The author of Eat, Pray, Love meets the Last American Man.
The Last American Man – the blurb
At the age of seventeen, Eustace Conway ditched the comforts of his suburban existence to escape to the wild. Away from the crushing disapproval of his father, he lived alone in a teepee in the mountains. Everything he needed he built, grew or killed. He made his clothes from deer he killed and skinned before using their sinew as sewing thread. But he didn’t stop there. In the years that followed, he stopped at nothing in pursuit of bigger, bolder challenges. He traveled the Mississippi in a handmade wooden canoe; walked the two-thousand-mile Appalachian Trail; hiked across the German Alps in trainers; scaled cliffs in New Zealand. One Christmas, he finished dinner with his family and promptly upped and left – to ride his horse across America. From South Carolina to the Pacific, with his little brother in tow, they dodged cars on the highways, ate road kill and slept on the hard ground.
Now, more than twenty years on, Eustace is still in the mountains, residing in a thousand-acre forest where he teaches survival skills and attempts to instil in people a deeper appreciation of nature. But over time he has had to reconcile his ambitious dreams with the sobering realities of modernity.
Mamas don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys
My book club chose autobiographies as a theme for this month, keeping it broad to make it as easy as possible for people to obtain a book. Still, perusing my shelves I noted I didn’t actually have any (If only I had left On Writing until this month!) My friend kindly offered me her selection out of which I picked The Last American Man about Eustace Conway a teepee living, bear skin wearing, possum eating man in North Carolina. Gilbert is a family friend and decided to write about his fascinating life and outlook.
The book isn’t your traditional biography but then Eustace isn’t your traditional kind of man. Whilst we do start at the beginning (a small boy who seeks shelter in the woods from a difficult father/son relationship) the timeline greatly flits around so that horses have died in some chapters but are still alive in later ones. Girlfriends have departed only to reemerge a chapter or so later and so on. You did manage to follow but it would have made an easier read if it were more lineal.
A picture tells a thousand words
What I found most surprising was the lack of photos included in the book. With every autobiography you are used to at least one middle section with various photographs illustrating certain topics you have read about in previous chapters. In the hardback copy of The Last American Man there is one black and white image of Eustace on the back cover. It’s so subtle it took me a little while to realize it was there. This is a man who has had many a headline written about him, who has done countless interviews and public speeches. Gilbert had access to Eustace’s parents, his siblings and the man himself, so why no photos? It would have been lovely to see a picture of Turtle Island, his horses or the teepee.
A rounded picture
I thought Gilbert very fair to Eustace and his family. It’s easy to paint him as ideal yet Gilbert highlights his flaws as well as his successes. She has taken the time to speak to each member of his family, even his ex girlfriends, and hasn’t shied away from putting down their sometimes not very flattering comments about him. Gilbert often returns to Eustace’s unflinching requirements of perfection, in love, horse riding, in just about everything. What results is a lonely man who seems destined to be disappointed by those around him.
He is certainly an enigma, a multi acre land owner shrewd enough to outsmart the developers yet not impress his father. One who couldn’t care less about material possessions yet dreams of walk in closets. An old fashioned romantic who writes love letters to girls he falls head over heels in love with. You’re never sure which face is going to emerge when Gilbert launches in another little anecdote.
The circle of life
The Last American Man is certainly an interesting read about a complicated man who has had some fascinating adventures and lives a very different life to most of us. The paragraph I found most interesting was one of Eustace’s comments about life being lived inside a box (TV, car, office) and how it should be a circle (of life, camp fire, earth around sun). After being housebound so much recently his words stuck me and you would do well to read it and dwell on them too.