Ben McGrath

I found this little treasure tucked among all the thrillers and romcoms at a Dallas-Fort Worth airport shop. It's the story of one man who lived on the edges of society, canoeing American rivers when he could, who disappeared just months after meeting the author, a writer for The New Yorker. Fascinated by Dick Conant's life and disappearance, Ben McGrath set out to retrace Dick's life and the people whose lives he had touched, and maybe figure out what happened to him. The project became show more this book, which tells Dick's story, but also that of America and rivers and the plight of the misfit.

(This is one of those books that you can return for a 50% refund, but I'll be keeping it. Highly recommended if you like books like [b:Into the Wild|1845|Into the Wild|Jon Krakauer|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1634587789l/1845._SY75_.jpg|3284484] and [b:The Last American Man|23202|The Last American Man|Elizabeth Gilbert|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1558376381l/23202._SY75_.jpg|24194].) show less

Although almost everything about Dick Conant was alien to me, for some reason I was very much drawn to him. This, apparently, was also true of the hundreds of people he met during the twenty or so years he spent canoeing on American waterways. I left the U.S. over twenty years ago and have been living abroad. This book made me nostalgic for America. But, oddly enough, nostalgic for an America I never knew personally. It's a brilliant portrait of an unusual, eccentric, intelligent man and the show more people he met along its riverbanks -- a wonderful piece of Americana. show less

Dick Conant is a one of a kind man. This book tells his story. He doesn't really fit into typical norms of behavior. Over his life he will traverse the entirety of the UNited Staves by canoe. He is larger that life physically (over three hundred pounds) but also by how much people he meets remember and rever him over his travels. It is clear that the author is one who has fallen under his spell. We find out that Conant has turned up missing on a trip and much of the book deals with the show more search for him through people he has known over the years. show less

Ben McGrath is a New Yorker staff writer. He encountered an odd character along the Hudson and got to know him better and wrote a magazine piece. This is the book-length version. I really wanted to like it more than I did. The writing is of course excellent, any New Yorker writer will have access to other great writers and editors. The "cook" is thus top-notch. The problems are with the ingredients, the main character and story. They are not that strong. As his life-story unfolds, the show more impression is of a college drop-out acid causality from the early 70s, who apparently tripped over 1,000 times, leaving him with a life-long mental-health crisis that manifested as homelessness, paranoia, aimless drifter. The book then is sort of horrifying. But McGrath doesn't present it that way, he looks for some deeper meaning in the American character. I didn't buy into that. This guy was troubled. To be charitable, it is a character study reminiscent of the 1930s era New Yorker writer Joseph Mitchell, in particular his work on Joe Gould, another troubled but colorful wanderer who traveled that fine line between hobo and outsider artist. show less