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Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics
Rebecca Solnit has made a vocation of journeying into difficult territory and reporting back, as an environmentalist, antiglobalization activist, and public intellectual. Storming the Gates of Paradise , an anthology of her essential essays from the past ten years, takes the reader from the Pyrenees to the U.S.--Mexican border, from San Francisco to London, from open sky to the deepest mines, and from the antislavery struggles of two hundred years ago to today’s street protests. The nearly forty essays collected here comprise a unique guidebook to the American landscape after the millennium—not just the deserts, skies, gardens, and wilderness areas that have long made up Solnit’s subject matter, but the social landscape of democracy and repression, of borders, ruins, and protests. She ventures into territories as dark as prison and as sublime as a broad vista, revealing beauty in the harshest landscape and political struggle in the most apparently serene view. Her introduction sets the tone and the book’s overarching themes as she describes Thoreau, leaving the jail cell where he had been confined for refusing to pay war taxes and proceeding directly to his favorite huckleberry patch. In this way she links pleasure to politics, brilliantly demonstrating that the path to paradise has often run through prison.
These startling insights on current affairs, politics, culture, and history, always expressed in Solnit’s pellucid and graceful prose, constantly revise our views of the otherwise ordinary and familiar. Illustrated throughout, Storming the Gates of Paradise represents recent developments in Solnit’s thinking and offers the reader a panoramic world view enriched by her characteristically provocative, inspiring, and hopeful observations.
These startling insights on current affairs, politics, culture, and history, always expressed in Solnit’s pellucid and graceful prose, constantly revise our views of the otherwise ordinary and familiar. Illustrated throughout, Storming the Gates of Paradise represents recent developments in Solnit’s thinking and offers the reader a panoramic world view enriched by her characteristically provocative, inspiring, and hopeful observations.
416 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2007
65 people are currently reading
1655 people want to read
About the author
Rebecca Solnit
117 books7,981 followersWriter, historian, and activist Rebecca Solnit is the author of more than twenty books on feminism, western and indigenous history, popular power, social change and insurrection, wandering and walking, hope and disaster, including Call Them By Their True Names (Winner of the 2018 Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction), Cinderella Liberator, Men Explain Things to Me, The Mother of All Questions, and Hope in the Dark, and co-creator of the City of Women map, all published by Haymarket Books; a trilogy of atlases of American cities, The Faraway Nearby, A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster, A Field Guide to Getting Lost, Wanderlust: A History of Walking, and River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West (for which she received a Guggenheim, the National Book Critics Circle Award in criticism, and the Lannan Literary Award). Her forthcoming memoir, Recollections of My Nonexistence, is scheduled to release in March, 2020. A product of the California public education system from kindergarten to graduate school, she is a columnist at the Guardian and a regular contributor to Literary Hub.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 35 reviews
June 24, 2019
I want to tell everyone who has just been introduced to Solnit's work to start with her books on environmental activism. Although dense, these essays are beautifully written and are so much more engaging than her more popular books on feminism. I admire how much Solnit knows about her city, San Francisco. I think her writing in this is an amazing example of what it means to pay attention and also reminded me of Jenny Odell's "How to Do Nothing". I feel as if her ideas in this book could very well fit Jenny Odell's idea of "doing nothing" and of paying attention to the history of where you are and where you will go. Much of my thinking was validated by Rebecca's writing which made this book extremely engaging to read; for example, her opinion on cars, on "heartless" cities, and on the immense privileges granted to us, depending on where we live, that we are hardly aware of.
