Customer Reviews

Off the Road: A Modern-Day Walk Down the Pilgrim's Route into Spain

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The author is frank, spares neither himself nor others, and his writing is often screamingly funny. His fellow pilgrims are a motley collection of rogues, jocks, fanatics, earnest believers, and clueless tourists -- but even in more pious eras, people went on pilgrimages for all sorts of reasons, few of them lofty (witness the Canterbury Tales). Hitt never manages to pin down his own motivation for making the trip, doubtless disappointing readers who expect every journey to end in a blinding flash of insight. But I found his candor refreshing: he tells it like it is and doesn't pretend to a piety he doesn't feel, even when he's momentarily overcome with emotion upon reaching his goal. Chaucer had it right: a pilgrimage is a metaphor for life itself, we're all on this road together, and, if you keep your eyes open, you'll learn that the journey IS the destination.

Having read a favorable review of this book in one of the Seattle papers, and having heard my wife tell of the Pilgrim's Route to Santiago de Compostela, I looked forward to reading this and was very prepared to like it. Though Hitt is clearly a writer of some talent, the narrative was rather poorly drawn and aimless. There was simply not much interesting in his story. What's worse, the Kirkus Reviewer is right: Jack Hitt does adopt a smug tone, discussing the religious aspects of the journey and the concept of "god" (with a pointedly lower-case "g") in a belittling manner at every turn. He seems to incur experience but to absorb none of it; he seems to learn nothing, because he knew everything he wanted to know when he started. In short, this is a regrettable effort.

I'm about as "religious" as Jack Hitt, but this book piqued my interest in the North of Spain, Romanesque churches and pilgrimages. Why would I do it? Well, the same reason as the author did; historical, architectural, for the connection with the past. In the Middle Ages, it seemed that pilgrimages were a great excuse to travel and there still is a culture of the pilgrim that exists on the pigrim road. When I travel to Spain I will most assuredly travel a part of the Pilgrims Road. I won't get to see as much as Jack Hitt did but I hope I will see enough to recall his ironic humor. When my daughters are old enough I hope to travel the road with them, as pilgrims.

In "Off the Road," author Jack Hitt immediately announces his contempt for religion and people of faith. He then writes a book about both. He is outside, an American in Spain, for most of the book, and I never got a sensuous, textured, memorable sense of what Spain looks like or feels like or smells like, and I got no sense of the natural world Hitt walked through. I am a walker, and I got no sense of what this walk entails.

Mostly, I got a sense of Hitt, and I didn't like him, which is hard because, ultimately, the book is all about him. Hitt could have walked his five hundred miles of the Santiago de Compostella pilgrimage through a succession of contiguous K-Mart parking lots.

Hitt announces his privilege. His family attended a "prestigious" church. No blue-collar church for Hitt! His ancestors, he wants you to know, were the kind of WASPs who created America. He's way cooler than his ancestors, though, so he makes fun of them and "effortlessly casts off" Christianity. He himself describes his rejection of Christianity as "casual" "arrogant" "glib" and done with "contempt."

Religion is a "dead dog in a ditch" Hitt pronounces, "cheap" and "dim-witted." Religion is "boring," "irrelevant," a "gag in a Woody Allen movie." "The answers to those Big Questions can't keep any of us awake."

You may read Hitt's open, ugly, empty bigotry, his complete divorce from one of the deepest expressions of the human spirit, as his attempt to build suspense. Maybe, you're thinking, he's getting you to be shocked at his contempt for the topic of his book. Maybe, you're thinking, this will be his narrative arch: He'll begin as a scoffer, and experience some mind- and soul-opening events on the pilgrimage, and learn, change, and grow.

Forget it. The book has no narrative arch, except that it does get meaner as Hitt walks - he hits his nadir when he manages to mock mentally retarded pilgrims. Or maybe when he disses Gothic cathedrals, otherwise universally lauded as pinnacles of human artistry, as "loud" and "bullying." The book's climax is the climax of Hitt's arrogance. He closes by detailing how excellent his own writing of his own book was, in comparison to another Santiago de Compostella pilgrimage book that is not as good as his, because that book's author did not follow the writerly directives that Hitt followed. There may be no God, but surely there is a hell for writers this un-self-aware.

Hitt begins his walk by being unaware of whether he is going uphill or downhill. That really wasn't enough of a suspenseful hook to get me into the book. Sadly, it was accurate indication of Hitt's value as an observer.

Hitt digs up every failure of every person who ever believed in God - or maybe it just seems that way - and reports that as the pertinent history of the Camino de Santiago de Compostella. The purging of the Knights Templar, a French woman Hitt decides, with his ultra-accurate sixth sense (this is a man who can't differentiate between an uphill trail and a downhill trail) that she is bigot: these are what Christianity is all about. And Charlemagne really wasn't all that great. Boo! Hiss! The scary part? You know some readers are actually buying this. "Wow! I just read a book that really blows the cover off the whole Jesus Christ thing!"

