A review by jayablanchard
Outpost: A Journey to the Wild Ends of the Earth by Dan Richards
2.0
The good: Richards' chapter on Iceland is masterful. Evocative imagery and warm humor paint the country's unique landscape in vivid tones. Throughout this memoir of sorts, Richards' unfailing good humor, frequently the self-deprecating sort, saves him from dozens of otherwise fatal faux pas.
The bad: The intended thesis of Outpost is Richards' journey to the "ends of the earth" where he specifically finds places that serve as outposts for humanity and takes various lessons from those outposts. It feels like the man's editor felt that there needed to be a unifying arc to Richards' exploits and sort of imposed that idea on a book that is realistically a set of dissimilar stories.
Richards travels the world as only a well-connected, white man can. He finds himself absolutely stranded in various places but miraculously knows someone who knows someone who rescues him from debacles of his own making. He cannot swim, and yet jumps into the ocean just to experience it and someone has to save him. The man cannot drive, and yet embarks on countless road trips. He supposedly journeys to the ends of the earth, but the only non-white country he goes to is Japan. Is this really a tale of some impressive, worldly adventurer? I think not.
I don't dislike this book because Richards is surprisingly aware of his own failings. His humor is the laugh-out-loud sort. It manages to save the entire endeavor. He also has some worthwhile musings about the importance of the experience of being alone in nature for the human psyche. He has nuanced thoughts about the global-warming-causing issues of travel balanced with the human need to see the world.
The bad: The intended thesis of Outpost is Richards' journey to the "ends of the earth" where he specifically finds places that serve as outposts for humanity and takes various lessons from those outposts. It feels like the man's editor felt that there needed to be a unifying arc to Richards' exploits and sort of imposed that idea on a book that is realistically a set of dissimilar stories.
Richards travels the world as only a well-connected, white man can. He finds himself absolutely stranded in various places but miraculously knows someone who knows someone who rescues him from debacles of his own making. He cannot swim, and yet jumps into the ocean just to experience it and someone has to save him. The man cannot drive, and yet embarks on countless road trips. He supposedly journeys to the ends of the earth, but the only non-white country he goes to is Japan. Is this really a tale of some impressive, worldly adventurer? I think not.
I don't dislike this book because Richards is surprisingly aware of his own failings. His humor is the laugh-out-loud sort. It manages to save the entire endeavor. He also has some worthwhile musings about the importance of the experience of being alone in nature for the human psyche. He has nuanced thoughts about the global-warming-causing issues of travel balanced with the human need to see the world.