I'm also glad that Solnit managed to talk about race in this book, too. She doesn't do as well as a job in her books about feminism and sort of shies away from the subject (If I remember correctly, she only listed statistics without substantiating it). She goes into the subject of the history of names and how often Native American history is consistently on the verge of being erased:
"There is a great incongruity in the names of men upon the land, for these rogues and bureaucrats are too recent and prosaic to convey the benediction of saints, heroes, gods. Instead of the certainties of mythology, they convey—to those who know the history of the names—turbulence, economics, ambition, and brutality. In Europe, white people are indigenous, and they are often named after places. Some Anglo-Americans were named Winchester after the English cathedral town, and so were some eastern U.S. towns, but the western towns—there are twenty-one Winchesters in the United States—are often named after the men who bore that place-name, including two towns honoring the inventor of the Winchester repeating rifle, “the gun that won the West.” Winchester itself comes from a pre-Celtic word and a Latin suffix,-chester, meaning a walled town, and the word is at least twelve centuries old. When places are named after men and not the other way around, people become more real and permanent than land. As Robert Frost once observed, “The land was ours before we were the land’s."
This book got me thinking about so many things! It encouraged me to get into landscape photography, which she discusses in a few essays at the beginning of the book. She's introduced me to so many landscape photographers, books, and activists who have done so much for the environment.
The biggest criticism I have with this book is the use of the term "disabled" in the essay "Seven Stepping Stones down the Primrose Path". I understand that being "conceptually disabled" due to people believing they always need mechanical assistance in order to get around is a thing, but I wish the author could've delved in to the politics of disability and landscape. She acknowledges in her other book, "Wanderlust", that "If walking is a primary cultural act and a crucial way of being in the world, those who have been unable to walk out as far as their feet would have not been denied merely exercise or recreation but a vast portion of her humanity." Surprisingly, this thought wasn't given much depth in this book, which is sad, because I think that disabled people have a different relationship to landscape and walking. Not everyone is able to walk, or run, or go sight-seeing as often as others can. I would've loved for this to be discussed more, especially since it's central to her idea:
"When I wrote about walking, I learned that one version of home is everything you can walk to. Thus I, with my few hundred square feet of rented space, can also claim a thousand-acre park that ends at the Pacific with a beach full of seabirds; four or five movie theaters; hundreds of restaurants, bars, and cafés; a big public library; way too many tattoo parlors; a fine collection of monuments, views, promenades, and more."
I loved this book, and although it is very dense and packed full of information, I think that Solnit did a great job at organizing her writing. Each essay compliments each other beautifully, and her writing is full of profound meaning. I enjoyed this book a lot and will be revisiting it often. It has really shown me the best of Rebecca Solnit's writing skills, even after I was absolutely convinced after reading her memoir, "The Faraway Nearby", she is equally the amount of genius on her nonfiction writing about the environment.
"There are no grand solutions, only everyday practices of paying attention, of valuing difference and the openness that comes with some risk, of rethinking home, and refusing to be afraid."
(I apologize for my typos or grammar errors, I wrote this on my iPhone)
I'm also glad that Solnit managed to talk about race in this book, too. She doesn't do as well as a job in her books about feminism and sort of shies away from the subject (If I remember correctly, she only listed statistics without substantiating it). She goes into the subject of the history of names and how often Native American history is consistently on the verge of being erased:
"There is a great incongruity in the names of men upon the land, for these rogues and bureaucrats are too recent and prosaic to convey the benediction of saints, heroes, gods. Instead of the certainties of mythology, they convey—to those who know the history of the names—turbulence, economics, ambition, and brutality. In Europe, white people are indigenous, and they are often named after places. Some Anglo-Americans were named Winchester after the English cathedral town, and so were some eastern U.S. towns, but the western towns—there are twenty-one Winchesters in the United States—are often named after the men who bore that place-name, including two towns honoring the inventor of the Winchester repeating rifle, “the gun that won the West.” Winchester itself comes from a pre-Celtic word and a Latin suffix,-chester, meaning a walled town, and the word is at least twelve centuries old. When places are named after men and not the other way around, people become more real and permanent than land. As Robert Frost once observed, “The land was ours before we were the land’s."
This book got me thinking about so many things! It encouraged me to get into landscape photography, which she discusses in a few essays at the beginning of the book. She's introduced me to so many landscape photographers, books, and activists who have done so much for the environment.
