One Word Summary: Space-TimeMore Words: Wow! I relied heavily on my dictionary while reading this book. The reading went slow, and even slower during the chapters I didn't fancy. It took about six months to digest. Usually I'm too impatient to tackle longish projects, but this was a very good book. It's an education. Solnit is thorough, thoughtful, and witty. I'm not a poet or a philosopher or any type of mover and shaker but I am a walker. In the last six months I've felt more conscious of the space outdoors- appreciative, protective, and while I've been luxuriating in the freedom of my feet I've also been chaffing at their limitations. I wish people would park their cars. I wish it were easy to fetch groceries with two young children on foot. I wish communities were designed for pedestrians.
Viking (Penguin Group) 2000
Quotes: I've flagged so many passages. Here are three chosen at random.
They have castigated her cross-country walk across
the boundaries of decorum; she is mocking their garden propriety by suggesting
that they have become part of the garden's array of aesthetic objects, objects
that she can contemplate as impersonally as trees and water. That evening Miss
Bingley strolls about the narrower confines of the drawing wroom, where all the
Netherfields characters but Jane are gathered. "Her figure was elegant, and she
walked well," says Austen. The acuity of idle people about each other's conduct
extended to critiques of movent and posture, and a person's walk was
considered an important part of his or her appearance.
The word citizen has to do with cities, and the ideal city is organized around citizenship - around participation in public life.
What exactly is the nature of the transformation in which machines now pump our water but we go to other machines to engage in the act of pumping, not for the sake of water but for the sake of our bodies, bodies theoretically liberated by machine technology?
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