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A review by jessferg
Outside Lies Magic: Regaining History and Awareness in Everyday Places by John R. Stilgoe
3.0
Stilgoe's choice of making a hero out of the "explorer" in order to show us the places behind the highways is an interesting idea but the follow through is lacking. The language is terrible - sloppy and excessive sentence structure, strange turns of phrase, outdated word selection, unnecessary asides that distract the reader - making it very difficult to find the sentiment at the bottom of the word pile.
Just by way of example, follow this: "Behind almost all commercial strips the explorer moves along the secret rights-of-way that few motorists find, that cheat all motorists, even the motorized police officer smelling trouble. A narrow ribbon snakes from one parking lot to another, through the trees on undeveloped sites, across the junk heaped up from aborted construction and demolition projects, always connecting one loading-doc area to another." What are we talking about again?
What is more interesting about this book is it's ability to highlight how dramatically our culture has already changed since 1998. In less than 20 years, we no longer have most of the "behind the scenes" areas Stilgoe highlights. His dressing down of the Post Office for not offering rural services that are as convenient as city services has a rather black comedic humor to it given our current insights. His discussion of railroads is almost irrelevant except as a history lesson.
Despite the title, there is no moralizing here, per se, and this third party "explorer" keeps the reader from being terribly invested. I find this slightly unfortunate as we now see all he writes about were signs of the crumbling structure of our cities, suburbs, and rural areas and the loss of socialization and community.
(Also - for any book freaks, the edition I read did not look like any of those listed on Goodreads despite a matching ISBN. Only 187 pages in the cover looks as the one in this review does (a great review, too) http://objectguerilla.blogspot.com/2012/02/outside-lies-magic.html)
Just by way of example, follow this: "Behind almost all commercial strips the explorer moves along the secret rights-of-way that few motorists find, that cheat all motorists, even the motorized police officer smelling trouble. A narrow ribbon snakes from one parking lot to another, through the trees on undeveloped sites, across the junk heaped up from aborted construction and demolition projects, always connecting one loading-doc area to another." What are we talking about again?
What is more interesting about this book is it's ability to highlight how dramatically our culture has already changed since 1998. In less than 20 years, we no longer have most of the "behind the scenes" areas Stilgoe highlights. His dressing down of the Post Office for not offering rural services that are as convenient as city services has a rather black comedic humor to it given our current insights. His discussion of railroads is almost irrelevant except as a history lesson.
Despite the title, there is no moralizing here, per se, and this third party "explorer" keeps the reader from being terribly invested. I find this slightly unfortunate as we now see all he writes about were signs of the crumbling structure of our cities, suburbs, and rural areas and the loss of socialization and community.
(Also - for any book freaks, the edition I read did not look like any of those listed on Goodreads despite a matching ISBN. Only 187 pages in the cover looks as the one in this review does (a great review, too) http://objectguerilla.blogspot.com/2012/02/outside-lies-magic.html)