More Walking Books: "I am, a stride at a time."

"Stephen closed his eyes to hear his boots crush crackling wrack and shells. You are walking through it howsomever. I am, a stride at a time. A very short space of time through very short times of space. Five, six: the nacheinander. Exactly: and that is the ineluctable modality of the audible. Open your eyes."- James Joyce, Ulysses

When I find myself explaining that Walking Off the Big Apple is often more about the idea of walking than a practical handbook of walks (though I hope there's plenty of those here, too), someone usually recommends a book about walking. High on many lists is Rebecca Solnit's Wanderlust: A History of Walking, a meditation on the intersections of walking with culture, history, and politics. Others may mention an older New York walking book such as Helene Hanff's Apple of My Eye or Helen Worden's Round Manhattan's Rim.

An ordinary novel, or an extraordinary one such as James Joyce's Ulysses, can often be read as a book about walking. Leopold Bloom's walk around Dublin explores the perambulator-as-protagonist in a literal geographical way but also as an internal map of the psyche. The same could be said for Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway. I've been reading Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth for the relationship of walking to social class. As Wharton's hero, Lily Bart, starts to stumble and fall through her social status, the more she takes to walking the street.

I'm enjoying a new book of essays, Psychogeography: Disentangling the Modern Conundrum of Psyche and Place, by Will Self, with illustrations by Ralph Steadman. Self packs his jaunty globetrotting essays with humor, zaniness (who else would decide to walk from JFK into Manhattan?) and a keen sense of the physical demands of walking.

I also recommend the following books on walking's literary heritage:
The Walk: Notes on a Romantic Image by Jeffrey C. Robinson
The Walker's Literary Companion, edited by Roger Gilbert, Jeffrey Robinson, and Anne Wallace
On Foot: A History of Walking by Joseph Amato (Author)
Paris Peasant by Louis Aragon (Author), Simon Watson Taylor (Translator)

Image: PRODUCT PLACEMENT ALERT! The terrier in the background is not for sale, but anyone can buy their very own WOTBA bear at the Walking Off the Big Apple Emporium. Perfect to give to yourself for Valentine's Day.

Sick in Bed and Reading About Walking

Maybe I over-exerted myself in the East Village yesterday, bringing on what appears to be a common cold, or maybe it was Saturday's stroll up Fifth Avenue. Whatever it was, I am down for the count. The winds over the last few days have not helped, nor the dry indoor conditions that send blue sparks flying even on the lightest touch. I thought my dogs and I were going to electrocute one another.

I've taken to private chambers today (if you like the duvet cover, I wrote about it in an October post), curling up with my walking books. Here I am with Jessup's A Manual of Walking (1936). Right now I'm reading the final chapter titled "Walking With Burdens." Jessup argues that the inhabitants of modern Western civilization do not often walk correctly, because they're forever carrying bags and packages in their hands. Jessup makes a case for the head:

"Head-carrying is really a more rational affair than hand-carrying, although to be an expert you need to have done it for several generations. It is a custom that will probably never get very far in Western countries, none the less, some of its virtues are worth pointing out. The strength in the head is far greater than generally realized, and under it you have the full support of the body, the burden being perfectly centered."

Jessup goes on to suggest that most Westerners, because they're incapable of carrying shopping bags on their heads, should carry burdens on their backs, in the form of a backpack. The illustrations for properly packing a backpack that accompany the discussion are hilarious, and I will show them to you once I regain my strength to scan.

"Opium-Eating is Not Congenial to Walking," Says Virginia Woolf's Father

Thumbing through my vintage walking books and reading descriptions of the routine perambulations of the most famous writers in literature, I hang my head in shame over how little I walk. Essays about walking published prior to our own era make note of standard daily walks in the twenty-to-thirty mile range, far longer than the 10,000 steps or five miles recommended these days.

Leslie Stephen, the father of Virginia Woolf and a walking enthusiast, wrote an essay "In Praise of Walking" describing the relationship of walking to the development of English literature. He writes, "The literary movement at the end of the eighteenth century was obviously due in great part, if not mainly to the renewed practice of walking." He cites William Wordsworth's walks in the Lakes and the Alps and Thomas De Quincey's daily ten miles. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, though consumed by bad habits, could walk farther than most avid walkers today:

"Opium-eating is not congenial to walking, yet even Coleridge, after beginning the habit, speaks of walking forty miles a day in Scotland, and as well all know, the great manifesto of the new school of poetry, the "Lyrical Ballads," was suggested by the famous walk with Wordsworth, when the first stanzas of the 'Ancient Mariner' were composed."

Stephen argues that all the great writers, with some exception, were "enthusiastic walkers." The greater the distance the more capable the writer, Stephen asserts, comparing the accomplishments of the lame Sir Walter Scott, who walked twenty and thirty miles a day, to the morbid obsessions of Lord Byron, a couch potato.

The Violence of Walking, According to Oliver Wendell Holmes

"Walking, then, is a perpetual falling with a perpetual self-recovery. It is a most complex, violent, and perilous operation, which we divest of its extreme danger only by continual practice from a very early period in life. We find how complex it is when we attempt to analyze it, and we see that we never understood it thoroughly until the time of the instantaneous photograph. We learn how violent it is, when we walk against a post or a door in the dark. We discover how dangerous it is, when we slip or trip and come down, perhaps breaking or dislocating our limbs, or overlook the last flight of stairs, and discover with what headlong violence we have been hurling ourselves forward."

