Solo: Writers on Pilgrimage by Katherine Govier

by Katherine Govier

The strongest stories of place are often those that tell of a personal journeys made under compulsion to wonder at nature, to a place of potent memory, a grave or home of a hero, to the site of a disaster or miracle.In this compelling collection of essays, fifteen internationally acclaimed novelists, poets, and nonfiction writers share the personal journeys they felt impelled to make. Among them, Booker Prize winner Margaret Atwood travels to the northern site where the members of the Franklin expedition perished. Roddy Doyle (Ireland) takes us to the 1989 World Cup. Nuruddin Farah, described by the New York Review of Books as “the most important African novelist to emerge in the last twenty-five years,” returns to his native, war-torn Somalia. Orange Prize winner Kate Grenville (Australia) travels to the bush and the house of a convict ancestor. Douglas Coupland takes us on an airplane. Ivan Klíma (Czech Republic), whose books and plays have been translated into 29 languages, visits the concentration camp where he was interned as a boy. Mark Kurlansky (U.S.), bestselling author of Cod and Salt, spends a week in a medieval monastery listening to plainchant. Wendy Law-Yone (Myanmar), author of The Coffin Tree and Irrawaddy Tango, follows the road that brought her Chinese and British ancestors to Burma. The Booker Prize-nominated Michael Collins (Ireland) writes of a foot race high in the Himalayas. And the editor of this collection, Katherine Govier, visits the grave of Miyamoto Musashi, the sixteenth-century Japanese sword master.

Genres: Travel, Short Stories, Nonfiction

Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Katherine Govier is the author of eleven novels, three short story collections, and a collection of nursery rhymes. Her most recent novel is The Three Sisters Bar and Hotel (HarperAvenue). Here previous novel, The Ghost Brush (published in the US as The Printmaker's Daughter), is about the daughter of the famous Japanese printmaker, Hokusai, creator of The Great Wave. Her novel Creation, about John James Audubon in Labrador, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year in 2003.

Katherine's fiction and non-fiction has appeared in the United Kingdom, the United States, and throughout the Commonwealth, and in translation in Holland, Italy, Turkey, Spain, Japan, Romania, Latvia and Slovenia. She is the winner of Canada's Marian Engel Award for a woman writer (1997) and the Toronto Book Award (1992). Creation was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year in 2003.

Katherine has been instrumental in establishing three innovative writing programs. In 1989, with teacher Trevor Owen, she helped found Writers in Electronic Residence. In 2011 she founded The Shoe Project, a writing workshop for immigrant and refugee women. She continues as the Chair of its Board of Directors. In 2019 Katherine was made a member of the Order of Canada.

She has edited two collections of travel essays, Solo: Writers on Pilgrimage and WIthout a Guide.

Reviews

[Magdelanye · Rating 4 out of 5]

travel is getting dicey...has lost it's serendipity...still we travel nonetheless.
from the intro by Katherine Govier pvi

It's a choice. You can feel safe, but be blind. Or, you can see, and know just how small you are.
from the story Mr. Wisemans Villa by Kate Grenville p20

Every perspective, it seemed, was deceptive.
from the essay Worlds End by Nino Ricci

With her keen sense of place, Katherine Govier has selected, for the most part, a splendid array of solo pilgrims to narrate their own accounts for the reader follow along. Not at all out of place is Margaret Atwoods account of her voyage in the illustrious company of an international team of scientists, historians, explorers and artists travelling to the Arctic Archipelago.

Weren't the goals of the pilgrim and the exile the same?
from The old Burma Road by Wendy Law-Yone p175

How much of the essence of a pilgrimage resides in the intention, rather than in the journey as such. from Margaret Atwoods account To Beechy Island p205

A pilgrimage begins with a vow. It can be formal but it need not be ornate. I think that what Margaret A is saying is that what matters most is honouring the intention instead of getting bogged down in the details or lost in the script. This implies to me an openness, a willingness even, to abandon the script for whatever reality requires. Sounds good, yet even so, a pilgrimage is more than intentional, and in reality requires work and careful attention to details that link together to illuminate the "the journey as such".

There are times when what is forbidden takes on an aura of the sacred, especially when what is forbidden used to be ones home.

from Burma Road ibid p174

[Kim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some essays were superb - Joy Kogawa & Kate Grenville particularly - while others were quite the range. Lovely to travel in different ways and to different places, though, and see authors write about their own lived experience.

[Old Man Aries · Rating 2 out of 5]

Un libro di racconti può nascere in vari modi: anzitutto può essere una raccolta di racconti di un autore specifico, situazione abbastanza a sé stante, dato che l'unico criterio di scelta può essere qualitativo, cronologico o “di genere”; personalmente preferisco le raccolte complete e cronologiche, ma si tratta di gusti personali.Poi ci sono le raccolte a posteriori: si decide di raccogliere racconti che abbiano in comune qualcosa (tipo anno di pubblicazione, genere, argomento, ecc...) e si cerca di filtrare il meglio di ciò che si ha a disposizione.Infine c'è il caso forse più raro, ma anche più rischioso: si chiede ad un gruppo di autori di scrivere un racconto su un certo argomento e, sostanzialmente, si incrociano le dita.Era avvenuto all'incirca così, con risultati molto gradevoli, con il libro dei sogni di Sandman ed è avvenuto così, ma a mio parere con una qualità ben più modesta, per “Dovevo andarci”.L'idea è sicuramente molto carina: 15 autori parlano di viaggi alla ricerca di se stessi o di una particolare meta; dei veri e propri pellegrinaggi, siano essi dell'anima o del fisico.Definita l'idea, però, il risultato non è sempre dei migliori: certo, ci sono alcuni racconti estremamente piacevoli da leggere e che lasciano un buon sapore in bocca, che aiutano a riflettere o fanno viaggiare il lettore assieme allo scrittore; altri invece lasciano il tempo che trovano o, caso più unico che raro, sono quasi illeggibili.Sicuramente parte del problema sta nella mia diversa sensibilità rispetto a chi quei racconti li ha scritti e vissuti, d'altronde è parte del rischio con certi tipi di argomenti, fatto sta che quell'emozione che speravo mi arrivasse mi ha forse sfiorato in alcuni momenti, ma nulla di più.Senza infamia e senza lode, direi.

[Cinthia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Most of the pieces felt contrived, as they were written specifically for the collection and some could have used further editing. The real gems were "Air Hunger" by Michael Collings, "My Terezin Visits" by Ivan Klima and "The Key to the Church" by Mark Kurlansky. They shined above the rest for their original and transformative content and will stay with me for some time.

[Margaret Lottridge · Rating 3 out of 5]

Places we travel to have a psychic pull that we can only clear by going there until we understand what the place means to us.