“At this point of my life, I have lived through social, political, and scientific changes that would have been not just unbelievable but in many cases inconceivable in my youth,” writes Rebecca Solnit in yet another book of hope-engineering, almost hypnotic essays, crafted with her usual atypical sentences which are like soft waves of power crashing upon the barriers of imbecility.
In No Straight Road Takes You There, Solnit looks at the long view of humanity’s faltering lurch towards some sense of responsibility in who we are and of our responsibilities to the world surrounding us (and what we should be doing to be around a little longer than currently predicted in order to further refine that concept).
Change for the better might come slowly, such as in areas Solnit has dedicated her life to as a writer and activist – the environment, feminism, democracy and human rights etc – but come it will, as history has shown us; what begins on the periphery eventually moves into the centre.
Solnit considers the circuitous routes some of these important changes have travelled: be it the Biden administration taking credit for student loan relief as though it were an imperious gift to impart, rather than a long campaign of struggle that was an offshoot of the Occupy Wall Street movement, or the International Energy Agency finally accepting an end to new fossil fuel exploration and extraction, something climate activists have long been arguing for.
The pieces dander with a desire for knowledge under Solnit’s unhurried pen (one essay’s title, In Praise of the Meander, could be shorthand for her style) and are rich with all kinds of references, from Toni Morrison, Hokusai, George Orwell and Li Po to Ted Lasso.
There are changes in gear, too, with honourable takedowns of Harvey Weinstein, and how Silicon Valley has hollowed out her home city San Francisco. One particular essay has the most merciless tone I think I have ever read in Solnit’s voice: the appropriately titled On Not Meeting Nazis Halfway. It sparkles as an empowered ethical stand in a volume full of enriching trails of thoughts and deliberations. If you have followed the path Solnit has made by walking with her books thus far, then you’ll want to take that journey onwards with this latest volume. A writer who gives us hope for today, and tomorrow.
