Wild: An Elemental Journey
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Product Description
The Observer, 20 May, 2007
A vital, unique and uncategorisable celebration of the spirit of
life itself, Wild is a profound and extraordinary piece of work --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
life itself, Wild is a profound and extraordinary piece of work --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Bruce Elder, Sydney Morning Herald (Books of the Year)
'The best book I read all year was Wild by Jay Griffiths'
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
24 of 25 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Not many of us will visit the places and talk to the people that Jay Griffiths has, and perhaps that's just as well. We accompany her on a seven year journey as she shows us how much damage has been done to the wild corners and cultures of our planet by the resource-hungry and the religious zealots of the 'civilized' world. From the chill of the Arctic, to the heat of the Australian outback, using language that takes you right to the heart of the wild and deep into the recesses of her own soul, she shows us the incredible beauty and savagery of the planet. Her descriptions are as extraordinarily vivid as the landscapes through which she travels. Poetic, alliterative, coarse, rhythmic, her words dance across the page like a verbal ballet. We are even given the etymology of some of her choices, to enrich her meaning. The last section of the book contains the most moving diary of grief I have ever read. This is an odyssey to delight and challenge both the mind and the soul. Both her books are etched in my memory.
15 of 16 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
An utter wonder of a book, at once vulnerable and ferocious, elegiac and giddy. It's a work that honestly engages the many-voiced vitality of the earth in all its elemental weirdness, a polyphonic fugue written in a style that for once matches the intensity of its topic. Luminously awake, politically astute, without a doubt "Wild" is the expression of a uniquely capacious intelligence, the song of a heart pulsing with compassion for divergent places, plants and creatures as they weather the insanity of contemporary civilization. Yet it's written with abundant empathy for the human animal, too, in our instinctive eloquence and our institutional stupidities. The author's rage sometimes nudges her into over-facile dichotomizing, but the polymorphous exuberance of her imagination steadily bursts the bounds of any such black-and-white theorizing. Meanwhile, her keen attunement to the music of language - and to the rootedness of words in the more-than-human soundscape of wave-surge and cricket-rhythm and thunder - enlivens this work with a magic that provokes the involvement of all one's senses. It's a deliciously erotic read.
33 of 37 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book does generally live up to its reviews. It is instinctive, visceral, and beautiful. It is also wild in every sense. It is a mix of travel writing, nature writing, anthropology, and nature philosophy. Her explorations are thoroughly hands-on and heartfelt, and i particularly like the way she shows how western religious attitudes are so damaging to the natural environment and indigenous people. Because she is so open and honest about her travels and encounters, and so vocal about her beliefs, it is not surprising that many people have commented on the feeling of activism that runs through the book.
Her style of writing is a mix of eloquence and honesty, and it can be very seductive. But it is not without its problems. Her political invective can sometimes feel a little over-done and personal. There are also frequent disparities between the language she uses and the ideologies she espouses. At one turn she will talk of nature as a dispassionate and unfeeling entity, and in the next sentence will extol the thinking and speaking powers of nature in flights of pathetic fallacy that go beyond the empathic points she makes. This made me lose trust in her convictions a little, and made me suspicious of her passion, because it sometimes gets used to hide her theoretical inadequacies. My last criticism would be that the issues she highlights with such alacrity in the first chapter, are basically repeated in the following chapters with a different natural element and location as the metophorical back-beat to her musings.
Despite all this, it is an enjoyable read, with some very valid points to make about nature, wildness, and environment. It should be treated with a little caution however, as once you have recovered from her salvos of passionate indignation, you are often left with a smouldering wreckage of problematic language and ideas.
Her style of writing is a mix of eloquence and honesty, and it can be very seductive. But it is not without its problems. Her political invective can sometimes feel a little over-done and personal. There are also frequent disparities between the language she uses and the ideologies she espouses. At one turn she will talk of nature as a dispassionate and unfeeling entity, and in the next sentence will extol the thinking and speaking powers of nature in flights of pathetic fallacy that go beyond the empathic points she makes. This made me lose trust in her convictions a little, and made me suspicious of her passion, because it sometimes gets used to hide her theoretical inadequacies. My last criticism would be that the issues she highlights with such alacrity in the first chapter, are basically repeated in the following chapters with a different natural element and location as the metophorical back-beat to her musings.
Despite all this, it is an enjoyable read, with some very valid points to make about nature, wildness, and environment. It should be treated with a little caution however, as once you have recovered from her salvos of passionate indignation, you are often left with a smouldering wreckage of problematic language and ideas.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
important understanding of culture and religion
Jay Griffiths' book `Wild' is a rare blend of carefully researched argument,passionate poetry and simple compelling first-hand experience. Read more
Published 21 months ago by tintin
Exactly what I needed...
I loved this book through and through. Griffiths' skilful ways in painting a scene are unrivalled, and her passion in revealing her insights is powerfully seductive. Read more
Published on 23 Mar 2010 by Scott Rennie
A poetic and scholarly voice demonstrates the nakedness of our...
The author travels worldwide to people living closer to nature than we have done for a long time. She says straight out that our accepted attitude of yanking them brutally out of... Read more
Published on 6 Jun 2009 by Frances Bell
Passion is no ordinary word
Jay Griffiths lived this book for seven years and her passion for wild authenticity shows in every page of her inspiring, poetic writing. Read more
Published on 10 May 2009 by J. P. S. May
Wild - a rather long Journey
This is an interesting book, which would have been better had it been 25% shorter. Some points (such as wilderness actually meaning a "lack of knowledge" and the maleness of... Read more
Published on 7 Jan 2009 by SCM
Essential reading
Nature writing seems to be back in vogue at the moment, and this is something very much to be welcomed. One of the best recent examples of the type is this book, Wild. Read more
Published on 23 Oct 2008 by Simon
Overwritten - too much
I see why people are seduced by this, but a hundred pages or so in, I fled back to Hemingway. A hundred pages of images like 'clouds mulled on the horizon'. Read more
Published on 7 Aug 2008 by D. M. Purkiss
Waking the wild woman
This is a breathtaking book that changed my perspective on the way I view the wild people and places of the world as well as my own internal landscape. Read more
Published on 4 Jun 2008 by V. Spalding
Life is not linear
I love this book. It is full of interest and takes a good look at the world from a perspective of the indigenous populations. I have never read anything like it. Read more
Published on 2 Jun 2008 by Gwen Buchan
Really enjoyable and moving.
Thoroughly enoyed this book, and found the stories of disenfranchised peoples very moving. It made me look further into some of the issues raised. Read more
Published on 19 May 2008 by J. Ferguson
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