This is the inaugural post of New, Old & Notable, a reoccurring column by Gordon Phinn in which he concisely reviews several books from the past and present. Links will take you to the publisher’s page for more information.
Rebecca Solnit: No Straight Road Takes You There: Essays for Uneven Terrain (Haymarket Books 2025)
Rebecca Solnit requires little or no introduction from me, having long-established herself as a leading voice of social and political activism, mainly in the post-feminist and ecological fields. Lesser known perhaps are her fine biographies and memoirs, of which Orwell’s Roses and A Field Guide To Getting Lost are the most recent. A polemicist of strong and often unyielding temperament, she always argues her case with a convincing aplomb, often sniffily dismissing any opposing arguments to the dumpster of disgust.
She is almost famous for her coining of the phrase ‘mansplaining’, consigning all males of a more chatty disposition to the wastebasket of boring outdated privilege and patriarchy, as if ‘Let me tell you young lady’ was on everyone’s lips when confronted with a woman’s naivete about fine carpentry, the intricacies of the Second Viennese School or the challenge of oil changes and tune-ups. With the confidence that comes along with fame she has developed the annoying and perhaps charming habit of what I’d label ‘Beccasplaining’, the assumption of righteousness in every debate as she pours forth the undeniable truth of her position on, well, whatever. With her, as with many of her doom-and-gloom tribe, environmental activism easily shifts into its wild child offshoot environmental alarmism, panic trading in the hellfire preaching of previous centuries, that fiery hell for unredeemed sinners into its update, apocalyptic decimation of landscape, seascape and breathable air. Well, let’s all dutifully cower in their contempt for our ignorance.
Fortunately her latest, a cornucopia of essays from various and sundry sources, journals of repute and online hubs, where the evangelism of her passions is tempered with more user-friendly exercises in literary reflection. Here, her customary flow of rhetoric retains cogency and conviviality, particularly in such outings as Tortoise At The Mayfly Party and In Praise Of The Meander. A literary artist at the top of her game, she is not to be ignored. Rather enjoyed and challenged by uppity contrarians like me.
Jeffrey J. Kripal: How To Think Impossibly: About Souls, UFOs, Time, Belief and Everything Else (University of Chicago Press, 2024).
Jeffrey Kripal, on the other hand, might need a snatch of background. A professor of Philosophy and Religious Thought at Rice University, he has expended much energy and thought on the mystical and paranormal, those areas of our existence that rationalists and materialists, whatever their educational background, love to deny outright while not maligning with mockery and character assassination. As a scholar of religions, he has noted the many miraculous abilities of prophets, saints, shamans, and ascetics throughout recorded history, many of them reliably witnessed. Telepathy, precognition, levitation, healing without touch or technology, the world’s faiths are replete with such tales that some would call mere legends and others fantasies. Fantasies designed to furnish more funds from the naively faithful. Meanwhile, the list, should you choose to inspect, grows larger.
In recent times, the advent of medically assisted recovery from coma and apparent death has led to many tales of what lies beyond in what has become known as the NDE phenomenon. Again precognition, clairvoyant vision and telepathic knowings have repeatedly surfaced, demonstrating that consciousness survives the temporary and some might say tendentious, expiration of the brain. Experiencer reports of paradise and the departed loved ones who greet them there on their short but shockingly real visits are becoming legion.
And now that the deans of the deep state have permitted mainstream media to glow with sightings and contactee testimonies, the world of extraterrestrial visitors, with their magical technologies that far surpass our own, have become almost commonplace. This is not the first examination of the fantastic and exotic from Kripal. A healthy half dozen or more preceed the current exposition. He could be said to be an old hand at this malarkey, as some would have it. His knowledge is deep and wide, and could truly be termed encyclopaedic.
He comes across as a passionate evangelist for the absorption of the impossible into our lives, as we once cheered when manned flight intruded on our terrestrial encampment. A metaphysical activist as much as Solnit is a social and environmental one, his work deserves more attention than it current attracts, and needs to be absorbed into our thinking and public culture. For him the weird is stunningly wonderful.
