Customer Reviews

The Cliff Walk: A Memoir of a Job Lost and a Life Found

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Don Snyder's book is wonderful.Having been one of his students, this is not surprising.Don Snyder was the most influential professor that I had at Colgate.His class was about life as much as it was about literature.For example,Don moved our classroom from one of the magnificent gray stoned buildings perched high on the hill of the campus,to a dank basement in one of the college houses at the bottom of the hill,so as to remove us from the ivory tower.He taught us the danger of assumption and vain glory.He challenged us to see the precarious nature of our lives and to take little for granted.Most importantly,Don challenged us to rid ourselves of the illusions of power and security, to find out what is truly the one most important thing in our lives and to live for this thing,this person.I kept waiting for him to tell me what that one thing should be.He never did.He left that to me and I am so thankful to him.This is the lesson of the book

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Don Snyder's account of his venture into and out of academia. I could relate to many of the feelings he had because of the similarities of our experiences. But it seemed that he has taken so much literary license that it is a little of a self serving memoir... but perhaps they all are.

I taught at Colgate University, apparently for the two years just before he arrived (on a 2 year contract). I will not claim, as some have, that Colgate did not mistreat or mislead him. I really do not know. But, I will point out that his portrayal of Colgate as an ideal place to hold a faculty position and as "one notch below the Ivy league" is a little generous.

Hamilton, NY. is only a great place to live if you like virtually perpetual cold gray weather in an isolated hamlet with very little cultural or other amenities (outside of the mostly amateur or excessively scholarly offerings of a small college's students and faculty).

The students at Colgate tended to be spoiled rich kids who wanted to go to an Ivy league school, but were not academically equipped to do so. Of course there were notable exceptions... those particularly talented and bright students that make teaching a joy. There are at least some of these at every school.

And the faculty... He should be happy not to be stuck there. The school's long term tenured faculty tend to be there precisely because they are not able to go somewhere else. There is a gilded cage feeling about their lives. It shows in their bitterness with administrators, students, and each other. They would fight over very small things because they had no control over the big things in their lives. Generally I would have to say that the over-all quality of the faculty was not one notch below Ivy League, but one notch below that at a typical large public state university.

Colgate regularly used 2-year contracts (instead of tenure track contracts) apparently to keep down faculty costs. Snyder was a little unclear about the nature of his contract. If it was a tenure track contract, everyone (in academia) knows that to be turned down at a third year review is an indication that the institution does not think you are doing well enough to be tenured at that institution, whatever they may "say" to soften the blow. An institution as small as Colgate would not typically hire a faculty member into a tenure track slot if it was a too heavily tenured department. It would use short term contracts, which are particularly easy to fill in English departments. So if Synder had a tenure track position, then he has not told us the whole story. There would be some written or verbal report or analysis from his colleagues judging the quality and quantity of his academic work, his teaching skills, his collegiality (how well they liked him and got along with him), and service. We hear nothing of this; he leaves us very much in the dark about the details of his dismissal. There must be more. By leaving this out, we are also shut out from the sense of outrage and/or self-doubt that such an analysis provokes. Perhaps this is what he could not tell his wife and couldn't tell us either... perhaps it just hurt too much to review it, even if he thought it was not a fair and accurate analysis.

It is interesting, though to spot some of the little ways in which I do concur with his analysis. His portrayal of the Economics Professor, whom he only names by initials, was right on the mark. I knew immediately to whom he was referring.

In the end, however, I found myself not liking Don Snyder very much. By neglect, at least, he mistreats his wife and children. He claims to have tried to "sell" one of his unborn children. We are supposed to think that this is because he has sunk so low. But, I think, he is just lacking in character and it took him a while to decide to be a better person.

He correctly notes that he is not the only one to face career setbacks, disappointments and even prolonged unemployment, but he did portray perhaps one of the worst ways to react to such a difficulty.

Not liking the person, Don Synder, however, does not mean that I did not like the book. It held my attention from beginning to end, and while I could not relate to the actions taken, I could relate to the emotions expressed as genuine.

This moving, at times poetic tale of coping with job loss should be required reading for everybody that works with dislocated workers.

As a self-made professional who defined his place in the world by his success in academe, Snyder experiences all the classic steps of grief when he loses his job. This guy was not just knee-deep, he was up to his ears in denial--and his family, particularly his wife, paid the price. I was particularly moved by his wife's ability to swallow her pride to return merchandise following his bouts of profligate overspending--even as she was reduced to applying for food stamps to feed their 4 kids. How could he be so foolish? Snyder lets us see exactly how . . . and also shows us how his eventual acceptance changed not only his job, but his life.

I work in a retraining program for dislocated workers, and this book provided me more insight into the devastation of job loss than any how-to book I've come across. I wept, and so will you.

