Hold the Enlightenment by Tim Cahill

by Tim Cahill

In Hold the Enlightenment , America’s favorite and funniest adventure writer returns with his most entertaining collection of essays yet, as he travels the globe and faces down challenges that are animal, topographical—and human.Hold the Enlightenment takes Tim Cahill to sites as far-flung as Saharan salt mines, the Congolese jungle, and Hanford, Washington, home of the largest toxic-waste dump in the Western hemisphere. With his trademark wit and insight, Cahill describes stalking the legendary Caspian tiger in the mountains bordering Iraq, slogging through a pitch-black Australian eucalyptus forest to find the nocturnal platypus, diving with great white sharks in South Africa, staving off enlightenment at a yoga retreat in Jamaica, and much, much more. In these essays, vivid and masterly storytelling combine with outrageously sly humor and jolts of real emotion to show one of the most popular journalists of our time at the absolute peak of his game.

Genres: Travel, Nonfiction, Humor, Essays, Short Stories, Biography, Travelogue

Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Tim Cahill (born 1944 in Nashville, Tennessee) is a travel writer who lives in Livingston, Montana, United States. He is a founding editor of Outside magazine and currently serves as an "Editor at Large" for the magazine.

Reviews

[Pam · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think Cahill is more fun to read in individual bites. I’ve always enjoyed his articles in Outside Magazine. Here, some of the chapters are hair-raising, some are thoughtful almost poignant. They are very uneven however. Some did not interest me a bit.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have always enjoyed reading Tim Cahill's adventure travel essays, and Hold the Enlightenment: More Travel, Less Bliss is no exception. I sometimes wonder if, in the end, it is boring always to be going on adventures, such as kayaking the Missouri Breaks or searching out the FARC guerrillas of Colombia. If you have an adventure each week or two, doesn't that somehow militate against the special purpose that travel and adventure play in our lives? Does it ever become humdrum?

Some of my friends and acquaintances think I am too adventurous in going to South America five times in the last eleven years. But those were once a year events that I needed to stay on an even keel in my life. And I have not contacted any guerrillas nor attempted to make demands of my aging body. In 2006, I broke my right shoulder in Tierra del Fuego. But that was not on an adventure: I slipped in a blizzard and slammed against a high curb at the corner of Magallanes and Rivadavia in Ushuaia. (Now there is a traffic signal at that intersection.)

In the world of travel literature, Cahill is excellent light entertainment. I don't think he is at the level of Bruce Chatwin or Paul Theroux, but he does make for good reading.

[Rex Fuller · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tim Cahill went on the many adventures in these stories. A quick-tongued devil pointing out the absurd rode along. Guess which one wrote the stories. You'll meet Fabrice, the con man, a Liberian who runs his scam on Cahill while they do what all travelers do, wait, in this case for paperwork to clear. You enter South African great white feeding grounds in a chicken wire cage. You climb el Capitan knowing a life-threatening maneuver with the rope is necessary at the top. And in one, you just hike with the dog to "not actually" pray--he is a lapsed Catholic--in the woods for a little girl going through spine surgery. Get the picture? No hitting you over the head, but tugging unmistakably at you in each one. And, like a sip of Pappy Van Winkle's, the pleasure is immediate, brief, and one you'll want again.

[C · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had this listed as read, and realized I hadn't actually finished it, so I finally snagged it off the shelf and started over.

It takes a mental gearshift to get back in the swing of Cahill's writing. There's a particular distinctive style to it that, unless you don't slow the heck down, you miss out. I like it - it's a good mix of snark, humor, danger and description. I felt like I'd like pictures... just because, descriptive as his writing is, I still wanted to see (and see where my imagination got it wrong). I can look those up later. I looked up the volcano he talks about in one of the articles...that was pretty incredible.

I like most of his books, but this one is a hit for me in particular because it has my favorite Tim Cahill article of all time, and the one that got me hooked on his writing, "Panic." It's about his experience with anxiety/panic disorder, and after reading it in Outside magazine, years ago, it blew me away that this guy - this person who has done *everything* under the sun, was adventure writing before adventure writing became a "thing," was cave diving and sky diving and hiking through jungles before "extreme sports" became popular, who has fallen off cliffs, suffered dysentery in Mexican jungles, and tromped around deserts... could get laid out by panic disorder.