The biggest criticism I have with this book is the use of the term "disabled" in the essay "Seven Stepping Stones down the Primrose Path". I understand that being "conceptually disabled" due to people believing they always need mechanical assistance in order to get around is a thing, but I wish the author could've delved in to the politics of disability and landscape. She acknowledges in her other book, "Wanderlust", that "If walking is a primary cultural act and a crucial way of being in the world, those who have been unable to walk out as far as their feet would have not been denied merely exercise or recreation but a vast portion of her humanity." Surprisingly, this thought wasn't given much depth in this book, which is sad, because I think that disabled people have a different relationship to landscape and walking. Not everyone is able to walk, or run, or go sight-seeing as often as others can. I would've loved for this to be discussed more, especially since it's central to her idea:
"When I wrote about walking, I learned that one version of home is everything you can walk to. Thus I, with my few hundred square feet of rented space, can also claim a thousand-acre park that ends at the Pacific with a beach full of seabirds; four or five movie theaters; hundreds of restaurants, bars, and cafés; a big public library; way too many tattoo parlors; a fine collection of monuments, views, promenades, and more."
I loved this book, and although it is very dense and packed full of information, I think that Solnit did a great job at organizing her writing. Each essay compliments each other beautifully, and her writing is full of profound meaning. I enjoyed this book a lot and will be revisiting it often. It has really shown me the best of Rebecca Solnit's writing skills, even after I was absolutely convinced after reading her memoir, "The Faraway Nearby", she is equally the amount of genius on her nonfiction writing about the environment.
"There are no grand solutions, only everyday practices of paying attention, of valuing difference and the openness that comes with some risk, of rethinking home, and refusing to be afraid."
(I apologize for my typos or grammar errors, I wrote this on my iPhone)
December 20, 2009
Solnit is a hero to me; she defines what activism can mean and accomplish. I read these essays, and I get the message: not all you do will change the world dramatically, but you have to at least care, at least FEEL some sort of passion for the planet we live on, and then do something about it! I have never been willing to be arrested for protesting, but I imagine I might be on a FBI list for emails against Bush's policies... and circulating a Swiss German poster of Bush... Her main focus is environmentalism, but she writes about the antislavery movement, immigrant rights, and protests against the evils of capitalism with the same focus and clarity. Besides that, she is a great, great writer.
With Solnit, there are always coincidences in my own life that make me even more in awe of what she has to say. For example, one night I had a crazy dream of a tsunami, and the next morning, over breakfast, I read her essay, Sontag and Tsunami (2004). "We can act to deal with the consequences of the earthquake and tsunami, but the disaster was only faintly political in the economics and indifference...the relief will be very political, in who gives how much (Bush offering 15 million, then 35 million under pressure, the cost of his inauguration adn then 350 million under strong international pressure)...but the event itself transcends politics, the realm of things we cause and can work to prevent. We cannot wish that human beings were not subject to the forces of nature, including the mortality... we cannot wish for the seas to dry up, that the waves grow still, that the tectonic plates ceast to exist, that nature ceases to be beyond our abilities to predict and control... But the terms of that nature include such catastrophe and suffering, which leaves us with sorrow as not a problem to be solved but a fact. And it leaves us with compassion as the work we will never finish."
"A year ago, I was at a dinner in Amsterdam when the question came up of whether each of us loved his or her country. The German shuddered, the Dutch were equivocal, the Brit said he was "comfortable" with Britain, the expatriate American said no. And I said yes. Driving across the arid lands, the red lands, I wondered what it was I loved. he places, the sagebrush basins, the rivers digging themselves deep canyons through arid lands, the incomparable cloud formations of summer monsoons, the way the underside of clouds turns the same blue as the underside of a great blue heron's wings when the storm is about to break. Beyond that, for anything you can say about the United States, you can also say the opposite: we're rootless except we're also the Hopi, who haven't moved in several centuries; we're violent except we're also the Franciscans nonviolently resisting nucelar weapons out here; we;re consumers except the West is studded with visionary environmentalists...and the landscape of the West seems like the stage on which such dramas are played out, a space without boundaries, in which anything can be realized, a moral ground, out here where your shadow can stretch hundreds of feet just before sunset, where you loom large, and lonely.