'The Cliff Walk' by Don J. Snyder provides insight into the thought processes and depression brought on by a job loss. It is a "to the point" book about how this man looks at other people while dealing with the emotional trama of losing and not being able to find another job. The internal battles about self worth, self expectation, and self doubt are mixed with the just plain day to day problems of how to survive. Mr. Snyder hits close to home for anyone who as ever lost a job as he describes his sink into depression and then the realization that he really is no better than anyone else. The characters in the book are fully developed, especially Colleen, his wife. I felt her strenghth as I read the pages of the book. I became so emotionally involved I had to force myself to put the book down in order to escape from the feeling of being cornered only to find myself drawn back into the pages as soon as I could stand the emotional pain. It is a must read reminder for anyone who had ever been in this situation and a must read for anyone trying to understand someone who is coping with a job loss.

I just read this book while still mired in a job search going on three years. The emotional tailspin the author displays is heart-wrenching and familiar; the tone of the first 200 pages felt like reading my own journals. I did not identify with the author's deceptions and strange behaviors, however, such as lying to his wife or to an insurance company, or considering selling a new baby. But everyone has their own threshold for going haywire, and the point of this book is that Don Snyder got through it and learned something about life, work, and family.

THE CLIFF WALK, beyond the author's personal journey, raises excellent questions about the "American Dream" and what it means in our modern age. It also looks at the meaning of work, and how we draw self-esteem -- even identity -- from what we do for pay. This is a courageous book, even if you don't always approve of how the author responds to his plight, and it offers a strong dose of perspective on what really matters.

This is the ultimate victory story...with a twist. Unlike most autobiographical profiles, this one doesn't stand tall and tell you how great it is to be great. The thing is, it doesn't wrap itself up neatly either; the ending doesn't suddenly justify everything that has happened along the way. It's a formula all it's own, one that carries you up and down through the vulnerable channels this man had to endure.

What's so refreshing about this book is kind of what I liked about the movie "Fargo"--the realization that a good story is as much the cumulitive value of the bits and pieces as it is the linear value--of this happening, then this, then this. Moments like his talking to a stranger while chipping golf balls capture the true feeling, the mixed combination of killing time with his genuine fear of being unemployed for even one more day. It's a strange loneliness that we all feel from time to time, even when we're not truly alone. Again, most writers need to have scaled great mountains before they'll write a story where they hang themselves out like this. Don Snyder makes an exception. In today's world, most nonfiction books succeed based on what they emphasize, leave in, or leave out. Snyder tells it all--even the bits that aren't exactly flattering.

And in the end, he shows his true grit: not with eagles or birdies, but simply by making the pars he's supposed to make. And don't let my analogies fool you: it's not about golf. It's just your typical combination of fear and pride and confusion that somehow lead us to where we are today. And it's that kind of simplicity that makes a book like this stand the test of time, whether it be now or 50 years down the road.

I have rarely read a book so frustrating. Although the prose is often moving, the more I think about this book, the more it bothers me. The author made stupid, selfish decisions, and he lied, sometimes involving his own children in the deceit. Rather than convince me that he was telling all by including bad behavior, though, his memoir seemed to me to be strangely selective and sometimes self-contradictory (for example, he emphasizes how little trouble his wife had having children, but then we find out there was some problem with his son's birth). I never got the sense he had a clue why he was let go, but I suspect it had a lot more to do with forgetting that students don't grant tenure than with his status as a white male. He presents his wife as a virtual madonna, but this seemed to me more of an excuse for his doing nothing to help take care of his own children than reality (after all, she's just so *good* at it, and she loves it so much, he'd just be spoiling her fun). The author seemed clinically depressed (with mania?), but even after an "accidental" overdose, no one, including his wife, seems to have suggested he might need help. I found this amazing. I think the author has a powerful need to be larger than life somehow, and he achieves this by romanticizing blue collar work. He still wants to be better than everyone else, but instead of achieving this by outward signs of success, he's going to do it by understanding things that have escaped the people he used to run with. Ultimately I was expecting more insight and less deceit.

I couldn't put this down. I had to laugh at some of his crazy antics, then felt like crying when it was so obvious that he was spiralling into the abyss. I wanted to scream at him at times, "Pull yourself together!!" Overall a satisfying and compelling read.

I read this book a few years ago and found it fascinating. I think it is particularly useful as we drift into the so called "knowledge based society". It becomes easier to delude oneself about one's self worth. Knowledge is continuously evolving and changing .... basic life skills it appears are more durable.

I think this book is really about these issues. The author's wife must be a Saint.

My husband and I both read this book a few years ago and agreed that it was one of the most profound memoirs we'd ever read. Snyder was born to write and we are blessed to have his thoughts recorded for posterity.