Voyager audiobook

Having studied with Russell Banks and read most of his fiction, I was happy to come upon this collection of travel essays. I suspect that some people will be put off by the long first entry in the book, a recounting of a trip he took in the Caribbean with the woman who would become his fourth wife, in which he shares with her--and the reader--the sad history of his previous marriages. Meanwhile, they hop from island to island and the story gets bleaker and bleaker. But for the reader who perseveres, the second half of the book is less self-indulgent, filled with adventures around the world, including a Himalayan trek when Banks was already in his 70s.See my full review here.

An old man recounts his travels and adventures in a memoir format and at times it is very moving. It made me look at my past relationships and the reasons they failed with an outside perspective.

Je suis tellement en train de découvrir un auteur majeur... la deuxième partie est franchement plus intéressante que la première.

Voyager is part memoir, part travel book. If you’ve read Banks’ fiction, this semi-autobiography will give you a kind of parallel universe to the world of those novels. I would never say that this book is better or anywhere near his novels. But that's mostly because he is a great novelist.People like Banks took a hard path. Most don’t do as well at it as he has. These are the people who drift out of high school, maybe go to college, maybe go to a few colleges, but they never settle on a nice, secure way of life. They don’t learn accounting or computer science. They roam, they try things out, they seem to fail a lot at personal relationships. They are dire introverts with a counter-need to build friendships and romances.They have lives that are interesting at least. And some of them can make other people’s lives interesting through their writing. Not all — some are undoubtedly those people you don’t want to get stuck having to listen to in some bar or at a counter at Denny’s. But out of that same group, you get people like Banks.Almost half of the book is a single essay. It recounts Banks’ return to the Caribbean, his original time there fictionalized in Jamaica Stories. He and his wife to-be, Chase, go from island to island, mixing thoughts about the current state of the islands, with Banks’ quasi-confessional to Chase about his three earlier marriages and their sad and sometimes guilty endings.It’s all a bit of a “journey through the past.” And parts of it aren’t easy for Banks, and, probably not for his wife-to-be either. You see some of the same self-imposed angst that his characters have. Always being at least slightly out of step, even with good times, is painful.Many of the other essays have to do with hiking. Banks is a hiker and a mountain climber. A very serious one, even into his seventies. As a hiker and climber, he isn’t a tourist as he was sometimes in the Caribbean. It’s all about the hike, or the climb. And he doesn’t always succeed.Banks is like his characters, more anti-hero than hero. Things don’t always go well. He can’t always be proud of what he does, but he’s trying to put together a whole that he can respect.

Most of Part 1, on the Caribbean islands, was so disappointing, especially from an author who has spent so much time in Jamaica, that I almost quit reading it. But Part 1 ended with his visit to Cuba, & his meeting w/Castro renewed my interest in the book. The rest of journeys described in the book were great, especially nthe last 2, on hiking in the Andes & Himalayas. And yes, I get that travel books like this are about the author, but even if the backdrop of the journey is to play only a minor role, it still has to impart something of the flavor of a place being written about.

I have mixed feelings about this book. I enjoyed the descriptions of the various travel destinations, but didn't really care about some of the personal stuff: his ruminations on his marriages. I had just finished reading the title essay where the locale was the string of Caribbean islands, which unfortunately were devastated by Hurricane Irma and are now awaiting the second wallop from Hurricane Jose.

It took me a while to get into this book, not being very interested in the Caribbean, but finally everything Banks writes about is interesting, especially himself and the energy that propels him in his relationships and in his life. An inspiration. I am now inspired to get to the Seychelles, although perhaps it too,has been spoiled in the years since he was there.

Russell Banks is a gifted writer. He has a wonderful turn of phrase. A couple of the chapters are more memoir than travel writing, although they have a lot to do with geography. The chapters that are more travel writing than memoir are well written, colorful, and poignant.

great insight on "why hike"

Entre le récit de voyage et l'autobiographie, une narration à la fois personnelle, critique et lucide de Russell Banks.

I listened to the audio version of the book and I cannot separate my feelings from the written text and the quality of the spoken version. The narrator, in my opinion, captured the poetry of Banks's writing and the wistful quality of the prose. He was especially effective his rendering of the book's first section, where Banks uses his travels through the Carribean with his soon to be fourth wife to describe his unsuccessful previous marriages. Overall, I found the travelogue cum memoir effective. I learned a lot about the character strengths and flaws of this major American novelist. Not si muich as a what makes him a well read author/artist, but as a human being with enormous appetites, tenacity, ego and yes, humility. If his revelations of character are not new or surprising, they are nonetheless interesting and insightful. Mr. Banks's descriptions of his mountain treks -- the preparations, physical exhaustion, early gaffs in preparation, the feelings the high mountain scenery evoked in him--captivated me. This is travel writing at its best. I share with Mr. Banks a love of the solitary high places. While I have never hiked in high altitude-- day hikes at 4, 5 thousand feet in elevation, with easy trails, has been my specialty--I have been fortunate enough to look over enormous valleys from heights alone and to experience the solitary vastness of glacier fields without the presence of another human. As I listened to Mr. Banks's descriptions of his wonder and appreciation of the solitary pleasures of experiencing his insignificance, his prose captured my feelings, even if mine were at a much smaller scale than his.So, I thank Russell Banks for sharing with me the pleasure of the solitary voyager trekking to the heights.

Great book! Having read and greatly enjoyed a half-dozen or so of the novels written by Russell Banks, it was a pleasant surprise to find this new non-fiction offering. And it, too, was a great read - featuring lots of interesting adventures and musings. Background from the author's life and travels, in turn, recalls those great novels and what inspired them!

After I "got through" the first, very long story in this collection I did some of the finest arm-chair traveling that I've ever enjoyed. I particularly enjoying Bank's reflections on climbing. He expresses the acknowledgement of limitations, mental, emotional, and physical that come from a life of taking chances.