I had that same conversation in Zurich with expat American friends, native Swiss, a German, and a Spaniard. We had just walked by the poster with a picture of George W. Bush in Swiss German and they translated it as "Wanted for crimes against humanity; considered armed and dangerous." And I may not be proud of the things my country does, but I love it, for its people and its nooks and crannies I have spent so much time exploring. That is part of what makes up a country also, its geography and landscapes, not just its terrible politics and foreign policies.
I have been in awe of all the constellations I have been seeing lately here in Denver, Orion and the Pleiades are amazingly bright right now; another little convergence with Solnit and her esay about constellation as metaphor: "The desire to go home that is a desire to be whole, to know where you are, to be the point of intersection of all the lines drawn through all the stars, to be the constellation-maker and the center of the world, that center called love. To awaken from sleep, to rest from awakening, to tame the animal, to let the soul go wild, to shelter in darkness and blaze with light, to cease to speak adn be perfectly understood." She writes about how many of us have never seen the Milky Way, "which showed up in San Francisco only during the velvety darkness of the blackout brought on by the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake..or that in the great blackout of 1977, the Milky Way presided over Manhattan for the first time in perhaps a century."
With Solnit, there are always coincidences in my own life that make me even more in awe of what she has to say. For example, one night I had a crazy dream of a tsunami, and the next morning, over breakfast, I read her essay, Sontag and Tsunami (2004). "We can act to deal with the consequences of the earthquake and tsunami, but the disaster was only faintly political in the economics and indifference...the relief will be very political, in who gives how much (Bush offering 15 million, then 35 million under pressure, the cost of his inauguration adn then 350 million under strong international pressure)...but the event itself transcends politics, the realm of things we cause and can work to prevent. We cannot wish that human beings were not subject to the forces of nature, including the mortality... we cannot wish for the seas to dry up, that the waves grow still, that the tectonic plates ceast to exist, that nature ceases to be beyond our abilities to predict and control... But the terms of that nature include such catastrophe and suffering, which leaves us with sorrow as not a problem to be solved but a fact. And it leaves us with compassion as the work we will never finish."
"A year ago, I was at a dinner in Amsterdam when the question came up of whether each of us loved his or her country. The German shuddered, the Dutch were equivocal, the Brit said he was "comfortable" with Britain, the expatriate American said no. And I said yes. Driving across the arid lands, the red lands, I wondered what it was I loved. he places, the sagebrush basins, the rivers digging themselves deep canyons through arid lands, the incomparable cloud formations of summer monsoons, the way the underside of clouds turns the same blue as the underside of a great blue heron's wings when the storm is about to break. Beyond that, for anything you can say about the United States, you can also say the opposite: we're rootless except we're also the Hopi, who haven't moved in several centuries; we're violent except we're also the Franciscans nonviolently resisting nucelar weapons out here; we;re consumers except the West is studded with visionary environmentalists...and the landscape of the West seems like the stage on which such dramas are played out, a space without boundaries, in which anything can be realized, a moral ground, out here where your shadow can stretch hundreds of feet just before sunset, where you loom large, and lonely.
I had that same conversation in Zurich with expat American friends, native Swiss, a German, and a Spaniard. We had just walked by the poster with a picture of George W. Bush in Swiss German and they translated it as "Wanted for crimes against humanity; considered armed and dangerous." And I may not be proud of the things my country does, but I love it, for its people and its nooks and crannies I have spent so much time exploring. That is part of what makes up a country also, its geography and landscapes, not just its terrible politics and foreign policies.
