The Walk Book

The young man is twenty-three years old. The year is 2014. He has no smartphone, zero hours of screen time. He has $1,000. All of 2013 he spent indoors, nocturnal, ill. Rotting under the weight of his institutional pampering, his full ride. Reading all of Bolaño, writing a “yearlong undergraduate thesis” on Bolaño. Not living according to Bolaño’s precepts: What’s outside the window? ... Literature + travel = illness ... It is a sad truth our travels teach! Not learning any of these sad truths. Only ill. Unaware of what’s outside the window—it’s dark out at night, and his fenestral view is shrouded by his chain smoke.

He’s not hanging his thesis out on a clothesline, like mad Amalfitano, to let it get battered by the elements.

Not till his thesis gets rejected. Till his full ride ends.

Not till then does he set out walking. In flip flops. Following a paper map till it gets dark each day. Sleeping out wherever he ends up.

A hundred day-cantos to get back in touch with THE STARS. A travel story that strives, “in plain speech, with words that are straightforward, honest, and well placed…” to poke deadly holes into our universal romanticization of travel stories.

Laying bare the most obvious yet overlooked ingredient of Literature: In order to WRITE something worth READING, you must have the COURAGE to DO something, WALK somewhere, worth writing ABOUT.

Even if, as it inevitably will be, as all things end up being, a colossal and crushing failure.

Only to discover the saddest truth: That the most courageous confrontations involve no walking at all—but rather facing, head on, the world, the relationships, and the responsibilities that were directly around you all along.