Starred review from August 23, 2010
Crowded airplanes and their lack of customer service, packed subway cars on a hot day, and daily commutes to and from work that take longer now on average than at any other time in history add up to much frustration with travel itself. Hiss (The Experience of Place) suggests, however, that all of us have an innate capacity to enter a different part of our minds during our travels and to begin to make use of an awareness that has its own range of interests, concerns, and methods. When the mind and not just the body is in motion, our experience of our ordinary world changes, and we can look with new eyes on the details of the world around us as we walk to the local coffee shop. Hiss urges us to embrace the innermost dimension of travel (its ability to lift the wings of the human spirit) as a way of transforming our time spent in motion. Hiss calls this ground-shifting waking consciousness "Deep Travel," that is, something that surprises us when we least expect it. For example, as biochemist Kary B. Mullis drove through redwood country north of San Francisco, his waking consciousness traveled along a wildly different path as he invented the technique that makes it possible to copy billions of pieces of DNA in a few hours and later brought him the Nobel Prize in chemistry. In the end, Hiss shares his own enlightening experiences of the mind in motion, acting as our Virgil of Deep Travel.
September 1, 2010
Former New Yorker staff writer Hiss (Building Images: Seventy Years of Photography at Hedrich Blessing, 2000, etc.) explores the "wider, expanded, more inclusive awareness" of the mind in motion.
Dramatic evidence for humankind's bipedalism is at least as old as the footprints discovered in the volcanic ash of Laetoli, Tanzania, and it extends in distance to Neil Armstrong's still-preserved boot prints on the surface of the moon. However, we have become so habituated to this business of upright walking, to travel in general, that we have buried the capacity to connect with the extraordinary opportunity for insight that travel offers. Long occupied with matters of design, environment and regional planning, Hiss turns his attention to the possibilities of larger understanding inherent in traveling or, more precisely, what he calls Deep Travel, that "ground-shifting variant of ordinary waking consciousness." Much more than simply moving from place to place or simply changing scenery, Deep Travel is a parallel journey that sharpens our perceptions, altering space—creating a larger "here"—and time—extending, making a larger "now." As we immerse ourselves in Deep Travel, insights previously hidden or otherwise unavailable are revealed to the off-balance mind. To define and describe Deep Travel, the author begins by pondering selected moments of wonder drawn from his own peregrinations—sometimes a journey through a certifiable tourist vista, sometimes a seemingly nondescript trip to the corner mailbox. He follows up with similar passages drawn from a wide survey of travel literature, from Marco Polo to Pico Iyer. He invokes folk tales, poetry and fiction, and cites authorities from anthropology, biology, paleontology, psychology and neuroscience to flesh out this notion of Deep Travel and to demonstrate the mind-expanding possibilities that arise when our bodies are in motion. The very evanescence of his topic may frustrate some readers, but Hiss, an accomplished stylist, persuades us that maybe he's on to something.
An intellectual walkabout filled with arresting, wide-ranging perceptions, quite unlike any other "travel" book.
(COPYRIGHT (2010) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)
September 1, 2010
New Yorker staff writer Hiss (The Experience of Place) takes on travel, or, more precisely, the concept of travel as a mind-opening, elucidating, even eureka-inspiring endeavor--something he calls "Deep Travel." One can be in Deep Travel on the way home from the market or on the way to work. It is about noticing and appreciating things, even if you've overlooked them hundreds of times. Deep Travel involves, literally, taking a first step (there is heavy coverage of the notion of first steps) and is related to the notion of "Deep Time"--as when during an activity one is lost in the moment and happily oblivious to its duration. Deep Travel is restorative; it could reduce the number of wars and other conflicts and allow you to live longer. Despite the book's exciting premise, after the first couple of chapters, reality hits: the text is interminably dull. Perhaps it would be better as an hour-long lecture or an essay made up of the beginning few chapters and the ending. VERDICT This is not recommended for travel enthusiasts; academics who study thought processes and patterns would, on the other hand, probably have a field day.--Lee Arnold, Historical Soc. of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
September 15, 2010
Hiss describes deep travel as an elevated awareness one can experience as one moves about, locally or globally. This book explores cognitive access to that aspired-to awareness, resulting in a work that resembles more an excursus into psychology than a concrete description of the travel experience. For example, Hiss writes prolix passages about the consciousness of the flow of time, positing improved perception of time as a way to higher acuity about ones surroundings. In Hiss case, those are his home of New York City, in which most of his personal observations are set. For the wider worlds aid in defining the concept of deep travel, Hiss quotes extensively from notable travel authors ranging from Marco Polo to Paul Theroux. He eventually diverges into human evolution, taking this direction to show that wanderlust is innate to humans. A discursive and intentionally incomplete workin one chapter, Hiss collects thoughts for a possible future title called A Short History of Awarenessthis work will appeal to readers interested in the psychological aspects of travel.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)