All Intensive Purposes

It's August, and apparently that means all books, all the time. Further to my post about Rebecca Solnit's new book, A Field Guide to Getting Lost, Mark Sorkin interviewed Solnit at Salon (subscription or submission to a brief advertisement required*).

Some of what she says about Field Guide:

So the writing itself was an exercise in getting lost?

In some ways. Most of my books have been driven by a linear story. Muybridge was born and then he died, to give you the simplest possible narrative. "Wanderlust" is a moderately chronological survey of the cultural, political, social and spiritual functions of walking. This one was much more intuitive in that things connect to things that lead you to things. The final chapter begins with a dream in which I'm carrying a tortoise in my childhood home. And then it talks about desert tortoises, and then the mythology of desert tortoises by the Chemehuevi, one of the tribes down there in the Mojave, and then it goes on to contrast them with the Death Valley '49ers -- you get the picture. I thought of it as a certain kind of story I hear on the radio sometimes, or something you hear in music, where somebody kind of improvises and noodles around, and there's often a moment where you think, "Do they have any idea where they're going? This is so far from where we started out." And then the last bit falls into place, and you realize that you haven't just been plodding through the underbrush but you've actually been traversing a sort of elegant circle.

Generally speaking, is your approach to the past sentimental, elegiac, analytical?

Can I just say yes?

Sure, but then I'd have to rephrase the question.

I always think historically. The way to understand something is by knowing where it came from, what it was before, how it got there, this kind of time-based analysis. And that same historical impulse can apply to your own sense of self. I think everybody's personal past is important to them, although when I was in my 20s, my childhood was much more vivid and emotionally compelling than it is now. I'm in my early 40s, and it's much further away. You know, you lose your childhood in order to grow up, and this constant arrival is the present. The book is about being "lost" in both senses: "lost" as in no longer there and "lost" as in not knowing where you are. It's about finding in some way the beauty and melancholy in living with those losses, in coming to terms with uncertainty. You have to let go of a lot of stuff, including versions of yourself and beliefs and delusions that you were right, or you get stuck.

* The advertisement I watched was for a French wine, Red Bicyclette. I noticed that their wine is sold as a syrah (or chardonnay or merlot), not under the name of the growing areas of Maury and Minervois, as would be customary for French wine. Maybe this is what it takes to sell French wine in the U.S. now?

edited to add: Actually, a little more research suggests that this is what happens when a U.S. company sells French wine. Red Bicyclette is produced by E. & J. Gallo, from grapes grown in the Languedoc. They started selling it about a year ago, which just shows that I haven't been looking at their bottles too carefully. "Gallo aims to compete with similar American-produced French wines, such as the fast-growing Fat Bastard line from Seattle's Click Wine Group, which is also sourced from the Languedoc and similarly priced. More than 400,000 cases of Fat Bastard were sold in the United States last year."