Name: A Field Guide to Getting Lost
Rating: 3.857142857142857 (63 reviews)
ISBN: 9780143037248

Rebecca Solnit

A series of autobiographical essays draws on key moments and relationships in the author's life to explore such issues as trust, loss, and desire, in a volume that focuses on a central theme of losing oneself in the pleasures of experience. By the author of River of Shadows and Wanderlust. Reprint. 25,000 first printing.

A Field Guide to Getting Lost

solnit travels wide and broad in this book, exploring the depth of loss and getting lost. the idea is great, and her writing style where historical facts and her personal experiences merge and build upon each other is really strong. reading the book felt a bit like getting lost itself, and i recon that it might have been an artistic choice of the author very much in line with the ethos of the book. the lack of structure however, made the reading experience a bit too fragmented to my taste. i would have loved for her to explore some of the themes in more depth, which I believe would have made the links and distinguishes between them more clear.

fragmented or not, the book did have some nice reflections which stuck with me. i especially enjoyed the way she described identity as a dynamic concept, that isn’t set in stone but more like a map, where the solution to feeling lost, sometimes is exploring our own terra incognita.

Cecilie Spangsberg

solnit travels wide and broad in this book, exploring the depth of loss and getting lost. the idea is great, and her writing style where historical facts and her personal experiences merge and build upon each other is really strong. reading the book felt a bit like getting lost itself, and i recon that it might have been an artistic choice of the author very much in line with the ethos of the book. the lack of structure however, made the reading experience a bit too fragmented to my taste. i would have loved for her to explore some of the themes in more depth, which I believe would have made the links and distinguishes between them more clear.

fragmented or not, the book did have some nice reflections which stuck with me. i especially enjoyed the way she described identity as a dynamic concept, that isn’t set in stone but more like a map, where the solution to feeling lost, sometimes is exploring our own terra incognita.

I don’t know if people in positions of privilege understand the heavy bearing of “being lost.” It is a very real thing happening to underprivileged people: not knowing what to do next, what to expect in the morrows to come, the fickle fate of life, it’s all real. The cost of being capricious, of leaving everything to chance, cannot be afforded by people like me. Everything has to fit within a schedule, within a budget, within my capacity – everything has to be calculated. The sad thing is, I don’t really know what to do with my life, but I intend to make meaning out of it, and I guess this book came to me at a divine time. But even in its perfect arrival, I remained guarded about its thesis, more so because it romanticizes the idea of being “lost.”

I first read Solnit in 2022 with her meditations on walking called “Wanderlust.” It was my first introduction to her prose, to her style, and to her window of thinking. I expected that this one would be more didactic than personal, but it veered on the latter. I think that inclination divided us in a sad distance. Solnit spoke about her interiority, experiences that were huge to her life that I cannot latch on to. Her talk about “Vertigo,” punk rock, the majestic desert, and her many artistic influences provide peripheral musings that made her “being lost” sound like a champagne problem. Nonetheless, she made tasteful attempts to connect her introspections to the bigger reality of our world. Her piece about lost heritage ties to the familiar crises most immigrants face; also, her piece about conquistadors and captivity tales mull over the possibility of transformation in a space/culture considered “alien;” and at her most political, her piece about lost species asserts how greedy corporations have endangered rich wildlife. All these pieces are sequenced randomly to resemble a feeling akin to being lost through forests of pages.

Being lost is a critical matter because it seeks return, and Solnit answers this by not returning, but by advancing; to go beyond the known, to tread unfamiliar waters. Solnit assures us, “It’s okay to sometimes experience not knowing what to do next, to run into a barrier.” Growth is possible in unknown borders, and that’s where I am right now, in constant liminality of the person that I am and who I am becoming. My frustrations that stem from my impoverished background pressure me to go back, find the trail, and be comforted by the familiar. This book, with all its dislocated pieces, consoles me to not return but to move forward even with uncertainty abound.

Kent Reymark Tocayon

I don’t know if people in positions of privilege understand the heavy bearing of “being lost.” It is a very real thing happening to underprivileged people: not knowing what to do next, what to expect in the morrows to come, the fickle fate of life, it’s all real. The cost of being capricious, of leaving everything to chance, cannot be afforded by people like me. Everything has to fit within a schedule, within a budget, within my capacity – everything has to be calculated. The sad thing is, I don’t really know what to do with my life, but I intend to make meaning out of it, and I guess this book came to me at a divine time. But even in its perfect arrival, I remained guarded about its thesis, more so because it romanticizes the idea of being “lost.”

 

I first read Solnit in 2022 with her meditations on walking called “Wanderlust.” It was my first introduction to her prose, to her style, and to her window of thinking. I expected that this one would be more didactic than personal, but it veered on the latter. I think that inclination divided us in a sad distance. Solnit spoke about her interiority, experiences that were huge to her life that I cannot latch on to. Her talk about “Vertigo,” punk rock, the majestic desert, and her many artistic influences provide peripheral musings that made her “being lost” sound like a champagne problem. Nonetheless, she made tasteful attempts to connect her introspections to the bigger reality of our world. Her piece about lost heritage ties to the familiar crises most immigrants face; also, her piece about conquistadors and captivity tales mull over the possibility of transformation in a space/culture considered “alien;” and at her most political, her piece about lost species asserts how greedy corporations have endangered rich wildlife. All these pieces are sequenced randomly to resemble a feeling akin to being lost through forests of pages.