I have been in awe of all the constellations I have been seeing lately here in Denver, Orion and the Pleiades are amazingly bright right now; another little convergence with Solnit and her esay about constellation as metaphor: "The desire to go home that is a desire to be whole, to know where you are, to be the point of intersection of all the lines drawn through all the stars, to be the constellation-maker and the center of the world, that center called love. To awaken from sleep, to rest from awakening, to tame the animal, to let the soul go wild, to shelter in darkness and blaze with light, to cease to speak adn be perfectly understood." She writes about how many of us have never seen the Milky Way, "which showed up in San Francisco only during the velvety darkness of the blackout brought on by the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake..or that in the great blackout of 1977, the Milky Way presided over Manhattan for the first time in perhaps a century."
November 23, 2017
Good news. Help is here. I was handed this book in the author's home city of San Francisco at the City Lights bookstore in 2007 by a bookseller who had noted that I lived in New Orleans; as he handed it to me from the new book area, he shared that Solnit was actually in New Orleans, researching. I have to confess that upon hearing that, I rolled my eyes at another outside voice come to tell our story but after leafing through it, I bought it anyway and went back to my quiet hotel and read it through and was glad I did and glad she was there to report on our trouble. I have now read many more bits of Solnit's writing, but as a survivor (so far) of the politics of Katrina, I am still dazzled by her lucidity and fearlessness in this book to define what the battle is really about.
To write about culture and politics without reverting to emotional finger-pointing or to cliches to analyze the thrilling and frightening American empire-building mindset is quite a feat, and Solnit did it here as no one else was doing then and has fulfilled that promise in other books since. That really is her gift: to share the news that yes, we've got to storm dem gates but paradise (community, as achieved through citizen action, gender expression, and place) could be just beyond.
She also asks us to consider that in order to understand what we have to do and what is really happening, we must strike out on our own at times to explore all facets of the landscape and not simply march in formation. To illustrate what she means she offers Thoreau's overnight stay in that prison as an example of that style of citizenship since whether living in the woods or running a pencil factory he was connected to beauty, humanity and to protest.
This book is the beginning of her best era (so far) on culture, politics, and place and so should be collected for that reason. By now, more people have heard about her and read her, but if you haven't, maybe don't start with this. Start with essays found in Orion Magazine or start with A Book of Migrations or The Faraway Nearby or the Muybridge book River of Shadows. If you are already a radical or simply a citizen full of anger but lack facts, I'd say start with Savage Dreams or Hollow City or with a slightly later book that is personally meaningful to me as it analyzes exactly what happened in post 2005 New Orleans and other post-disaster places with their exuberant community and pitiful politics, A Paradise Built in Hell.
This one I suggest you hold on and read later on a quiet trip or while sitting on a porch at a lake or on a train heading across the US; this is a wide-ranging set of writings that give a reader an excellent overview of Solnit's ability to essay and to connect social and natural issues, small and large, current and historical in her graceful, lucid style. It will round out your own ability to connect the dots that need to be connected. Take your time with it.
To write about culture and politics without reverting to emotional finger-pointing or to cliches to analyze the thrilling and frightening American empire-building mindset is quite a feat, and Solnit did it here as no one else was doing then and has fulfilled that promise in other books since. That really is her gift: to share the news that yes, we've got to storm dem gates but paradise (community, as achieved through citizen action, gender expression, and place) could be just beyond.
She also asks us to consider that in order to understand what we have to do and what is really happening, we must strike out on our own at times to explore all facets of the landscape and not simply march in formation. To illustrate what she means she offers Thoreau's overnight stay in that prison as an example of that style of citizenship since whether living in the woods or running a pencil factory he was connected to beauty, humanity and to protest.
This book is the beginning of her best era (so far) on culture, politics, and place and so should be collected for that reason. By now, more people have heard about her and read her, but if you haven't, maybe don't start with this. Start with essays found in Orion Magazine or start with A Book of Migrations or The Faraway Nearby or the Muybridge book River of Shadows. If you are already a radical or simply a citizen full of anger but lack facts, I'd say start with Savage Dreams or Hollow City or with a slightly later book that is personally meaningful to me as it analyzes exactly what happened in post 2005 New Orleans and other post-disaster places with their exuberant community and pitiful politics, A Paradise Built in Hell.
