A Book Named Hope

I have to confess to an unwanted addiction to the works of Rebecca Solnit. Well, not unwanted. I enjoy the process of reading them, even though I know there's so little nourishment in them. Like Chinese takeaways, perhaps. But even that's a little unfair and doesn't get to the root of my problem with her works, because they are, in their own way, inspirational, and they do what they say on the cover. It's just that the subjects Solnit deals with are so general, so abstract, and the way she writes so ethereal and nebulous that you feel like you've feasted on celery. Even her author photo seems to be in soft focus, taken through a vaselined lens, and that's an apt metaphor for her writing too.



I'd previously read Solnit's Field Guide to Getting Lost, Wanderlust: A History of Walking, and Migrations: Some Passages through Ireland, all for different reasons, so at least I knew what I was letting myself in for. These are all slight, meandering, contemplative, gentle books; upon finishing them, you even want to sigh before placing them down gently on the fire.

I jest. Not the fire. But the sigh is genuine enough because there is an element of melancholy about Solnit's writing that comes from the sense of detachment she generates. This is only possible because she takes particular situations or phenomena and then uses them as a springboard for more abstract reflection. It isn't that she skims lightly over life or over the surface of things the way Baudrillard might have, but her descriptions, while not superficial, are always terse even when she is being passionate and partisan. I've never done a word count for one of Solnit's books, but they feel like Arizona landscapes, full of vast emptinesses followed by spectacular canyons and landscapes that give way once again to deserts and soft warm winds.

Hope in the Dark is a lovely, inspiring book about the rise of the global justice movement. It is optimistic, it cites all the right sources (Jonathan Schell's The Unconquerable World, Subcomandante Marcos, Eduardo Galeano, Hakim Bey), and it is beautifully written. But once again, each chapter, and there are 21 of them in 165 pages, moves from particular to general, from concrete to abstract, and does so in such a smooth and rapid way—indicative of Solnit's exquisite writing, incidentally—that the reader doesn't have time to become immersed in the case studies that she is using to exemplify her argument. And this always leaves the reader somewhat adrift, grasping her point but without feeling any urgency about it. Her work is irredeemably cerebral even when she is discussing something so visceral as justice.

There is nothing but good and goodness in this book. It explains the importance of hope as a force that motivates people to persevere, and it recounts the victories that have taken place, despite the apparent odds, over the past 30 or 40 years. These are reason enough for you to read it, and I've no doubt that I'll be reading Solnit's next book, too. But prospective readers need to be aware that her works are like honey, slow-moving and mellifluous, even dreamlike sometimes. They're an activist's equivalent of a medieval Book of Hours, a gorgeously illuminated contemplative work meant to reinforce faith and leave you feeling tranquil, at peace, and spiritually refreshed. They do. But hungry.