Book review of The Lost Art of Walking by Geoff Nicholson, 2008
- Mark Mathew Braunstein
- Jun 7
- 2 min read
Updated: Jun 8
The Lost Art of Writing
As a walker, Geoff Nicholson has been privileged to have meandered all over the globe, while in this book he meanders primarily in London, Los Angeles, and Manhattan. As a writer, he meanders all over the page.
Throughout this book written in a stream-of-consciousness style, the patient reader will find many insightful and eloquent passages, but they are interspersed with useless fluff. Unfortunately, that’s how we all think. On rare occasions, we conjure up profound insights. All the other times in between, our minds are cluttered with ennui.
The author verges on the edge of soon becoming a great writer. Meanwhile he remains a good writer woefully in need of a good editor. As a prolific writer of some 23 books, he writes too darn much.
Had he or a skilled editor reduced this 275-page book down to 200 pages by deleting the 75 pages of needless digressions and tedious personal anecdotes, this would have been a great book.
Look, for example, at the 15-page bibliography. This is not an academic book in need of any bibliography, yet he pads it with irrelevant citations, for instance books of criticism about the films of Buster Keaton and about the novels of Raymond Chandler, as well as listing five 1930s detective novels by Chandler. The latter appears because in his Los Angeles chapter Nicholson serves up five pages about Raymond Chandler as he walks around the Hollywood neighborhoods where the novelist lived. The book about Buster Keaton is listed because Nicholson devotes two pages to his observations about the actor’s gait, this after the two pages about Charlie Chaplin’s gait. The two comedy film directors happen to interest me, Raymond Chandler not.
Throughout the book, to spare myself the useless ennui, I was compelled to skim passages and to skip entire pages. Yes, buy this book. It provides much food for thought and is much fun to read. Just don't read the whole dang thing. Be prepared to skip many pages at a time and you will find this book well worth your time.