This one I suggest you hold on and read later on a quiet trip or while sitting on a porch at a lake or on a train heading across the US; this is a wide-ranging set of writings that give a reader an excellent overview of Solnit's ability to essay and to connect social and natural issues, small and large, current and historical in her graceful, lucid style. It will round out your own ability to connect the dots that need to be connected. Take your time with it.
March 24, 2020
When speaking of specific thinkers or environmental travesties Solnit is radical. Well informed, deeply empathetic to people and non-human life. Then, a few pages later, as she talks about art or takes on a more distanced approach to the environment, her radicalism fades into rambling, blustery, wide-eyed views that lose any practical edge. Reading of her political work in the 90's and the 2000's is both informative and interesting (imagine being confused by the presence of police in riot gear at a protest!), but seeing how this experience shapes her view of her home city of San Francisco at the end of the book, where gentrification is both the 10th great destruction of the city and yet spun as seemingly uncontrollable (an unculpable) as the fires responsible for the first 7 destructions of that city, I felt like I was being visited by the ghost of politics future, showing me what I might look like if I allow myself to be captivated by the enormity of problems rather than enraged at those responsible. It certainly gave me a lot to think about, and to look up, but Solnit seems more interested throughout in the cleverness of her connections than in their political or practical import.
January 25, 2025
“Thus the border, which is not so much a line drawn in the sand of the desert but in the imagination, a line across which memory may not travel”. Rebecca Solnit’s Storming The Gates of Paradise is an expansive collection of essays on “landscapes for politics”, starting in the West of Savage Dreams and moving through questions of poisoned water, photography and compassion, the drawing of constellations, the place of women in landscapes, and the eternally indefinable but endlessly policed idea of borders, man-made and imposed, an injustice to the people whose land is taken by greed and self-interest, and those who are kept away from safe land by much of the same. Of course, Solnit’s worldview is one of opportunity, that where borders were once installed they may be removed, adjusted, made porous for a world in need of less rigidity.
June 29, 2022
This is an older collection of Rebecca Solnit's essays on the collision between environmentalism and politics. She manages to weave the most profound statements out of tragic situations, but I have to say this is not my favorite book of hers. I did like her essay on Walter Benjamin, he is always such an interesting character.
May 19, 2020
I am always surprised with how much information Rebecca Solnit packs into her essays, many less than ten pages. Current (for the time) events, biology, meteorology, history, sociology. Her prose is elegant, her commentary apt. This was a fine set of essays spanning the 1990’s and early 2000’s.
May 28, 2019
This is the Solnit collection that took me the LONGEST to get through. And I do love her writing. Some of these essays are great and others are very dense, dated or otherwise didn't really hold my interest.
May 10, 2013
Solnit is always an incredibly read. She is stellar when discussing the early environmental activists of California and the US, even more stellar and affecting when getting into anti-war activism, and even when I disagree with her I can do so intelligently, carrying on the discussion begun by the essay in my head. When she's wrong, she's wrong in a way I can most often respect (aside from her very occasional forays into elitism that makes her both dismiss the internet and come off as, well, elitist - but this only happens two or three times in a 385-page book), and I also highly appreciate the way she doesn't gloss over failings of icons like Friedan, even when her essay is focusing on what Friedan's work initiated in terms of social change and activism.
In short: this is bright, conscientious, and deeply empathetic work. Highly recommended, particularly the first 6 sections of the book and the last, her love song to San Francisco. Moreover, this is a book that is deeply conscious of the dark portions of America's past, as she devotes a large section to her discussion of nature as public space to the struggle of Native Americans to regain the rights to what should be their land or prevent new injustices to be done to it. Solnit's work spans three hundred years, two or three continents, and countless activists and writers, starting with Thoreau and ending in the racist so-called urban renewal projects of the 1950s and 60s.
