Journey to Mount Tamalpais

by Etel Adnan

Literary Nonfiction. JOURNEY TO MOUNT TAMALPAIS is an essay on Nature, Art, and the relationship between them. Highly original in both content and literary structure, it provides a new outlook on the importance of Nature as an element of thinking; one of the major works on the "spirit of place" in contemporary literature.

This book is illustrated with 17 drawings by the author.

"An enlightening journey for those who love the mountain, and for those who love Etel Adnan."—Wendell Berry

Genres: Poetry, Essays, Nonfiction, Art, Nature, Philosophy

64 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 1986

About the author

Etel Adnan was born in Beirut, Lebanon in 1925. She studied philosophy at the Sorbonne, U.C. Berkeley, and at Harvard, and taught at Dominican College in San Rafael, California, from 1958–1972.

In solidarity with the Algerian War of Independence (1954–1962), Adnan began to resist the political implications of writing in French and became a painter. Then, through her participation in the movement against the Vietnam War (1959–1975), she began to write poetry and became, in her words, “an American poet.” In 1972, she returned to Beirut and worked as cultural editor for two daily newspapers—first for Al Safa, then for L’Orient le Jour. Her novel Sitt Marie-Rose, published in Paris in 1977, won the France-Pays Arabes award and has been translated into more than ten languages.

In 1977, Adnan re-established herself in California, making Sausalito her home, with frequent stays in Paris. Adnan is the author of more than a dozen books in English, including Journey to Mount Tamalpais (1986), The Arab Apocalypse (1989), In the Heart of the Heart of Another Country (2005), and Sea and Fog (2012), winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Poetry and the California Book Award for Poetry. Her most recent books are Night (2016) and Surge (2018). In 2014, she was awarded one of France’s highest cultural honors: l’Ordre de Chevalier des Arts et Lettres. Numerous museums have presented solo exhibitions of Adnan’s work, including SFMoMA; Zentrum Paul Klee; Institute du Monde Arabe, Paris; Serpentine Galleries; and Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Qatar.

Reviews

[Edita · Rating 5 out of 5]

Up there, the open but filled mouth of the volcano speaks back to the sky a tale of past disorder. The fire has left for its own origins: it returned to the sun. The mountain remains in blue silence, in purple desertion, in agony, and nobody knows.
*
The ocean is launching its brilliant waves against the asphalt-black walls of the mountain, and in the night of this ocean I am finding the freshness of dispersed springs. Harbors catch fire at the edge of the sea. Everything, at last, is upside down. The skies are confused with blackness and the water is green like eyes which are cruel and opened on smoke.
*
I feel trapped in this universe and think of what an anti-universe could mean, which is still a universe; there is no way out.
*
To be: the light over there, breaking the clouds, alone in the cool winds, peaceful over the waves, knowing the mountain, and the ocean furiously possessed by its love for water. Drown and do not drown, the mountain is as solid as a fog, as translucent as the undertow, as possessed as the ocean, but its travelling is silent and formal, and the ocean is a pure voyage.

[Illiterate · Rating 3 out of 5]

Prose poem expressing a slow, nurturing, mystical stance to concentration/focus, perception/art, place/ecology. The drawings - dark mounds & sketched lines - are evocative.

[Margot Dower · Rating 5 out of 5]

Astonishing essay by Etel Adnan on her mountain, Mount Tamalpais, feeling so emotional about loving and knowing a landscape, holding a mountain in you as you go about your daily life.
“In a painting you may be bringing down an angel. In a dream I climbed the 3000 feet of Tamalpais in a matter of seconds.”

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

I appreciate that this book makes me think about the complex relationships between author, subject, and reader. Etel Adnan masterfully blends prose, poetry, and painting. A gorgeous reflection on place and our connection to landscapes. I too adore Mount Tamalpais-- perhaps this biases my feelings on this piece.

[Summer · Rating 5 out of 5]

the whole time reading this I was like wow....this is just how I feel about supernatural (there is something wrong with me)

[Naimah · Rating 5 out of 5]

closest words can ever get to describing how it feels to exist as a painter!!!

[Peggy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked up this slender book of musings and various monochrome watercolors of Mount Tamalpais on the recommendation of the excellent enewsletter, “Brain Pickings.” (Highly recommended itself). I found some of the writing a bit oohy-oohy and I tend to go into a negative high alert when white people start talking about American Indian spirituality in a lumped-together sort of way. But such issues are not a huge roadblock to the rest of her content, which is casual and flowing and often poetic. I found it a peaceful read with beautiful ink wash images of Mount Tam, which I first climbed in 1975. I bought a new copy, very nice, at Powell’s Books online. It was originally published in 1986. Meditative.

[Stevie Ada · Rating 5 out of 5]

A provocative and contemplative prose essay. Etel Adnan shows her philosophical observations by moving through 23 years of notes to create Journey to Mount Tamalpais - which reads as a free associative exploration of time and perception. The constant return to Mount Tamalpais fixes the perspective of the reader (if we can say there is anything fixed about a mountain).

"I told him how the Bay was blue, and that Angel Island was dark brown, the color of live deer skin, and Tamalpais was as green as a crushed bottle of beer.... And he smiled. America, I told him, was torn between paradise and hell, and it was not suffering, it was numb."

- Journey to Mount Tamalpais, p.21, second edition

[Em · Rating 4 out of 5]

A luminous prose-poem meditation on connection with place forever having changed my own relationship the mountain, Adnan nevertheless veers a bit over into the overly suggestive and vague at times (Tam is no killer mountain).

[Jenny Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this journey. Is it a genre - inner/outer journeys toward and into mountains?

[Sawyer Lavelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read in Mendocino on a spiritual anniversary trip - can hardly imagine a better read for that, or better conditions for the book to be read in :)

[Kateryna Hresko · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tender, genuine and beautiful

[Theodora · Rating 5 out of 5]

Adnan is such an artist with her words and her paintings. I first read about this in The Marginalian and was happy to see it on my last visit to the Point Reyes Bookstore. As someone who also sees and feels magic in Mount Tamalpais, it was such a lovely piece to read. I would write some of her quotes down but there are too many to include. When she describes some of the sunsets on Mt. Tam, perhaps I related to those best: “A pink smoke sweeps the sky from the West to the East. It is the evening fire, the one which leaves no ashes. […] Tamalpais is there, pale and fused with the ocean, with the Bay, with lakes and reservoirs. My right eye merges with the colors. The other gets lost in infinity.” :))

[Rhea · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve never wanted to live in a piece of prose more

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

I always thought that dreaming was the honor of the human species. the logic of dreams is superior to the one we exercise while awake. In dreams the mind at last finds its courage: it dares what we do not dare. I t also creates: from nightmares to fantastic calculation .. and it perceives reality beyond our fuzzy interpretations. in dream we swim and fly and we are not surprised.

to perceive is to be the movement not the object

[Dr. des. Siobhán · Rating 3 out of 5]

Das Buch wurde (zu Recht) mit Nan Shepherds Der Lebende Berg verglichen, weshalb ich es gekauft habe. Die englische Ausgabe war sehr teuer, daher habe ich die gebrauchte deutsche Übersetzung angeschafft. Teile des Romans sind etwas veraltet, ich war etwas entsetzt, "Indianer" zu lesen. Insgesamt eine spannende Geschichte über eine Obsession mit einem Berg. Leider weder so profund, noch so poetisch wie Nan Shepherd. Ich mochte die Malereien!