Hearts Of Freedom: stories of Southeast Asian Refugees (McGill Queens 2025) Eds: Duschinsky, Lundy, Molloy, Moscovitch & Stobbe
This anthology, a sequel to the earlier Running On Empty, both products of many contributors as part of the Hearts Of Freedom historical research project at Carleton University, spotlights the plight of refugees from the wars and revolutions in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia in the 70s and 80s, when millions were displaced as a result of genocidal regimes implementing their remorselessly brutal agendas. Older Canadians will recall the maritime dramas and tragedies of the “Boat People” from the many print articles and TV portrayals of the era, but the younger citizens of the new millennium might not. This gathering of testimonies from the many survivors who have thrived under Canada’s generous outpourings of support, from both government, private charities and families, bears witness to the appalling sufferings of the refugees as they made their way in leaky skeletons of boats in storm tossed seas only to be repeatedly attacked by lifelong fishermen turned rapacious pirates pillaging without mercy.
The detailed audio reports gathered by the many who quickly stepped up to the plate once members of the Vietnamese Community saw the need and made contact with Carleton University’s Department of Social Work, leading to the oral history project Hearts of Freedom with funding from Heritage Canada, the deFehr Foundation and others, are remarkable in their thorough exploration of the dire circumstances and heroic recoveries made by those who grew to love the diversity of cultures and democratic freedoms we Canucks rather take for granted. The main problem seems to have been adjustment to our winter weather! In these less than tolerant and forgiving times, one is heartened by this shining example of compassion in action.
Will Rees, Hypochondria (Coach House 2024)
I’ve always been a sucker for a good memoir, especially the ones that transcend the Oh poor me! confessional, with its regimen of transgressions, pity pulpits and heroic resolutions, often essayed by celebrities and podcasting influencer bunnies looking to bolster fading reputations and digital subscriptions. Hypochondria by UK author and publisher Will Rees certainly fits that paradigm.
Despite a suspicious count of glowing endorsements, this book really is an “elegant and well crafted essay”, and an “almost impossible balancing act” that assembles “an archive of fellow sufferers” like Melville, Kafka, Freud, Sartre, Charlotte Bronte, Virginia Wolfe and Joan Didion to augment Rees’s own trail of debilitating symptoms. In essence, a literary memoir of nimble sophistication that can soon delight any reader doubtful of the subject with its cast of aching complainers. Maybe it is all anxiety, fantasy, the psychosomatic and self-obsession. But heck, the pain, as it traps both body and mind, is insistently real and rarely responds to raised eyebrows or the cynic’s ridicule. Drugs can redeem the hobbled with measures of relief, but rarely for the ever they desire.
And so is the history of the condition, in which Rees, replete with research, gives forth quote after quote from sources as well-read as himself. Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy (1651) would seem to be the deep well from which the culture draws its sustenance, but the likes of Hippocrates and Galen both chimed in some time back and can only be topped with UK comedian Tony Hancock’s “Hypochondria is the only illness I do not have”. As Rees unrolls his own multi-year rollercoaster ride of complaints and cures, tempered more with bemusement than self-pity, one comes to admire his willingness to confront the multilayered mystery that has dogged mankind from, as the saying goes, day one.
About the Author
Gordon Phinn, a longtime resident of Oakville, Ontario has been active in literary production since 1975, with a number of titles in a variety of genres to his credit: Non-fiction, fiction, poetry, criticism and memoir. His early critical work for Books In Canada and Paragraph are collected in It’s All About Me, and his four year reviewing stint at WordCity will be soon available as Joy In All Genres. Other recent essay collections: Bowering and McFadden, Laughing At The Universe Of Lies and Consciousness: A Primer. A novel, An American In Heaven, a memoir Moving Through Many Dimensions and a poetry collection, Winter, Spring and Eternity’s Seduction. He is currently editing a collection of essays in celebrating the work of Laurence Hutchman, to be published by Guernica in 2026.
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Thanks Penn. Will attempt one of these per month as I have often, if not always, felt that such are as important as full length appreciations, as there is always so much interesting and worthwhile material in all genres coming out from Can/US/UK, not to mention other English language sources. Note I say "attempt"!
Elegant essay!