From Publishers Weekly
"By the time Eustace Conway was seven years old he could throw a knife accurately enough to nail a chipmunk to a tree." Such behavior might qualify Eustace as a potential Columbine-style triggerman, but in Gilbert's startling and fascinating account of his life, he becomes a great American countercultural hero. At 17, Conway "headed into the mountains... and dressed in the skins of animals he had hunted and eaten." By his late 30s, Eustace owned "a thousand acres of pristine wilderness" and lived in a teepee in the woods full-time. He is, as Gilbert (Stern Men) implies with her literary and historical references, a cross between Davy Crockett and Henry David Thoreau. Gilbert, who is friends with Conway and interviewed his family, evidences enormous enthusiasm for her subject, whether discussing Conway's need for alcohol to calm down; his relationship with a physically and emotionally abusive father; or his horrific hand-to-antler fight with a deer buck he was trying to kill yet she always keeps her reporter's distance. At times, Conway's story can be wonderfully moving (as when he buries kindergartners in a shallow trench with their faces turned skyward to help them understand that the forest floor is "alive") or disconcerting (as when, in 1995, he's uncertain about Bill Clinton's identity). Gilbert has a jaunty, breathless style, and she paints a complicated portrait of American maleness that is as original as it is surprising.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From AudioFile
Eustace Conway, who took to the woods at age 17, makes firewith sticks, lives in a teepee, and wears clothes made of animalskins. Is he an American countercultural heor or a maladjustedself-promoter who moved to the Appalachian Mountains and acquiredmassive acreage to avoid confronting his shortcomings? ElizabethGilbert, a friend of Conway, explores these--and other--questions inTHE LAST AMERICAN MAN, a fascinating examination of Conway. PatriciaKalember's reading is thoroughly in sync with the author's feminineperspective on Conway. Kalember gives life to Conway, and the legionsof people drawn to him, most of whom are eventually repelled by hispersonality. She is particularly adept at conveying the tortuousrelationship between Eustace and his antagonistic, unloving father andhis inability to deal with women, whom he perceives as mates whoshould obey his every word. D.J.S. © AudioFile 2002, Portland,Maine--
Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine
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