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River of Forgotten Days: A Journey Down the Mississippi in Search of La Salle
A poignant voyage of discovery down the great Mississippi.
Praised by such authors as John Barth, and George V. Higgins, Dan Spurr's gently powerful memoir, Steered by the Falling Stars , captured the hearts of readers with its story of death, rebirth, and redemption and its evocative description of life under sail. Now, Spurr takes us on another adventure, a voyage into not only the heartland of contemporary America but also back into the rough and ready days of exploration and discovery 250 years ago.
Following the trail of the enigmatic French explorer Rene de La Salle, Spurr takes his seven-year-old son Steve and his grown daughter Adriana down the Mississippi from Chicago to New Orleans in the rundown, underpowered Belle. Throughout the journey, the juxtaposition of modern America on the river's banks and the untamed wilds of La Salle's day, as revealed through journals and historical documents, illuminates the changes in the land and its people over the intervening centuries.
The inexorable flow of Spurr's clean and honest prose mirrors that of this greatest of American rivers. The voices of the river's denizens and the keen observations of the author's young and wide-eyed shipmates take us deep into the heart of an ever-changing American landscape.
Praised by such authors as John Barth, and George V. Higgins, Dan Spurr's gently powerful memoir, Steered by the Falling Stars , captured the hearts of readers with its story of death, rebirth, and redemption and its evocative description of life under sail. Now, Spurr takes us on another adventure, a voyage into not only the heartland of contemporary America but also back into the rough and ready days of exploration and discovery 250 years ago.
Following the trail of the enigmatic French explorer Rene de La Salle, Spurr takes his seven-year-old son Steve and his grown daughter Adriana down the Mississippi from Chicago to New Orleans in the rundown, underpowered Belle. Throughout the journey, the juxtaposition of modern America on the river's banks and the untamed wilds of La Salle's day, as revealed through journals and historical documents, illuminates the changes in the land and its people over the intervening centuries.
The inexorable flow of Spurr's clean and honest prose mirrors that of this greatest of American rivers. The voices of the river's denizens and the keen observations of the author's young and wide-eyed shipmates take us deep into the heart of an ever-changing American landscape.
288 pages, Hardcover
First published June 15, 1998
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September 12, 2021
Nevertheless, one morning on Main Street, Elkhart, Indiana, forsaking a sit-down breakfast, I pulled into the center turn lane in front of the Golden Arches. My intention was to enter the Marathon gas station just beyond, but on seeing that the drive was roped off and the pumps ripped out of the concrete, I checked both mirrors, then inched backward so that I might negotiate the turn into what Steve now called Micky D's.
"Just the drive-through," I said, mindful of the time. "Couple of potato cakes, OJ, coffee--a Danish if you like--then off we go."
As I was speaking, still slowly backing, the car suddenly stopped. Though I had heard no sound, the nature of the event was unmistakable.
Stepping out of the car I was confronted by a heavy-set man with long sideburns. He was dressed in a black western shirt and black jeans held up by a wide belt and large copper buckle, an absurd-looking clypeus of astonishing prominence.
"What the hell you think you're doin'?!" He slammed the door of his pickup, swiping at the handle as if it were not a piece of shit.
I looked stupidly around the corner of the boat transom. The outboard propeller was firmly embedded in the truck's grille--the image one might expect to see on an avant-garde postcard, the juxtaposition of unexpected forms belying the violent grotesquerie of torn and punctured metal. Of course I already knew that my propeller had pierced his radiator. Still...
I’m not sure what to make of Daniel Spurr’s River of Forgotten Days: A Journey down the Mississippi in Search of La Salle. Frankly, Spurr is a pessimistic, bitter bastard who someone thought should author a book about his bitter trek down the Mississippi River in a used motorboat. The historical bit about “searching” for La Salle provides a veneer to the work, giving it a bit of scholarship and class. But scholarship and class never surface in this murky book. His “historical sections” are choppy and difficult to follow. His organization is non-existent: He’ll veer from a journal of his family journey to memories of his dead son to an anecdote about La Salle in a few pages—hell, sometimes within a single sentence. The real problem with this work is a lack of consistent focus on what it is supposed to be: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values for the motorboat set? A contemporary, corrected La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West ? It’s neither.
Consider this passage where Spurr is turned away at a hotel:
We recrossed the river entering Memphis and stopped at the Best Western Riverbluff Hotel. The black desk clerk told us he had no rooms, but I had the distinct impression that he simply didn’t want us staying at his hotel. A sign welcomed the Rucker Family Reunion and from the outdoor pool we heard the screams and yelps of children dunking and splashing.
Feeling suddenly alien in our own land, like a black in white America, we stopped outside the hotel on a grassy bluff and studied the river below, which roiled under the highway bridge, folding into itself in shelves and eddies. A small runabout played with the current, keeping its bow pointed upstream in the way of hovering salmon contemplating the falls before it.
Why is the race of the desk clerk critical to this anecdote? Has Spurr never encountered a hotel without a vacancy? How is hearing a full pool in the background “evidence” the “black desk clerk…didn’t want us staying at his hotel?” Why does he make sure to mention the very hotel in Memphis in this book? Joseph and Mary were turned away at the inn, too, but they didn’t bitch about it in the Bible.
