Friday, May 18, 2012

Narvey on Walker: Book Review


Jonathon Narvey´s review in full of my book, An Occasional Walker, follows this excerpt. 

This collection of Walker’s writings from the No Dhimittude blog reads at times like a stream of consciousness from a scripture-quoting American Tea Party recruiter. There are diatribes against the Islamist threat that (belatedly) burst into the public’s consciousness on the day of the 9/11 attacks; rages against policies of civilizational suicide in the wake of non-assimilating (and occasionally openly seditious) immigrant communities in the West; odes to the oil companies; screeds against environmentalists; nostalgic looks back at shoot-first ask-questions-later cowboy role models.

But occasional breaks in the commentary clue you in that you’re reading something more akin to a work of art by a tortured soul; there’s pain there. Rejection. Grim anecdotes of survival amid gritty poverty. Descriptions of places that might be war zones or just some plain old slum that looks like a war hit it. Haunting slices of life as a derelict. Love in the shadows.

An Occasional Walker is a hard book. Sometimes amusing, other times perplexing; often surprising. Just stay away from the absinthe while you’re reading it.

Many thanks to Jonathon for the review. 

1 comment:

Dag said...

Feel free to comment here or at my blog about this book.

I put it together in part in the hope, as I have written here and elsewhere many times, that others will do the same, putting together books that will inform the public in coherent and, one might hope, long-term ways, books being more authorative than the same material on a blog.

I don´t know that this is actually working for me, but it could be that others will reach great heights if they publish books on the subjects so dear to us all.

Best of luck.
Dag Walker,
Arequipa, Peru.