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Title: The Last American Man by Elizabeth Gilbert ISBN: 0-670-03086-4 Publisher: Viking Books Pub. Date: 09 May, 2002 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.68 (62 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: The Last (Thank Goodness!) American Man
Comment: When I saw this book advertised in a periodical, I knew I would enjoy it. My own boyhood fantasies of wild independence were stirred by what appeared to be this great man's life.
While not a great man, Eustace is an incredible human being. Anyone with but a passing interest in wilderness living and primitive human heritage will be riveted by every other page of this book. The intervening pages may be a bit tedious for action-oriented types as these examine the finer points of Mr. Conway's psychological uniqueness, his family relationships, and his romantic (?!) adventures.
The writing is superbly done and the quality of the author makes reading a pleasure. My attraction to the story is based on my love of Appalachia (wilderness in general) and the extraordinary drama of life it stages every day. This book does not disappoint on that score - the wild exploits of Mr. Conway will captivate you. A great gift for that man or woman in your life who bemoans our civilization's increasing detachment from nature.
Rating: 5
Summary: A modern-day Daniel Boone. . .
Comment: This is one of those books that stir up strong opinions and heated controversy. Eustace Conway, the back-to-nature mountain man of the title, is someone you can see as a living American myth or a nut case. The author's portrait of him, full of ironies right from the title onward, lends itself to either point of view. And depending on how the book is read, you can see either admiration or skepticism in what she says about Conway.
Or you can see subject and author in all of these ways which, as I understand the book, is what the author intends. Eustace Conway is full of contradictions. He's both immensely appealing and stridently off-putting. A rigorous thinker, naturalist, and walking whole-earth-catalog, he is still a babe in the woods in knowing how to negotiate just about any kind of relationship with another human being - including the many, many young women he attracts. By the author's account, few men so lucky in bed have been so unlucky in love.
For every amateur psychologist the author provides more than enough back-story to puzzle over Conway's behavior. There's a tyrant father who heaps withering scorn on his son, starting at the age of two. And there's his great-outdoors-loving mother, who rescues him from his father by encouraging his unsupervised forays into the woods. By the time he is out of high school, he's already living in a teepee, beading his own moccasins, killing game for food, skinning animals, and hiking the entire Appalachian Trail wearing nothing more than two bandanas, weather permitting.
Meanwhile, his epic journeys on foot and on horseback and his pioneering in the North Carolina backcountry are mythic Americana. While our first reaction to all this may be admiration, Gilbert writes in a wisecracking tone that heightens the ironies and more than once made me laugh out loud. And she reminds us that if there's anyone to fault, it's not Conway but the gullibly romantic Americans who believe literally in their own national mythology and heroes. Looking back to Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett, for instance, she reveals that they were in fact no different. Like Conway, they were supporters of the myths and legends that grew up around them and good old-fashioned American entrepreneurs and self-promoters.
Anyway, there's much to enjoy in this book. And it's full of surprises - right up to the last pages, as Gilbert tells a poignant story of how Conway touched the life of a troubled teenager who spent a week with him in the woods building a fence. And the author's closing image captures the spirit of the entire book - Conway getting out of his truck and shouting, "I love you!" at a buck deer that refuses to move off the road. The image is moving, ridiculous, or both; take your pick.
Rating: 1
Summary: Broken
Comment: Read within these pages the effects of extreme mental and emotional abuse upon a child and the way it plays out as an adult. Eustace is a broken human. His unfortunate treatment at the hands of his father seriously crippled him. People who have suffered like Eustace are often over-achieving, perfectionists; unable to maintain relations with others; either oblivious to the needs of others or slavishly catering to the whims of others and they almost always come to closley resemble the abuser.
Big Eustace was a denizen of the office and the classroom- liked to write out long equations and ramble on to hear the sound of his own voice, so little Eustace subcociously chose a path 180 degrees away from father and becomes a creature of the forest but ended up rambling in his classroom just the same, just a different subject.
To me this was an eminently sad tale of a boy going to any length for father's notice and approval. Neither of which came at least by the conclusion of this book.
Eutace-walk away.
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Title: Stern Men by Elizabeth Gilbert ISBN: 061812733X Publisher: Mariner Books Pub. Date: 01 June, 2001 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Gender Differences at Work: Women and Men in Nontraditional Occupations by Christine L. Williams ISBN: 0520074254 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: 01 May, 1991 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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Title: I Married a Communist by Philip Roth ISBN: 0375707212 Publisher: Vintage Books USA Pub. Date: 01 November, 1999 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: In the Image: A Novel by Dara Horn ISBN: 0393325261 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: September, 2003 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: The Blue Bear: A True Story of Friendship, Tragedy, and Survival in the Alaskan Wilderness by Lynn Schooler ISBN: 0066210852 Publisher: Ecco Pub. Date: 07 May, 2002 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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