 

Being lost is a critical matter because it seeks return, and Solnit answers this by not returning, but by advancing; to go beyond the known, to tread unfamiliar waters. Solnit assures us, “It’s okay to sometimes experience not knowing what to do next, to run into a barrier.” Growth is possible in unknown borders, and that’s where I am right now, in constant liminality of the person that I am and who I am becoming. My frustrations that stem from my impoverished background pressure me to go back, find the trail, and be comforted by the familiar. This book, with all its dislocated pieces, consoles me to not return but to move forward even with uncertainty abound.

Michelle

Maybe it gets better with time?
It gained a star on this second reading- I appreciated the personal narrative more. Perhaps it's easier when you don't read it right before bed, but instead earlier in the day when your mind isn't so sleepy.

Nick Gracilla

Solnit's writing, a mix of memoir, philosophy, theory, art and cultural history, reminds me of the best of Jan Morris' traveling writing — experiential, insightful, and curious. Here, she explores the ideas of lost: in thought, between cultures, between times; lost in not knowing who you are, where you come from, or where you are. Lost in the sense of memories, once cherished, then lost, or recovered; lost in the sense of abandoned; lost in the sense of the distance that can be approached but never achieved. And, in being lost, the opportunities — what's learned, discovered, and made present; what's expressed, revealed, remembered. Her writing is clear, concise, and evocative.

Sloan, Kara

There are people I wish I could try on. I want to be as soft and articulate as Rebecca Solnit. I want to be able to see with her eyes and understand with her mind.

Amelia

This is and continues to be one of my favorite books of all time. I first read it in 2013 and this was my second reread. Each time a new piece strikes me.

In this investigation into loss, losing and being lost, Rebecca Solnit explores the challenges of living with uncertainty. A Field Guide to Getting Lost takes in subjects as eclectic as memory and mapmaking, Hitchcock movies and Renaissance painting, Beautifully written, this book combines memoir, history and philosophy, shedding glittering new light on the way we live now.

Dora Tominic

Disclaimer: this is not a review.

Zadaćnica kao najdraži žanr. 
The surveyist pointed out my affinity towards books about places (and/or their unatainability). hmm, really? I usually easily don't know where I am. Physical spaces and being lost in them. Space, when I think about Laban's theory, was my least favourite of the aspects of movement to think about. Or is it. I chuckled when I realized I am literally reading a book called A Field Guide to Getting Lost at the moment. 

What does space want from me? 

Sameer Vasta

The one thing I have missed most over the past few weeks, as I have been healing from my herniated disc, is the ability to stroll. While previously I would spend hours a day on my feet, journeying on sidewalks and in parks, never moving in a direct line to get from A to B, but instead wandering in indefinite directions and on undefined pathways to eventually find myself somewhere, now I am rarely a pedestrian. When I must go to a certain place, I take transit and taxis; my strolling has been replaced with purposeful walking, a maximum of five minutes at a time, when my destination is close enough and I can quickly sit down when I arrive.

My propensity to walk everywhere, before my injury, meant that I was always discovering somewhere and something new. I made an effort to rarely duplicate my routes, and to allow serendipity guide me towards new locations and experiences. On these rambling strolls, I would rarely be lost in place — my impeccable sense of direction emerges even in foreign and strange cities that I have never before visited, but can navigate within minutes — but I would be lost in time and mind. I may have always known where I was, but I never really knew how I got there and where I was going next.

It’s that feeling of being lost in mind and in time that resonated most with me upon reading Rebecca Solnit’s A Field Guide to Getting Lost. The stories of being lost in place were more illustrative of the meditative power of ambling, while the stories of being lost in time and mind were resonant of my favorite kind of exploration: of discovering something new in places that are familiar, of being lost in experience and not necessarily in location.

As if illustrating its commitment to the idea of aimless ambling, A Field Guide to Getting Lost does not present a tight, cohesive narrative, but is instead constructed more loosely, a collection of stories and illuminations that are held together more by a sense of wonder than any commitment to structure. It is a book that allows you to get lost in it, and to subsequently find yourself, dozens of times.

This ambling and rambling narrative, and Ms. Solnit’s incredible ability to craft poetry in every paragraph, is what makes A Field Guid to Getting Lost so meditatively appealing. It is a book that can be devoured in one sitting, and then re-read in bits in pieces, in highlighted passages that evoke some kind of emotion, whether it be nostalgia or excitement.

There are few authors that can manipulate prose the way Ms. Solnit can, and she does so deftly in this book. The lyricism of each paragraph reminds us of just how beautiful it is to get lost — each word I read, and re-read, reminds me just how anxious I am for my back to heal, so that I can begin my strolls, my aimless ambling, again.

(Review originally published on Flashing Palely in the Margins.)

A Field Guide to Getting Lost

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