I love the way she talks about activism, with hope and empathy:
She is a remarkable writer, too:
In short: this is bright, conscientious, and deeply empathetic work. Highly recommended, particularly the first 6 sections of the book and the last, her love song to San Francisco. Moreover, this is a book that is deeply conscious of the dark portions of America's past, as she devotes a large section to her discussion of nature as public space to the struggle of Native Americans to regain the rights to what should be their land or prevent new injustices to be done to it. Solnit's work spans three hundred years, two or three continents, and countless activists and writers, starting with Thoreau and ending in the racist so-called urban renewal projects of the 1950s and 60s.
I love the way she talks about activism, with hope and empathy:
...a passion for justice and pleasure in small things are not incompatible. It's possible to do both, to talk about trees and justice (and in our time, justice for trees); that's part of what Thoreau's short jaunt from jail to hill says.
She is a remarkable writer, too:
Metaphors matter. They make tangible the abstractions with which we must wrestle. They describe the resemblances and differences by which we navigate our lives and thoughts. I published a book recently called Hope in the Dark, which the inattentive routinely call "Hope in Dark Times." Dark times, like dark ages, are gloomy, harsh, dangerous, depressing, when the good stuff has fled. But the darkness I was after was another thing entirely. This wasn't hope despite the dark; darkness was the ground and condition of that hope...Hope in the dark is hope in the future, in its constant ability to surprise you, its expansiveness beyond the bounds of the imaginable.
July 4, 2008
solnit is officially my favorite writer of the moment. this is a collection of essays, ranging from 2006 back to the mid-nineties. as such, there not as uniformly great as a field guide to getting lost, which i also read recently. but when she's got a good idea, she follows through with it in surprising and illuminating ways. the quality of the work often follows the theme of its content. for my money, any time solnit discusses american history, art or gender, her writing is rich, informative and poetic.
when she delves more specifically into activism she's still convincing, but her focus often broadens. when she describes, say, a local protest, her tone becomes more didactic. i typically agree with her politics, but i find that her writing is more informative to me personally when it remains open-ended.
but that's small potatoes. when she's discussing ruins, or the history of landscape photography (especially as it relates to pubic hair!!!), or the ecological ramifications of an influx of crows, solnit is about as good as it gets.
when she delves more specifically into activism she's still convincing, but her focus often broadens. when she describes, say, a local protest, her tone becomes more didactic. i typically agree with her politics, but i find that her writing is more informative to me personally when it remains open-ended.
but that's small potatoes. when she's discussing ruins, or the history of landscape photography (especially as it relates to pubic hair!!!), or the ecological ramifications of an influx of crows, solnit is about as good as it gets.
January 15, 2009
I'm on a Rebecca Solnit binge. This one might be a little drier, as it's a collection of articles and so far my biggest fault with it is the print is really small. I'm excited to see where she takes me and I love that she can combine journalism, memoir, and critical thought into the same piece... I was on the brink of abandoning this book, however, until Pablo commented on my review and gave me the wherewithal to continue. I'm so glad I did! Once I allowed myself to skip a few of the essays, I was completely transported by Solnit's observations and intellect. I also loved it because she reused some of the ideas that appear in "A Field Guide to Getting Lost," but expanded on them. It was a good insight into a writers process. Plus, I got one of my favorite quotes ever:
"It is not efficient to have a body. It is not, by the same criteria, efficient to be alive. Life is inconvenient, but that's hardly the best measure of what it's for."
"It is not efficient to have a body. It is not, by the same criteria, efficient to be alive. Life is inconvenient, but that's hardly the best measure of what it's for."
September 5, 2007
I like this book as much for its form as for its content - a book of essays that mix personal memoir, political opinion, history, and journalism, into a readable and unique clutch of statements. I'm always looking for essays that don't smack of "crackademics" or go too heavy on the theory (although there's an essay about following Benjamin's last walk, his escape from France into Spain in WWII, after which he died).
