Dear Friends and Colleagues from Around the World, In this year in review issue, I’ll highlight my new book and share the most compelling stories from the Culture Watch. My Saddest Pleasures: 50 Years on the Road was published by Cyberwit.net. and was announced in the May issue of the Dispatch. It was inspired by a quote from Paul Theroux from his Picture Palace, which put my fifty years of travel into perspective and allowed me to appreciate the miscues, disasters, and disappointments. https://millionmilewalker.com/2022/06/million-mile-walker-dispatch-launching-my-new-book-my-saddest-pleasures-may-2022/ The response from fellow travel writers was immediate: “Walker delights in this chapbook with amusing […]
Continue readingMonthly Archives: January 2023
Knulp: Three Tales from the Life of Knulp, by Hermann Hesse, Reviewed by Mark D. Walker
I became enamored with Hesse’s work in Crested Butte, Colorado, where I managed a dozen houses that paid for my schooling at Western State Colorado University. Those were the days of “Counterculture.” The bookshelves of most of my student renters inevitably included Hesse classics like Siddartha, Demian, The Glass Bead Game, and the iconic Whole Earth Catalog—displayed in smoke-filled living rooms. By the early1970s, Hesse had become a cult figure, and in 1968, the California rock group, Steppenwolf, named after one of Hesse’s other classic books, released “Born to be Wild,” which was featured in the film Easy Rider. The […]
Continue readingWriting on the Edge: A Borderlands Reader, by Tom Miller, Reviewed by Mark D. Walker
I’ve gotten to know the author over the years based on a shared appreciation of iconic writer Moritz Thomsen, whom Tom met in Ecuador. He accompanied me to the University of Arizona Library, which acquired his archives, including six boxes of materials on Thomsen that I used to research and write several articles. With Tom’s help, I’d write my anthology, Moritz Thomsen: The Greatest American Writer Nobody Knows About. Tom and I also share a love of travel and travel writing. His best-known book, The Panama Hat Trail, is one of my all-time favorites, and I was impressed to learn […]
Continue reading