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A review by brontherun
Off the Road: A Modern-Day Walk Down the Pilgrim's Route Into Spain by Jack Hitt
3.0
Camino books are a strange breed of travel memoir. This one felt somewhat dated to me, published in 1994, and perhaps that is why it didn't resonate with me as much as some of the recent accounts.
Hitt does do a great job of steeping you in the history of the road, the crusades, and the nature of relics that play a crucial role in the growth of Santiago as a pilgrimage site. Relics are such a fascinating thing for me - be they religious or secular (one of my favorite books centers around Descartes' bones). The mysteries, miracles, and magnetism of relics created their own economy and impacted the course of organized religion.
Per Hitt, "Relics were valuable for many reasons. They attracted throngs of worshipers. They raised funds. They created prestige and celebrity. They caused miracles." Ah, the power of relics! It is genuinely fascinating to read about the economic boom-bust cycle they created.
Miracles, sainthood, and how the Catholic Church and Popes sort these issues out is also discussed and examined. Sometimes the sheer proliferation of local miracles (for local, think miracles equivalent to modern images of the Virgin Mary in potato chips) became problematic. "In Rome, the task of controlling the outbreak of miracles and streamlining their meaning became a thousand-year nightmare." Imagine the Popes having to deal - for a millennium - with spin control of people all over Christendom reporting miracles. It would be, say, like Mark Zuckerberg trying to control inaccurate content on his social media sites.
So all the history and his colorful commentary on history would have likely led me to strongly recommend Hitt's account of the Camino. Except, his pilgrimage experience was so alien from mine -drunken nights out, walking with two mules as part of his pilgrim group- that it lent a feel of unreality to the journey that he lost me. I get his description of the pilgrim unplugged from technology and the velocity of the interconnected world. That has only become more significant since 1994. But overall, it felt like he was looking for unique 'characters' with whom to walk, and perhaps that is why he chose to align with the groups he did.
Hitt does do a great job of steeping you in the history of the road, the crusades, and the nature of relics that play a crucial role in the growth of Santiago as a pilgrimage site. Relics are such a fascinating thing for me - be they religious or secular (one of my favorite books centers around Descartes' bones). The mysteries, miracles, and magnetism of relics created their own economy and impacted the course of organized religion.
Per Hitt, "Relics were valuable for many reasons. They attracted throngs of worshipers. They raised funds. They created prestige and celebrity. They caused miracles." Ah, the power of relics! It is genuinely fascinating to read about the economic boom-bust cycle they created.
Miracles, sainthood, and how the Catholic Church and Popes sort these issues out is also discussed and examined. Sometimes the sheer proliferation of local miracles (for local, think miracles equivalent to modern images of the Virgin Mary in potato chips) became problematic. "In Rome, the task of controlling the outbreak of miracles and streamlining their meaning became a thousand-year nightmare." Imagine the Popes having to deal - for a millennium - with spin control of people all over Christendom reporting miracles. It would be, say, like Mark Zuckerberg trying to control inaccurate content on his social media sites.
So all the history and his colorful commentary on history would have likely led me to strongly recommend Hitt's account of the Camino. Except, his pilgrimage experience was so alien from mine -drunken nights out, walking with two mules as part of his pilgrim group- that it lent a feel of unreality to the journey that he lost me. I get his description of the pilgrim unplugged from technology and the velocity of the interconnected world. That has only become more significant since 1994. But overall, it felt like he was looking for unique 'characters' with whom to walk, and perhaps that is why he chose to align with the groups he did.