Voyager: Travel Writings [9780061857683]

Overview

“Banks’s narrative seductively juxtaposes rambles through lush volcanic mountains, white sand beaches and coral reefs with a barrage of memories of the hash he’s made of his private life.” —The New York Times Book Review

Russell Banks has indulged his wanderlust for more than half a century. This longing for escape has taken him from the “bright green islands and turquoise seas” of the Caribbean islands to peaks in the Himalayas, the Andes, and beyond.

In each of these remarkable essays, Banks considers his life and the world. In Everglades National Park this “perfect place to time-travel,” he traces his own timeline. Recalling his trips to the Caribbean in the title essay, “Voyager,” Banks dissects his relationships with the four women who would become his wives. In the Himalayas, he embarks on a different quest of self-discovery. “One climbs a mountain not to conquer it, but to be lifted like this away from the earth up into the sky,” he explains.

Pensive, frank, beautiful, and engaging, Voyager brings together the social, the personal, and the historical, opening a path into the heart and soul of this revered writer.

What happens when a lifetime of movement confronts the stillness of memory?

• Introspective Memoir: A frank and unflinching look at a messy private life, including the author’s relationships with his four wives.
• Wanderlust: Journey from the turquoise seas of the Caribbean and the time-traveling landscape of the Everglades to the remote peaks of the Himalayas.
• Marriage and Divorce: An honest self-dissection of love, escape, and the recurring patterns that shaped his most intimate relationships.
• A Writer’s Self-Discovery: In these powerful meditations on a life of travel, Russell Banks seeks to understand the man he has become—and the boy he once was.