And what the hell is up with that second paragraph—progressing to “black in white America” to description of river to a simile of a boat like a “salmon contemplating the falls before it”? This sort of poor writing and vitriolic explosions towards people doing their job occurs over and over—especially as he proceeds further south. He cannot resist portraying all people encountered in the “south” as gothic, grotesque characters fresh off the pages of Faulkner or O’Connor:
His name, he said, was Anthony, and in his bucket were a number of small fry, crappies and river bream. His rod was bamboo, “the best kind.” The line was string and the hooks homemade. The worms he’d dug that morning, in the woods miles away. With a practiced motion he swung the hook and worm toward several rotten pilings, dropping the bait in their shadows. “Fish like it there,” he told Steve. “Put it in tight.”
Steven tried, but his technique was too eager, lacking deftness.
Some time past, Anthony said two black boys had killed a family on a boat, “right where yours is, yessir. This town ain’t been the same since. You keep you gun ready and enjoy yourself.” Which made me worry all the more about Adria.
Adria, by the way, is his college-age daughter who took off—alone--earlier to procure gasoline for the boat. Yep: Spurr is a hell of a father. He has a son who died playing on the train tracks he uses for emotional gravitas; he allows his seven year old to swim in water he won’t enter himself because it looks “snake-infested”; he leaves his daughter alone numerous times in areas he knows nothing about with people he doesn’t know.
Enough. Spurr is too arrogant and shallow to warrant further exploration or explanation. There are better journals of river travel out there; there are far better histories. If you ever have a hankering to read what it would be like to travel with an arrogant asshole down the Mississippi—then this is your book. Otherwise, forget these days and explore elsewhere.
"Just the drive-through," I said, mindful of the time. "Couple of potato cakes, OJ, coffee--a Danish if you like--then off we go."
As I was speaking, still slowly backing, the car suddenly stopped. Though I had heard no sound, the nature of the event was unmistakable.
Stepping out of the car I was confronted by a heavy-set man with long sideburns. He was dressed in a black western shirt and black jeans held up by a wide belt and large copper buckle, an absurd-looking clypeus of astonishing prominence.
"What the hell you think you're doin'?!" He slammed the door of his pickup, swiping at the handle as if it were not a piece of shit.
I looked stupidly around the corner of the boat transom. The outboard propeller was firmly embedded in the truck's grille--the image one might expect to see on an avant-garde postcard, the juxtaposition of unexpected forms belying the violent grotesquerie of torn and punctured metal. Of course I already knew that my propeller had pierced his radiator. Still...
I’m not sure what to make of Daniel Spurr’s River of Forgotten Days: A Journey down the Mississippi in Search of La Salle. Frankly, Spurr is a pessimistic, bitter bastard who someone thought should author a book about his bitter trek down the Mississippi River in a used motorboat. The historical bit about “searching” for La Salle provides a veneer to the work, giving it a bit of scholarship and class. But scholarship and class never surface in this murky book. His “historical sections” are choppy and difficult to follow. His organization is non-existent: He’ll veer from a journal of his family journey to memories of his dead son to an anecdote about La Salle in a few pages—hell, sometimes within a single sentence. The real problem with this work is a lack of consistent focus on what it is supposed to be: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values for the motorboat set? A contemporary, corrected La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West ? It’s neither.
Consider this passage where Spurr is turned away at a hotel:
We recrossed the river entering Memphis and stopped at the Best Western Riverbluff Hotel. The black desk clerk told us he had no rooms, but I had the distinct impression that he simply didn’t want us staying at his hotel. A sign welcomed the Rucker Family Reunion and from the outdoor pool we heard the screams and yelps of children dunking and splashing.
Feeling suddenly alien in our own land, like a black in white America, we stopped outside the hotel on a grassy bluff and studied the river below, which roiled under the highway bridge, folding into itself in shelves and eddies. A small runabout played with the current, keeping its bow pointed upstream in the way of hovering salmon contemplating the falls before it.
Why is the race of the desk clerk critical to this anecdote? Has Spurr never encountered a hotel without a vacancy? How is hearing a full pool in the background “evidence” the “black desk clerk…didn’t want us staying at his hotel?” Why does he make sure to mention the very hotel in Memphis in this book? Joseph and Mary were turned away at the inn, too, but they didn’t bitch about it in the Bible.
And what the hell is up with that second paragraph—progressing to “black in white America” to description of river to a simile of a boat like a “salmon contemplating the falls before it”? This sort of poor writing and vitriolic explosions towards people doing their job occurs over and over—especially as he proceeds further south. He cannot resist portraying all people encountered in the “south” as gothic, grotesque characters fresh off the pages of Faulkner or O’Connor:
His name, he said, was Anthony, and in his bucket were a number of small fry, crappies and river bream. His rod was bamboo, “the best kind.” The line was string and the hooks homemade. The worms he’d dug that morning, in the woods miles away. With a practiced motion he swung the hook and worm toward several rotten pilings, dropping the bait in their shadows. “Fish like it there,” he told Steve. “Put it in tight.”
Steven tried, but his technique was too eager, lacking deftness.
Some time past, Anthony said two black boys had killed a family on a boat, “right where yours is, yessir. This town ain’t been the same since. You keep you gun ready and enjoy yourself.” Which made me worry all the more about Adria.
Adria, by the way, is his college-age daughter who took off—alone--earlier to procure gasoline for the boat. Yep: Spurr is a hell of a father. He has a son who died playing on the train tracks he uses for emotional gravitas; he allows his seven year old to swim in water he won’t enter himself because it looks “snake-infested”; he leaves his daughter alone numerous times in areas he knows nothing about with people he doesn’t know.
Enough. Spurr is too arrogant and shallow to warrant further exploration or explanation. There are better journals of river travel out there; there are far better histories. If you ever have a hankering to read what it would be like to travel with an arrogant asshole down the Mississippi—then this is your book. Otherwise, forget these days and explore elsewhere.
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