked up A Field Guide to Getting Lost. I recently gave my reading notes for The Faraway Nearby, and I’m currently reading Wanderlust: A History of Walking. I’m on a bit of a Rebecca Solnit tear right now.
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