"I've tried to map the circuitous routes that change takes, the byways and backroads by which movements have been built and ideas have advanced," Rebecca Solnit writes in the introduction to her incisive No Straight Road Takes You There: Essays for Uneven Terrain. The illuminating collection gathers 20 previously published essays that Solnit believes "have something to say beyond the moment," divided into three sections titled Visions, Revisions, and More Visions.
Solnit (The Faraway Nearby; The Encyclopedia of Trouble and Spaciousness) writes with her signature deployment of myriad sources, combined with fascinating lines of thinking, to link subjects such as violin maker Antonio Stradivari and climate change as in "A Truce with Trees." In "In Praise of the Meander," she begins with an anecdote about mushroom hunting to introduce the central arguments of the piece: that depth can be found through lingering and meandering, that books--and essays--do not have to be linear. She ends by nodding toward the mushroom hunting she began with, a circling back that matches form with content.
While some essays indeed meander, others are calls to arms, such as "Despair Is a Luxury," in which Solnit implores readers not to succumb to the dangerously dulling and indulgent thinking that all hope is lost--especially regarding climate change. She invokes historical examples of solidarity movements overcoming establishments, as in the collapse of the Soviet Union.
One of the delights of reading Solnit is the invigorating sensation of forging new connections between unforeseen topics and ideas. In No Straight Road Takes You There, she absolutely does not disappoint. --Nina Semczuk, writer, editor, and illustrator