Main entry:

Nicholson, Geoff, 1953- author.

Title & Author:

The lost art of walking : the history, science, philosophy, and literature of pedestrianism / Geoff Nicholson.

Edition:

1st Riverhead trade paperback edition

Publication:

New York : Riverhead Books, 2009
©2008

Description:

276 pages; 21 cm.

Notes:
Includes bibliographical references (p. [259]-273).
An introduction: the lost art of falling down; when bad things happen to good walkers; some fellow travelers and fellow stumblers -- Los Angeles: walking wounded with Ray and Phil and others -- Eccentrics, obsessives, artists: walks with Richard Long, Captain Barclay, et al. -- Nicholson's London, your London, anybody's London -- As I tripped out one morning: music, movement, movies -- A man walks into a bar: New York, the shape of the city, down among the psychogeographers and mixologists -- Some desert walkers, walking in and out of nature, with and without god -- The walking photograph -- Walking home and away from home -- Perfect and imperfect walks, last walks, the walks we didn't take.

Summary:

From the Publisher: A fascinating, definitive, and very personal rumination on the history, science, philosophy, art, and literature of walking, by a skilled cultural commentator. Geoff Nicholson, author of Bleeding London and Sex Collectors, turns his eye to the intellectual and cultural history of that most common of activities-walking. This simple, omnipresent activity has inspired numerous subcultures, literary and artistic legacies, sporting events, personal memories, epic journeys, mystical revelations, and scandals. It's a rich tradition that embraces such novelists as Charles Dickens and Paul Auster, musicians like Robert Johnson and Bob Dylan, and moviemakers from Buster Keaton to Werner Herzog. But it's also a tradition that includes obsessives and eccentrics, such as the artist Mudman, who coats his body in mud and then walks the city streets; competitive pedestrians such as Captain Barclay, who walked one mile an hour for a thousand successive hours; and gang members who use the hidden language of the "Crip Walk" to spell out messages in the dirt with their scuffing. How we walk, where we walk, why we walk announces who and what we are. Geoff Nicholson is a master chronicler of the hidden subversive twists on a seemingly normal activity. He analyzes the hows, wheres, and whys of walking through the ages. He finds people who walk only at night, or naked, or for thousands of miles at a time, in costume, for causes, or for no reason whatsoever. Here, he brings curiosity and genuine insight to a subject that often walks right past us.

Resources:
Table of contents only
Publisher description
Table of contents only

ISBN:

9781594484032
1594484031

Subject:

Walking.
Voyages and travels.
Voyages.
journeys.

Holdings:

Location: Library main 270824
Call No.: BIB 203665
Status: Available