Having an anxiety/panic disorder, myself, this was a total game changer. Could it be I wasn't a big wimp? Could it be that just trying to "tough it out" wasn't enough? Could I let go of the shame and guilt attached to this thing that was "all in my head"? Most importantly, could I get over it someday?

It took years, after reading his article, to get a handle on my own panic attacks, but having read that article, I was relieved to know I wasn't alone in what I was feeling. If someone like the guy who has done it all could get caught by it, then I felt a little better.


Of the other articles in the book (most of his books are collections of his articles): I LOVED the one on the volcano - that was chilling. Loved the salt mines, gorillas, bug screams, travel tips and shark cage articles.

There was a really good line in there I bookmarked to quote later...I finished the book, thought "what's this bookmark doing in here?" and yanked it out of the book...and remembered right afterwards why it was there. Ah well. I'll add it if I find it again. Probably something about life and perspective, usually is!

[Nathan Albright · Rating 4 out of 5]

When you read a book by the author, you have a good idea of what you are going to get, and that is short travel pieces that have humor and often a fair amount of beta male perspective and hipster politics.  To be sure, there are elements of this that I find less enjoyable, but the humor and general sad sack nature of the author is enough to cover a multitude of sins--it is easier to appreciate the author the less you take him seriously and the more you take him as a figure of fun.  Like the author's other books, this contains mostly articles that the author has written for magazines that I don't happen to read, and that most people probably haven't bothered to read either.  Having them in a convenient and easy-to-read volume like this one is certainly worthwhile, as it provides material that is funny and that occasionally offers larger insights (though not as often as the author would wish) on the world that the author finds himself traveling in with a low degree of competence at being sufficiently manly to handle his adventures properly.  Since this schtick is intentional, though, one doesn't feel too bad for the author.

The author begins this book somewhat aggressively in seeking to attack a reviewer who said that the author was not attractive to women, which shows a certain combativeness on his part.  Aside from that, the essays are what one would expect--the title essay is a humorous one on yoga, there are essays about the search for a tiger thought extinct that may in fact still exist, and the author finds himself in strange locales and interesting places.  He travels to Mali in search of salt mines, hunts for the adorable platypus, visits the house of Boots in Argentina, better known as the home of Butch Cassidy, ponders the overcrowding of a boat on the Congo River, shows off an ability to act like an entranced duck to some people in Bali, and discusses some of the weird (and unclean) foods he has tried.  There are essays about swimming with Great White Sharks off the coast of South Africa, discusses the crimes of dolphins that make them human-like, visits cowpersons in Tanzania, and talks about his brother's dealing in pots, along with some travel experiences and numerous other stories that will occasionally amuse or annoy the reader.

It is refreshing, in a way, that the author does not hide away from talking about the less pleasant aspects of his character.  Most telling is his admission of being a bully when it came to instructing others on travel writing, in which he brings a writer to tears, making her leave the seminar in humiliation after he picks on the lead sentence in something she had written, without appreciating that not everyone writes to a mass audience.  The fact that the author does write to a mass audience does make this easier to relate to, as this sort of writing would be pretty insufferable if the author added to his other issues that of being a snob as well.  If one is going to be a putz, at least one should be a putz who has the good sense of trying to relate to others and to be someone that one can laugh with and not take too seriously rather than someone who combines incompetence and arrogance together.  That said, let us judge not lest we shall be judged.  This is a book that is meant to be enjoyed, and also meant to demonstrate a certain degree of wit and humor and as it generally succeeds one should not be too hard on it.

[Nicole · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another successful collection of essays and stories by Cahill. There is a wide variety featured in this assembly of tales so one or two is bound to hold the interest of most readers. Each chapter is an autonomous tale so this is a book that can be easily digested in stages and at one's leisure. The majority feature trips in the somewhat distant past (i.e. occurred more than twenty years ago) as Cahill has been a travel writer for over four decades so he's accumulated a lot of mileage with which to construct essays, short stories, and chapters to entice readers. Anyone who has enjoyed either his featured articles in "Outside Magazine" or one of his previous anthologies will no doubt find this entry equally entertaining. Cahill's writing makes me yearn to travel even more and see places I've yet to explore but at the same time, maybe not so much at the extremes that may of his adventures seem to take him. I have no interest in traveling to war-torn countries, meeting up with guerilla fractions, finding out what it is like to be arrested or stopped at gunpoint. Nor do I want to find out how panic-stricken I can be if I opted to rappel beyond my level of training and find myself dangling over a mountain cliff. I am just fine living *those* experiences vicariously through Cahill, turning his pages leisurely while sitting at home comfortably on my sofa.

