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"Ghost Rider" book, motorcycle travel thru US and Canada



 
 
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Old October 24th, 2004, 04:46 PM
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Default "Ghost Rider" book, motorcycle travel thru US and Canada

Comments (my review) on two non-fiction books recently read:

"Ghost Rider" by rock-band Rush drummer Neil Peart

Imagine a book where the author/protagonist:
Loses his daughter to an automobile accident
Loses his wife who seemingly willed herself death, from grief
Loses his dog who seemingly wills itself cancer
Then, decides to ride a BMW just "anywhere", semi-aimlessly
Describes himself as a bicycle-touring rock-band drummer who doesn't
wallow in drugs, sex, or groupies
Tours 55,000 miles from one logging road to another, without a
cellphone
Rides a BMW motorcycle into the remotest and roughest dirt roads, from
Yukon to Belize, yet doesn't ask BMW for sponsorship
Despises dams because they have destroyed the natural ecology but
doesn't mind riding a huge motorcycle that may be getting less mileage
than a Toyota Prius
Manages to read more books, faster, than most book critics
Finds history everywhere, and weaving that history into the present
Calls himself a ghost, because [OK, I won't ruin the suspense for the
reader]

Who is this book for? Anybody [mainly the male baby-boomers] out there
who dreams about dirt-biking the Baja, Guatemala, or the Dempster
Highway. It'll may just cure you of your dreams (or the illusions)
because Peart manages to capture it all, in his book.

There are some puzzling human behaviours here. Why did Mrs. Peart bury
herself so deep in grief that she was unable to crawl out? Why does
the author write about sipping a particular brand of single-malt that
his book sometimes reads like an infomercial? In contrast, Peart never
reveals his brand of smokes. Is there some hidden guilt behind all of
Peart's travel, some Purgatory in why Peart would ride, ride, ride
into torrents of rain, mud, headlong, with barely a windscreen, when a
Gold Wing would have been way more comfortable?

Peart's travels is not caused by a inner (non-spiritual) quest but a
need to drown the noise of grief with the noise of road tires.
Touring, albeit without a goal. Does Peart come out of "it", and find
religion? If he did, he doesn't write about it. Midway through the
book, it Peart's self-story seems to drag on, I'm waiting for the
punchline. There isn't one. In the last chapter, he somehow overcomes
his grief and the widower turns into a single-guy and finally 'gets
the girl', a Hollywood one at that.

Peart seems to have told of his travels honestly, revealing the most
embarrassing details that few men would have courage to disclose.

Peart's book, in my view, is worthwhile reading.


The second book is "A Keen Soldier" by Andrew Clark. Although I've
only managed to get to page 100 or so, I'd like to nominate this book
for a Nobel Prize, or something similarly honourable, for the research
Clark undertook to deliver, the amazing details of what happened
nearly 50 years ago. Clark's writing is so visual (of war scenes) that
I have some trouble going to sleep. Clark's masterful weaving of the
micro and macro views of bullets and mortar seem to wound this reader
himself. It is as "troubling" as the movie, "Saving Private Ryan."
And, this book, in my opinion, is an important historical chronicle,
without the Hollywood-movie treatment. These details would be
impossible to capture in a movie. But, Clark's writing created a movie
in my head, his writing is full of vivid scenes.

Few books are this profound. Clark's book, in my view, contains as
universal a message as Pearl Buck's "The Good Earth" (Nobel Prize
winner, if I recall correctly.)
 




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