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Powells.com Staff Pick
Elizabeth Gilbert first met Eustace Conway in New York City, on the sidewalk in front of her apartment. He'd traveled from North Carolina, dressed in handmade buckskin clothing and "carrying an impressive knife on his belt."
Gilbert, a regular contributor to GQ, was so fascinated by this modern-day mountain man that she wrote an article about him, titled simply enough, "Eustace Conway is Not Like Any Man You've Ever Met." The profile generated a flood of mail at the magazine, but the author felt she hadn't yet done service to Eustace. He was too big a character, too full of contradictions, to adequately portray in such a small frame.
In The Last American Man, she introduces her subject:
By the time Eustace Conway was seven years old, he could throw a knife accurately enough to nail a chipmunk to a tree. By the time he was ten, he could hit a running squirrel at fifty feet with a bow and arrow. When he turned twelve, he went out into the woods, alone and empty-handed, built himself a shelter, and survived off the land for a week. When he turned seventeen, he moved out of his family's home altogether and headed into the mountains, where he lived in a teepee of his own design, made fire by rubbing two sticks together, bathed in icy streams, and dressed in the skins of the animals he had hunted and eaten?
But his coolest adventure was probably in 1995, when Eustace got the notion to ride his horse across America.
He crossed from Georgia to San Diego in 103 days, setting a speed record in the process.
"But Gilbert is too good a writer to stop there," Heather Hewett commented, reviewing the book in the Christian Science Monitor. "She deftly dispels the fog generated by our Daniel Boone fantasies to show us what others cannot (or will not) see: Eustace Conway is not a simple mountain man leading a peaceful, nature-centered existence. Instead, he is a contradictory, driven individual who finds himself working nonstop in his attempt to single-handedly change the modern American lifestyle."
"I don't think of myself as a journalist," Gilbert explains. "I'm not a beat reporter covering Washington. I only know how to tell a story the way I know how to tell it, which is how I would tell it if we were friends sitting in a bar and I'd just come back from a week with Eustace at Turtle Island." Dave, Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
Publisher Comments:
Gilbert explores what pushed men to settle the frontier West in the nineteenth century and delves into the history of American utopian communities. But her primary focus is on the fascinating true story of Eustace Conway, who left his comfortable suburban home at the age of seventeen to move into the Appalachian Mountains, where for the last twenty years he has lived off the land.
Conway's romantic character challenges all our assumptions about what it means to be a man today; he is a symbol of much that we feel our men should be, but rarely are. From his example, Gilbert delivers an intriguing exploration into the meaning of American manhood and — from the point of view of a woman — refracts masculine American identity in all its conflicting elements. Like Jon Krakauer's national bestseller Into the Wild, this book will find an enthusiastic audience among women, readers of American history, and those interested in nature and the wild.
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Synopsis:
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From the frontier West to American utopian communities, Elizabeth Gilbert has produced a history of American manhood as it has never been told before.
To illustrate her story, Gilbert uses the rich and fascinating case study of Eustace Conway, a man who has lived in the Appalachian Mountains since the age of 17. Conway has worked tirelessly to try to convince his fellow Americans to give up self-destructive modern lifestyles and return with him to the primal sanctuary of the wilderness. He is a living metaphor that challenges all assumptions about what it is to be a modern man in America.
The Last American Manis at the same time an adventure saga and a thoughtful meditation on the relationship of man to the wilderness. It is also a reflection of masculine American identity in all its conflicting elements'"energy, isolation, narcissism, inventiveness, audacity, and destiny.
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Average customer rating based on 1 comment:
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Marie Angell, July 15, 2007 (view all comments by Marie Angell)
Be careful what you wish for. The Last American Man, so termed, is not necessarily what he appears to be, and Elizabeth Gilbert has done a fine job of peeking beneath our fantasies of American masculinity to find the depth and troubled spirit of Eustace Conway. He may seem to live the stuff of myth, but does he really?
Although Gilbert uses a familiar tone that veers close to being flippant, she does a nice job of tying together the past, present and possibility future Conway in a very readable style with surprising depth.
Definitely recommended.
Product Details
- ISBN:
- 9780142002834
- Author:
- Publisher:
- Penguin Books
- Location:
- New York
- Subject:
- General
- Subject:
- Naturalists/Gardeners
- Subject:
- Wilderness survival
- Subject:
- Outdoor life
- Subject:
- Naturalists, Gardeners, Environmentalists
- Subject:
- Essays
- Series Volume:
- GTR-582
- Publication Date:
- May 2003
- Binding:
- Paperback
- Grade Level:
- General/trade
- Language:
- English
- Pages:
- 288
- Dimensions:
- 7.64x5.38x.52 in. .44 lbs.