- Oliver Wendell Holmes, "The Physiology of Walking," from Pages From an Old Volume of Life: A Collection of Essays, 1857-1881. Seventh Edition. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1887

"Toes Are Really Short Fingers:" More from A Manual of Walking

(Click to enlarge image: from Elon Jessup's A Manual of Walking from 1936)

My copy of Elon Jessup's A Manual of Walking from 1936 once belonged to a couple named Jeanne and Bill Taylor. I acquired the book as a gift, and I don't know them. I would have liked them, I think, because they took great care of the book. The Taylors affixed a book owner's label to the endpapers, that's why I know their names, and I surmise from the slips of papers stuck into the book that they were members of the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club. A review of the book is pasted onto the back endpapers. According to this clipping, the reviewer liked the book but thought that the title was too prosaic for such witty writing. He suggested that it should have been titled "Feet First."

The writer, Elon Jessup, sure loves to wax poetic about feet, and he was particular about the proper fit of shoes. I have heard that it's best to shop for shoes in the afternoon, when the feet are given time to swell, and Jessup recommends this as well. He also criticizes the emphasis of style over comfort, and I would agree with him here also. I have worn stylish and painful shoes that made me hate everything in my path. Here's what Jessup recommends for the proper fit:

"First and foremost, let it be sufficiently long and sufficiently wide to permit toes to stretch forward and while doing so remain separated each from the next. Avoid any pressure from leather, both against the inner side of the big toe and outer side of the small toe. Even the apparently fool-proof Greek sandal can sometimes do mischief in the latter respect, in that the pressure of a leather strap against the side of the small toe may curl this toe under and wrench it out of shape."

"A Person of Movement:" Elon Jessup's A Manual of Walking, 1936

In the previous post, I quoted an essay from an anthology of walking essays published in the 1930s. I'm enjoying my little collection of vintage walking books so much that I wish to continue sharing their contents in the days ahead.

Please see before you Elon Jessup's A Manual of Walking published in 1936. A charming writer, Jessup was an authority on scouting and wrote several books on the subject. A Manual of Walking features practical advice for putting one foot in front of the other. His topics include the relative merits of fast and slow walks, the under-appreciated role of the big toe, and a lengthy discussion on taking care of the feet. I particularly enjoy the following paragraph from Ch. 2, "How Fast and How Far?" Here, Jessup explains that brisk walking is most useful for the boring parts of the walking journey:

"....There are those who take on walking as systematic daily exercise for the sole purpose of keeping physically fit, and very good gravy it is–the best all-around type of exercise that exists. Being systematic about it is distinctly more beneficial than being spasmodic, as with any other form of physical exertion. Here, none the less, is a circumstance in which a hearty brisk pace can usually come into its own. Surroundings, such between home and office, may be too well known to arouse any special interest, so one might as well become exclusively a person of movement. Nor even during rambles afield is it irrational to speed up the pace whenever surroundings become uninterestingly drab. A mixed grill of slow and fast walking may make for a palatable menu."

Not only does Jessup presage our current era's concept of interval training, the "mixed grill" of the last sentence goes very nice with the "good gravy" mentioned at the beginning of the paragraph. Genius.

Walking Through A Recession

News on Wall Street this week was grim. After a few dramatic sessions on the stock exchange, talk of a looming recession grew louder in the mass media and on the campaign trail. In New York, luxury retailers like Tiffany reported soft holiday sales, and Starbucks is losing the coffee market to fast food giants. I'm concerned that the city will see a noticeable decline in visitors from the domestic US market, and it's clear that the New York tourist industry has shifted its marketing already to visitors from other countries. Many businesses will suffer from the ripple effect of a recession, even in New York.

What ever shall we do? What types of businesses and activities are recession-proof? Historically, the liquor business and movie theaters have been known to fare well during economic downturns. Money is tight, so a beer at a bar and a movie ticket ($6 + $12 = $18) would be more affordable than a prix fixe dinner and a Broadway show ($75 + $80 = $155), for example. Looks like the culture of the 1930s to me.

Personally, I would like to recommend walking as a way to get through a recession. It's free and fun (when you get the hang of it) and much cheaper than gasoline. For many, walking may become a necessity. In my recent attempts to pace out 10,000 steps a day, I find walking also to be time-consuming, a fact that shouldn't bother the unemployed.

Thanks to the colonel, who presented me with several vintage walking books for Christmas, I have learned that during the Great Depression, many Americans, through no choice of their own, reconnected with the pleasures of walking. Here's the Introduction of The Pleasures of Walking, edited by Edwin Valentine Mitchell, from 1934 (illustration here is also from the book) :

"When I remarked to a friend that I was engaged in compiling an anthology on the subject of walking, he said, 'I suppose the depressed state of the world has made walkers of a great many people who a few years ago were almost in danger of losing use of their legs. It's odd, when you stop to think of it, that because of the harshness of the times and the fact that shoe leather is cheaper than gasoline a lot of people have been driven to the discovery that walking is among the most rewarding pleasures of life.'

See? I see a great age of walking ahead of us.

For commentary on the recent Wall Street worries see the special walk, Walking Off the Wall Street Bears.