[Mitch · Rating 3 out of 5]

Perhaps this book deserves a higher rating than I gave it. Clearly the author is competent (and more) in composing and writing, and I enjoy both his varied travel adventure subjects and his sometimes surprising and sharp humor.

The downgrade is solely due to his references to whoring and drinking to excess. Certainly these activities wouldn't bother many people, but they do me...which is why his book got a bit down-rated.

There is much to interest readers of this type of writing regardless, and the humor lights it all up.

[David Lumpkin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tim Cahill is an entertaining writer. His prose are a mixture of adventure, history, everyday life and impossible situations. He always applies his unrelenting humor and usually a just a few well placed emotive comments or sub-stories. He can, at times, be inspiring, but you won't notice that through the laughter. I have read all of his books and have them in my library. I've read Tim Cahill for 30 years, or more.

[Kim Clarke · Rating 5 out of 5]

An adventure is never and adventure when it’s happening. Challenging experiences need time to ferment, and an adventure is simply physical and emotional discomfort recollected in tranquility.

There were several people at the bar, and though some undoubtedly lived a yoga lifestyle, others did not. No one talked about Obstacles Along the Path. There were even a few smokers, and several who drank alcohol, though hardly in the quantities I find refreshing.

[Mender · Rating 1 out of 5]

The title story is first, and it's just an incredible piece of empty narcissism.

Never managed to get into the stories following that, which is a shame because they seemed quite wild adventures. I'm not naturally interested in short stories and nothing in a quick flick through grabbed me, and the author isn't someone I wanted to spend any more time with. So. That.

[Kelly · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's not bad, but I couldn't finish it when the book turned to be more about the author talking about how amazing and funny he was, and less about the places he went to. I wanted to like this book since it's so highly recommended, but I just couldn't get into it.

[Suzanne Fournier · Rating 4 out of 5]

A more introspective collection of Cahill's writing, one almost feels like he's grown up and finally settled down. "Hold the Enlightment" chapter is particularly enjoyable, and you'll likely shed a tear reading "Trusty and Grace".

[JDK1962 · Rating 3 out of 5]

A hit-or-miss collection of magazine articles in the "adventure travel" genre. I liked them alright, but they're magazine articles: none of them are all that ambitious.

[Kathy Shea · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book. Tim Cahill is a talented writer, but I only connected to paragraphs of writing instead of the totality of this book. I quit reading half way through.

[Carolyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

An incredibly interesting man with varied and brilliant thoughts transcribed in his writing. The view of "his world" is complex with an emotional, almost spiritual assessment while packing his stories with humor and a sort of self-deprecating style. The places he takes you are literally all over the world. His friends that support his journeys and him are varied also.

Reading this 30 something essays helps to bring you close to his activities and experiences and help you to add him on your friend list.

[Fayette · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tim Cahill can write, and he doesn’t travel to ordinary places. I’d put him at the top of the travel writing genre and will read more of his books.

[Dan Geiger · Rating 5 out of 5]

Life is simply a process of learning and growing which Tim demonstrates with the term enlightenment.

[Kym Lucas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cahill never disappoints.

[Darla Ebert · Rating 3 out of 5]

One can see that Tim Cahill is a good writer, some of his stories are imaginative and even kind of funny. However much of his writing, for me, is ponderous.

[Ann · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of his previously published essays ranging from scary to poignant.

[Dennis Blanchette · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is amazing. Cahill is the master. Adventure travel with humor. My favorite travel writer of all time. Read anything he writes.

