Customer Reviews

The Cactus Eaters: How I Lost My Mind - and Almost Found Myself - on the Pacific Crest Trail (P.S.)

5 star:		(29)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

If you're looking for a guide to the Pacific Crest Trail - this isn't that kind of book. BUT, if you're looking for an extremely well-written, hard-to-put-down, hysterically funny account of a very personal 2,650 mile journey - Cactus Eaters is for you!

I strongly disagree with the reviewer who tagged this book a yawn-inducing personal narrative with too little emphasis on The Trail itself. I've done a long distance hike (Appalachian Trail) and, to be honest, a description of the *actual* trail experience has HUGE potential to be quite tedious. You walk a lot. Body parts hurt. Your gear fails you. If you're inexperienced, you make stupid mistakes. If you're experienced, you make well-educated ones. There lots of trees and the occasional animal. Other hikers can either entertain or irritate you.

It's what happens to a person in the face of all these things that transforms the experience into a real journey and Dan White does an amazing job of bringing the reader along on his.

I was so taken by Cactus Eaters that I dusted off my backpack and hit the trail for a few days after reading it. Can't recommend it enough :)

I read all the reviews of this book, and I find it interesting that a couple of the critiques say there's not enough "trail" in the book. Clearly people read for different reasons. Personally, I found a lot of trail in the book. I loved all this book's descriptions of the realities of the beauty and dreariness of the trail--and I found myself looking forward to relishing Dan White's hilarious (and often deceptively poignant) riffs on what all of this means to him. This is a memoir, not a travel guide, which the subtitle ("How I lost my mind and almost found myself on the PCT") makes clear.

This is about someone facing adversity, boredom, beauty and physical pain--all shaped by good writing into one riotous scene after another. It's not just about exploring a trail but about exploring one's coming-of-age existential questions about what to do with one's life.

That said, the humor of this book cannot be overstated. The book often reads like David Sedaris meets the Three Stooges. I can't remember the last time I laughed out loud so much while reading.

I loved reading The Cactus Eaters because Dan White has written it using vivid, luscious and sometimes strange details. For the price of a few lattes, I traveled with White as he came upon one moment of truth after another, and got to see the consequences of his choices. Along with being a great travel narrative, White has crafted a funny, sad and beautiful true story - well told and timed. I particularly enjoyed the realness of this book - White did not sugar-coat things, even when his actions ended up being wrong or ill-thought through.

The story engages one's interest on many levels through a telling that is jam-packed with fascinating details and portraits of interesting characters--much in the style of John McPhee (one of my favorite authors). Unlike McPhee, however, White's own (progressively more annoying) personality impinges on the reader's ability to actually enjoy the story. I'll admit that this may be something of a hollow critique, owing to the fact that the title doesn't specifically advertise the book as strictly an account of hiking the PCT. The story is of the author's "almost finding" of himself.

But particularly on that level, the story is lackluster and pointedly disingenuous fare. Aspects of the author's mindset and personality that are initially somewhat charming become, within a surprisingly short space, almost nausea-inducing. White's toxic mixture of infantile narcissism, insecurity, and inexcusable incompetence becomes evident early-on and only gets deeper with each page. If it ever led anywhere--if the author would actually lower shields and offer a glimpse into the effects of the trip on his true self--it might all be tolerable. Instead, however, the reader is subject to a non-stop onslaught of White's desperate, cloying attempts to illustrate how his asinine behavior, selfishness, and barely-masked contempt for the wilderness are, in the end, great character strengths which we are to witness with reverence and awe. Fairly trivial inconveniences and unplanned events--inconveniences and events well-known to every weekend backpacker--become, in the hands of the author, tremendous and overwhelming ordeals that he surmounts through the force of sheer strength and superhuman will. (As a reasonably-seasoned backpacker and through-hiker, I look at every event described in the book and can't help think: `Um... Yeah? So? Big deal!')

Another particular point of great annoyance is White's incessant need to remind the reader time after time and time again that his girlfriend-companion on the trip is really, really exceptionally attractive, and that they had sex a lot. The set-up for these childish, winking reminders comes early in the book, where the reader is treated to an inexplicably detailed and lengthy accounting of the author's gawky (and utterly commonplace) boy-meets-girl story. Besides being pointlessly detailed, the account is so fastidiously one-sided and sexist that it is actually difficult to read. The girl, Allison, is reduced--truly reduced--to a robot-like non-entity. She is set-up as a barely sentient sex-object who serves dutifully, with a smile and nod, at the behest of White's pleasure. (Spoiler alert) The fact that White doesn't "end-up" with Allison is the most pleasing thing about the book. I'm happy for her.