The woman Hitt condemns, on the basis of a linguistically skewed conversation he admits he did not understand, is a real person, and Hitt identifies her by her real name. It is unethical for Hitt to make such a serious and unsubstantiated charge, in print, against a private citizen who does not have the access to the printed page that Hitt has.

There are a few passages sprinkled into this book that I really did like. Hitt describes the medieval uniform for pilgrims: interesting. He includes a quote by St. Augustine about miracles: lovely and profound. A Basque grandfather proudly displays Basque ball bearings: an intimate and accurate observation of provincial pride. A detailed description of obscene corbels once found on Spanish churches: fascinating. A quote from the 1025 Council of Arras explaining Catholicism's complex relationship to statues and images: poignant and profound.

Jack Hitt can be, as he assesses himself, "glib." He can turn a phrase. He can certainly be sarcastic. He tries to wring humor out of, for example, the word for thunderstorm in Spanish.

I never felt, though, that Hitt's talent for glibness or sarcasm served his subject matter. A couple of dozen times while reading this book, I stopped and said, "Okay. That was a clever use of language. Not beautiful. Not true. But certainly clever. But Hitt, you foreground your own cleverness, and what you are writing about - faith, your fellow pilgrims, the appearance of the "useless Spanish town" through which you walk, even just the weight of your back on your shoulders - is hidden behind your cleverness. Give me, first, the world you encounter. Then, as an afterthought, be clever. You want me to see your cleverness first, not faith, not Spain, not the wheat fields through which you walk."

Hitt meets pilgrims who are all eccentric and flawed. Hitt gloms on to their flaws; his literary talent, his deepest perceptions, exist to wring shallow sarcasm out of other human being's flaws. There is temporary bonding, feasting, drinking, and punching. There is no love or sex. Be grateful. Given how Hitt writes about religion, I shudder to think how he would write about love or sex.

Having just completed the Road to Santiago myself, reading Jack's book again was refreshing and helped me recollect a lot of what I saw. He does a great job describing the life and mind of a pilgrim and the history of the road. I would reccommend this book for people interested in walking the ancient road and for those who have completed it. It captures Spanish culture and history and combines it with the humor and challenges that the Camino brings.

For my recent compilation of pilgrimage quotations ("Ultreia! Onward! Progress of the Pilgrim") I read all 40 or so contemporary English journal accounts available about the various routes. Hitt's is clearly within the first grouping of 8 or so best such books (i.e. largely those written by established authors and/or academics). This was the third or fourth pilgrimage account I read and after plowing through another couple of dozen of such I remained impressed by both the sense of humour and critical eye that Hitt brought to describing his trip. One finds much here about the various characters that one is likely to encounter along the route and Hitt is accurate in his portrait of the moving circus that the camino has unfortunately become.

Great book. I ordered it after seeing the movie "The Way" and, although the movie had a different plot/story, Jack Hitt's writing is very engaging. I loved the way he marbled the chapters with historical anecdotes and the way he describe the different characters without ridiculing them...I suspect we'd all retreat to our quirky selves after walking for a couple of days. Really enjoyed it and will probably read other stuff he's written.

This book has been so much more than I expected. Hitt is about 35 years old when he decides to up and walk to Santiago de Compostela. He seems to have many and few reasons, none of which he can articulate to inquirers. He starts with a visit to the Cloisters in New York City. After months of planning, he's finally on his way to France to start off this medieval pilgrimage.

His narration is rich with history about Charlemagne and Roland, the Knights of Templar, the Basques, and so much more. I found myself with new interests just because he makes it all sound so interesting.

The best part is that the book is hilarious. Whether he's shrieking from thunderstorms, getting drunk on Spanish wine, or growling at dogs, he's brutally honest and humble with his audience. The people he meets along the way are as colorful as the history of the walk itself. I found myself laughing out loud at many of his anecdotes.

Ever since my music history class where I learned that Santiago de Compostela has a relief of a hurdy gurdy and other musical instruments, I've had an interest in traveling there myself. I hope I will someday! I'm so glad I found this book again. I had picked it up in a public library many, many years ago. I did not get a chance to finish it. I had to return it, but I could never remember the name or the author. Finally, after much googling and searching, I found the book. It was worth it.

Jack Hitt's writing style is endlessly introspective, and so it is with no small surprise that when he set off on a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, the resulting book would be full of allegory for his own personal travels.

Hitt admits this upfront, however, and the result is a book that is entertaining, but perhaps never quite as deep as he tries for.

Fans of travel accounts will laugh along as Hitt describes his initial travel problems, his incredibly zany and diverse fellow pilgrims, and a host of, well, hosts along the way that make the trip exciting and memorable.

Hitt is at his best when describing his life on the road to Santiago. It is when he tries to decipher the meaning the road holds for himself or others, he falters. Although his introspection is gently self-deprecating, it does not impress the reader any more because of this.

Hitt's book should be a, well "hit" if a person can stomach a little self-indulgence. But, hey, after all, maybe that's one of the things a pilgrimage can be?

Well written. Never boring. Gave me a different perspective on the way I think about history.