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tim Cahill helped found Outside magazine and he's done some serious traveling. Most of the articles featured in this collection appeared in Men's Journal, and they're all interesting in some way. Some of the essays seem a bit underdeveloped, possibly due to the constraints of the medium. On the whole, there's almost always a nugget of something substantial at the heart of these works, and that raises the essays above classic adventure-travel narrative into a much more interesting and rewarding realm. The title displays the irony felt in most of the works, and the self-deprecating anti-romanticism usually works. It's hard to make a coherent collection out of this type of trait, but the articles are good enough on their own to reward dipping in now and again. This would be a great commuter read.

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the latest of adventure travel writer Tim Cahill’s nine travel collections including such illustrious titles as Pass the Butterworms, and Jaguars Ripped my Flesh. Cahill’s style is conversational, entertaining, well-researched and often LOL funny. This collection starts at a yoga retreat where he pokes fun at those who think they are closer to universal wisdom than the rest of us, but admits he does experience some benefits, like feeling better. He takes us to Bali in Entranced Duck, Mali before the troubles, a wild road trip to Banos in Ecuador and shark diving in South Africa. I especially enjoyed EvilFish a tongue and cheek conversation about deviant dolphin behavior. Tim has no lofty aspirations with his writing other than to share with readers things, people and places he cares about in a way they can enjoy. Mission accomplished.

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

In bygone years, I was a big fan of Tim Cahill, but I was less impressed with this collection. It must be hard to be in the same camp as authors like Bill Bryson (especially when you look like his long lost brother), when your audience sits down, opens your book and demands "Amuse me". In this, I feel Cahill tries hard, but his heart's not really in it. He seems to be a bit more jaded and uninspired by his own material. It's readable enough, but in many of the stories I felt a bit like Karl from the Ricky Gervais podcast, asking, "Okay, go to Papa, but is it worth it?" The one story that did interest me was the one called "Panic", where Cahill admitted rampant anxiety attacks kept him in the house for two months, too terrified to face the world. I've nearly been there and done that!

[Lara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Man, why did it take me so long to finally read this? Maybe it was just an attempt to savor the Tim Cahill, since now I only have one book of his left unread (other than the John Wayne Gacy one, which I'm just going to pretend isn't there).

Anyway, as usual, I delighted in Cahill's sense of humor (mainly a mix of self-deprecation, sarcasm, and a keen eye for the absurd), even when telling stories about being threatened by Malian guerillas or attempting to locate a fellow traveler lost in the desert. I prefer his stuff to Bill Bryson's any day!

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tim Cahill's dry reports from wild wild adventures - accidentally charging a troop of gorillas, weighing up the dangers of being in the sea off South Africa where Great White Sharks pick seals off, etc - are all entertaining to read, so much so that even I, a die hard lover of what Cole Porter called The Great Indoors, feel the urge to get out and experience nature red in tooth and claw. (And then I pour a Talisker, and the urge drifts away)

A splendid book, nonetheless

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tim Cahill is a really good travel writer. I got to know him by reading Outside magazine, and a former boss got me this book for Christmas back in 2002. I'm just now getting around to reading it. It's a collection of short stories about his trips to various exotic places and the people, animals, events, etc. he encounters. If you like travel, enjoy some pretty good humor and really solid writing, you'll like this.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

This wonderful writer creates another definition of travel, - adventurous, world's hot spots and off the beaten paths. The writer is fearless, daring, who had his share of tragedies. The book is divided by thirty mini chapters, all cover different parts of the world and the Northwest. Some of the chapters took my breadth away. "I don't travel like this" For the traveler, and the traveler at heart.

[David R. · Rating 4 out of 5]

An engaging collection of short essays concerning some of Cahill's adventures in various dangerous, insane, or fascinating travels. Cahill has a wonderfully eccentric humor in the face of situations that would undo most people. I especially enjoyed the story about his foray into Colombia with an adrenalin junkie friend. And the account of "gorilla science" before the 3rd graders. Wonderful storytelling!

[Mads · Rating 5 out of 5]

Collection of magazine articles and essays. "Professor Cahill's Travel 101" is a hoot.

Rule 1: Avoid psychotic travel companions.
Rule 1, corollary 1: The most carefully chosen travel companions become the most psychotic.
Rule 1, corollary 2: Psychosis is contagious.

Rule 2 is the one I've vowed to remember.