I'm glad, too, that White inserted that "almost" into the subtitle, for he doesn't even come close to "finding" himself. It's not so much that he doesn't quite manage it as he doesn't even try. Far from it--he clearly doesn't want to find himself, for fear of who he really is. This seems clear enough from the sense one gets that White's "self-deprecating" style is really more self-congratulatory than deprecating (`Hey, look at me! See how self-deprecating and down-to-earth I am!'). A more accurate subtitle might be: `how I set-out to use the PCT to retreat further into my narcissism, and succeeded brilliantly, as usual.'

Like all good artists, White does an excellent job of painting the scene around him. From the desolute desert to the decadent forest, this book makes you crave more. There are very few books that have me ready to set out on my own adventure and White hooked me on 2,650 mile PCT. As a native Oregonian I have spent countless hours/days trekking around the forest and high deserts of Oregon and now my wife and have decided to take our hikes to the next level. Thanks for the inspiration and the great book Dan White!!

This book is a great read! Funny and fun, honest and insightful . . . it transcends "travel book," while having all that genre has to offer, a wonderfully descriptive sense of the Pacific Crest Trail, the flora and fauna lovingly described (and, in the case of the cacus, eaten!), a true and shimmering sense of the landscape, that is both barren and beautiful, always haunting . . . But it's also a story of one man's personal journey, into his own occasionally deranged mind and overheated soul, that is so frank and engaging and so very human, as it also explores the nature of relationships as well as the nature of nature itself.

This is a terrific book, and it would make a really good movie!

Dan White is a funny dude and I enjoyed The Cactus Eaters - especially in the early-going when White's humor was fresh. The pacing of the story is excellent and he explores the challenges of couple-hiking in an effective (if one-sided way). Several aspects of this book aggravated me:

1) White never tells us when exactly he hiked the trail although his references to popular culture would date the hike in the early to mid 1990s.

2) Some of the drama and dialog seems contrived - which given the likely time lapse between the hike and the manuscript, would not be surprising

3) White's self-flagellation becomes a little repetitive and there were 2-3 too many references to cosmic payback

4) The timing of his two-season hike (he starts in June) leads him to miss much of the culture of the trail. His contact with other thru-hikers is minimal. I can't help but think that if he and Allison had done a traditional thru-hike that he would have had much richer inter-personal material

5) The specific content of this book is eerily similar to A Blistered Kind of Love - which tells the story of a couple hiking the PCT from a dual voice standpoint. This might just be coincidence or maybe not or maybe I am biased.

Overall, I would recommend The Cactus Eaters as a well-written and humorous narrative, but if you are looking for an authentic PCT book, there are better options out there.

Although the book has a few funny sections, the author spends WAY too much time talking about his own problems, obsessions, etc. Many of the mishaps in this book could have been avoided with a little hiking experience before tackling such an enormous trail. The author didn't even know how to use a compass to find North when he started, and he took untried equipment along.

Also, there is some cosmic rule about this kind of book that descriptions of various bodily functions have to be included; if that doesn't sound funny to you, you might not like this book.

I heard Dan on a local radio show describe his adventures/misadventures, telling how he set off to hike the PCT with very little experience and lots of ideals. Based on that, I had to get the book.

I really enjoyed the book - a believable narrative of someone who may have bitten off more than he could chew. The characters he meets on his travels ring true; they run the gamut of helpful, to weird to downright bizarre. I had to keep reading until the end so I could see how everything turned out.

When I was younger, I often wanted to through hike the Appalachian Trail, but I have a feeling that this is how it would have turned out if I did!

Dan White seems to have found the same narrative style as Bill Bryson (In a Sunburned Country and A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail), a mix of laughter, adventure and "Oh my God!".

This book is certainly not a guide book for the PCT, but it is a very enjoyable read for adventurers and for couch potatoes. I had initially purchased an electronic version of this book for me, but I liked it so much, I went back an purchased a print copy for my husband.

Dan White has a way with words. In the first three lines of this book, he draws the reader in with his uncanny descriptions ("I suck my tongue. I lick my hot teeth") his metaphors, his ability to all at once keep the reader laughing and keep the reader sympathetic. Reading this book is like watching a completely engrossing movie. You are taken out of your life and into the hot, dry, crackling desert. When something draws you out, you long to get back in, back to the PCT, back to Dan and Allison and the cast of bizarre characters they meet along the way in this story. Dan is a perfect guide: sensitive, funny, smart, and not a little self-deprecating. In a word: awesome. This book begs to be read out loud to friends.