{"id":31464,"date":"2012-05-11T18:04:30","date_gmt":"2012-05-11T22:04:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=31464"},"modified":"2012-05-11T20:35:36","modified_gmt":"2012-05-12T00:35:36","slug":"walking-while-reading","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/05\/11\/walking-while-reading\/","title":{"rendered":"Walking While Reading"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I\u2019ve been reading a few things lately on the subject of walking, including treatments philosophical (Rousseau\u2019s <\/em>Reveries of the Solitary Walker, Thoreau\u2019s \u201cWalking\u201d), narrative (Walser\u2019s<\/em> The Walk, new from New Directions next month), and poetic (O\u2019Hara\u2019s <\/em>Lunch Poems and some Wordsworth). I\u2019m thinking of writing an essay on the subject and noting that my list so far consists of only dead men. Can you recommend any writers who are female and\/or living who have written about walking?<\/em><\/p>\n

\nRebecca Solnit is female and very much alive. You should start with her Wanderlust: A History of Walking<\/em><\/a>. And if city walking interests you\u2014or the subject of walking with one\u2019s mother\u2014you will want to read Vivian Gornick\u2019s modern classic, Fierce Attachments<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

\nAs it happens, I\u2019m in the middle of a brand new book about walking: The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot<\/em><\/a>, by Robert MacFarlane. I keep saving it for bed to make it last. The American edition won\u2019t be out until October, but the British edition comes out early next month; if you can possibly wait for it, I would. You will want to read MacFarlane, above all for the wealth of his references, but also for the unabashed, Norsey music of his prose:<\/p>\n

\n

I\u2019ve read them all, these old-way wanderers, and often I’ve encountered versions of the same beguiling idea: that walking such paths might lead you\u2013in Hudson\u2019s phrase\u2013to \u201cslip back out of this modern world.\u201d Repeatedly, these wanderers spoke of the tingle of connection, of walking as seance, of voices heard along the way. Bash\u014d is said to have told a student that while wandering north he often spoke with long-dead poets of the past, including his twelfth-century forbear Saigyo: he therefore came to imagine his travels as conversations between \u201ca ghost and a ghost-to-be.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nWith so much to read out there\u2014and more being published all the time\u2014how do you find the time to get through it all?<\/p>\n

\nPlease don\u2019t quote my actual name.<\/em><\/p>\n

\nDear \u201cStefan\u201d (not his actual name),<\/p>\n

\nYou\u2019re mixing me up with Kurt Andersen\u2014and I have no idea how he gets through it all. I get through almost none of it. It just sits there on my desk and table and shelves, glowering, until our interns box it up and take it to the Strand. <\/p>\n

\nBut the nice thing about books is that they don\u2019t go anywhere. The good ones keep. <\/p>\n

Have a question for the editors of <\/em>The Paris Review? E-mail<\/a> us.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been reading a few things lately on the subject of walking, including treatments philosophical (Rousseau\u2019s Reveries of the Solitary Walker, Thoreau\u2019s \u201cWalking\u201d), narrative (Walser\u2019s The Walk, new from New Directions next month), and poetic (O\u2019Hara\u2019s Lunch Poems and some Wordsworth). I\u2019m thinking of writing an essay on the subject and noting that my list […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[3416,971,2392,7501,7502,7499,7498,3638,3756,2629,7500],"class_list":["post-31464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ask-the-paris-review","tag-basho","tag-frank-ohara","tag-kurt-anderson","tag-rebecca-solnit","tag-robert-macfarlane","tag-rousseau","tag-saigyo","tag-thoreau","tag-vivian-gornick","tag-walking","tag-walser"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nWalking While Reading by Lorin Stein<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"May 11, 2012 \u2013 I\u2019ve been reading a few things lately on the subject of walking, including treatments philosophical (Rousseau\u2019s Reveries of the Solitary Walker, Thoreau\u2019s\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" 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