The book is mainly about the Western part of the country, and ends with a focus on San Francisco, so the themes run the line of Native Americans, the Mexico/US borderland, environmentalism, etc.
Good stuff!
The book is mainly about the Western part of the country, and ends with a focus on San Francisco, so the themes run the line of Native Americans, the Mexico/US borderland, environmentalism, etc.
Good stuff!
October 16, 2011
I love Solnit. She is one of my favorite authors.
A lot of this collection is really good and engaging, but some of the essays were a little bit boring and kept me from finishing the book in a timely way.
I finally just started skipping things that didn't hold my interest, and that worked pretty well.
Definitely not my recommendation for your first foray into her work, but it's pretty good if you like her and geography and etc.
A lot of this collection is really good and engaging, but some of the essays were a little bit boring and kept me from finishing the book in a timely way.
I finally just started skipping things that didn't hold my interest, and that worked pretty well.
Definitely not my recommendation for your first foray into her work, but it's pretty good if you like her and geography and etc.
April 16, 2008
Solnit interweaves so many facts and ideas that reading her books is like eating a bowl of spaghetti -- every strand leads to another. This is a book for anyone who loves the western United States, in all its beauty and all its turmoil. Tough going at times because of her wide-ranging knowledge, but keep trudging because the view at the top is terrific.
November 29, 2009
I had this book out of the portland library and have been looking for a copy around here to finish it. Its full of beautiful, informative essays on gold mining, the anti-nuclear movement, native land struggles, etc. Relevant for building a case against Bank of America and others who invest in extraction and devastation.
September 3, 2010
The essays in this book are beautiful. Not sure why Solnit is not a more widely read writer. I'd stack her up against Susan Orlean any day. Solnit is very up front about her politics, which perhaps costs her some readers. But her beliefs are what drives the writing, so there isn't any way around that. Art, landscape, architecture--she analyzes them all with a unique vision.
March 9, 2012
A great introduction to an amazing thinker, activist, historian, cultural critic, art critic. Solnit's ability to weave seemingly disparate elements into a single narrative is truly powerful and moving. Plus, she's just so good at uncovering the hypocrisies in American history and politics. Prepare to have thoughts provoked.
Currently reading
September 18, 2007Just picked this up at the Strand this weekend. Picked through it a bit. Solnit makes her way through some territory she covered in "Wanderlust." Yet another great interview on Against the Grain: http://againstthegrain.org/audio6.06....
April 11, 2009
Some essays were eloquent and insightful, but some were tedious and repetitive. I'll probably revisit some of the essays in the years to come, but there are many I'll never look at or think about again.
June 13, 2013
I'm not sure this comparison has been made too often, but as a former Chicagoan living in San Francisco, she's my Studs Terkel, a writer whose wholly committed to and celebrates the virtues of my city I most appreciate while fighting for the ideas I most wish to fight for.
September 24, 2007
I stole this from Leslie when I was out west. Stayed up late reading last night and, as expected, AMAZING.
January 4, 2009
All the right stuff at just the right time. This book is an incredible collection of Solnit's previously uncollected essays.
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August 30, 2008Photographer and author Stephen Trimble recommended this as part of the Rocky Mountain Land Library's "A Reading List For the President Elect: A Western Primer for the Next Administration".
November 19, 2008
This is a must read---I can't possibly put into words my respect for Rebecca Solnit and this book.
March 5, 2009
C Some interesting essays, but a lot of them were way too long-winded and went on uninteresting tangents. Still, some interesting reads.
October 19, 2012
awesome perspective, eye-opening, almost lyrical read.
March 13, 2021
Rebecca Solnit, be still my heart. More journalistic than literary, but still mindblowingly brilliant and thought-provoking.
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February 27, 2013Excellent book for those who work with and on the land.
October 29, 2013
Wonderful essays.
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