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ldrobinette's review against another edition
2.0
This book was painful. I read it as a begrudging sort of solidarity with my wife who was assigned this book for a college class. [Don't even get me started on the problems with assigning this book to students.]
Anyway, the book chronicles Sanders's search for hope after an argument with his son. Okay, so first of all, Sanders conflates a search for hope with a search for meaning amidst a life of privilege. He so desperately wants to be important enough to warrant the praise of Krakauer's Into the Wild or Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning.
Something Sanders is good at? Writing about nature. I am by no means an outdoor enthusiast, but he was able to describe nature and the environment in a way that made the idea of sleeping on the frozen ground after hiking and sweating all day seem worth it. There was a point in the book when I thought Sanders was going to make his search for hope into a plea for people to treat the environment better and to preserve the Earth for future generations.
But... No such luck.
Instead, he spends seemingly endless pages describing a version of nature that seeks to make you feel guilty for liking grocery stores and mattresses. With this point, Sanders makes it clear that he doesn't understand anyone that works paycheck to paycheck or that didn't receive a liberal education extolling the values of Thoreau and memorizing poetry.
My biggest problem with all of this is not that he developed this view of the world or that he decided to chronicle his existential crisis. To each their own and all that. However, I cannot manage to get past the authoritative tone of superiority with which he tries to present his subjective understanding of the world as objective Truth.
Anyway, the book chronicles Sanders's search for hope after an argument with his son. Okay, so first of all, Sanders conflates a search for hope with a search for meaning amidst a life of privilege. He so desperately wants to be important enough to warrant the praise of Krakauer's Into the Wild or Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning.
Something Sanders is good at? Writing about nature. I am by no means an outdoor enthusiast, but he was able to describe nature and the environment in a way that made the idea of sleeping on the frozen ground after hiking and sweating all day seem worth it. There was a point in the book when I thought Sanders was going to make his search for hope into a plea for people to treat the environment better and to preserve the Earth for future generations.
But... No such luck.
Instead, he spends seemingly endless pages describing a version of nature that seeks to make you feel guilty for liking grocery stores and mattresses. With this point, Sanders makes it clear that he doesn't understand anyone that works paycheck to paycheck or that didn't receive a liberal education extolling the values of Thoreau and memorizing poetry.
My biggest problem with all of this is not that he developed this view of the world or that he decided to chronicle his existential crisis. To each their own and all that. However, I cannot manage to get past the authoritative tone of superiority with which he tries to present his subjective understanding of the world as objective Truth.
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