The Lost Art of Walking
The History, Science, and Literature of Pedestrianism
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4.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
How we walk, where we walk, why we walk tells the world who and what we are. Whether it's once a day to the car, or for long weekend hikes, or as competition, or as art, walking is a profoundly universal aspect of what makes us humans, social creatures, and engaged with the world. Cultural commentator, Whitbread Prize winner, and author of Sex Collectors Geoff Nicholson offers his fascinating, definitive, and personal ruminations on the literature, science, philosophy, art, and history of walking.
Nicholson finds people who walk only at night, or naked, or in the shape of a cross or a circle, or for thousands of miles at a time, in costume, for causes, or for no reason whatsoever. He examines the history and traditions of walking and its role as inspiration to artists, musicians, and writers like Bob Dylan, Charles Dickens, and Buster Keaton. In The Lost Art of Walking, he brings curiosity, imagination, and genuine insight to a subject that often strides, shuffles, struts, or lopes right by us.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"Setting foot in a street makes it yours in a way that driving down it never does," says Nicholson (Sex Collectors), and mundane though walking may be, Nicholson tells us in this leisurely, charmingly obsessive literary stroll, pedestrianism is not without drama, from pratfalls like the one in which he broke his arm on an innocuous Hollywood Hills street to getting lost in the desert of western Australia. Walks, he reminds us, have inspired writers from Thoreau and Emerson to Dickens and Joyce, as well as musicians from Fats Domino to Aerosmith. Nicholson guides readers from the streets of L.A. where walkers are invariably regarded with suspicion to New York City and London. He considers the history of "eccentric" walkers like the "competitive pedestrian" Capt. Robert Barclay Allardice, whose early 19th-century walking feats gave him the reputation of a show-off. From street photographers to "perfect" walks the first at the Poles, the first on the moon and walks that never happened, Nicholson's genial exploration of this "most ordinary, ubiquitous activity" is lively and entertaining.
Customer Reviews
Title Doesn't Tell All
This certainly isn't a whiney book about how people don't walk any more --- wah, wah, wah. 10X more fun. It meanders (he loves walking related words) around covering many walking subjects such as pedestrianism (again not exactly what you'd expect), his own experiences, perfect walks,etc. The only thing missing is Monty Python's Ministry of Silly Walks. The book is a real joy!