All Intensive Purposes

Rebecca Solnit is a font of all sorts of interesting ideas about California's cultural history, among other things. It took me a while to pick up on her work, but lately it's hard to pick up a copy of the San Francisco Chronicle without running into her thoughts on something or other -- she is prolific and ranges widely, and the Chronicle's editors do not tire of checking in with her. Her latest book, A Field Guide to Getting Lost, is a collection of essays with a theme loosely running through them. Rather than write my own review, this one by the Chronicle's David Kipen captures my feelings well:

River of Shadows may still be Solnit's best book, if only because her resistance to the conventions of straightforward biography gave her something to measure herself against. In writing the life of the photographer who proved that all four of a horse's hooves leave the ground during a gallop, she could pursue the ideas that have always animated her thinking -- art history, natural history, environmental history -- while allowing Muybridge to keep her from free-associating out of all compass.

This book, by comparison, with a subject so slippery as sometimes to seem no subject at all, makes greater demands on a reader. The Muybridge bio was Solnit on the rocks with a twist; the new book is Solnit straight, no chaser. Some who loved the earlier volume may find the new whiskey's kick too strong, too unrelieved. But for those readers who admire the play of Solnit's intelligence across any landscape -- or no landscape at all -- just the fumes from A Field Guide to Getting Lost can disorient you for days.

I enjoyed reading this book very much, and yet it was something of a relief to finish. I'm looking forward to reading Solnit's book about Muybridge, which is lurking on the shelf. My pal G. recommends it highly.

Previous Field Guide posts here and here.