25. The Ghost Rider

Neil Peart. 2002.

In the spirit of Jack Kerouac and Robert Pirsig, this is a road trip book about a guy out driving his motorcycle across the country.  As with both of those books, the narrator isn't responsible or even tired to anyone and so the storyline feels self-centered and narcissistic, even while the backdrop of traveling is compelling. I particularly loved Paert's descriptions of places he has been, as a lot of the places he goes, I have been, often during the same time period that he was there.  

Unlike On The Road or Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, the reasons for Peart's trip are front and center.  Following the death of his daughter in a car accident and then his wife to a broken heart that was diagnosed as cancer, her consciously sets out to manage his grief by focusing on the road in front of him, from Quebec to Vancouver, all over the west, then through Mexico to Belize and all the way back again.  You can see him staying connected to friends and family, even while traveling in an era without internet and cell phones.  

The book is at its best when he actually writes the book, as opposed to the times when he includes lengthy passages from his journals or letters he wrote at the time.  Those were sometimes repetitive, sometimes unpolished, particularly in the last part of the story.  I wish he had gone back and wrote those from scratch because the earlier parts of the book were so much better.  I found myself liking the times when the story was meta, as he contemplates possibly writing a book in the future about a particularly event or feeling and how he might portray it in the future when he looks back.

I didn't know who Peart was and I still don't think I could name or recognize a singled song by RUSH, but apparently, Peart was their drummer, so perhaps this might make the book more enticing for fans as well.  If it weren't for his self-awareness of his privilege in contrast to his grief, this fact would have made the book less appealing for me. But, there is something powerful about the grief of a parent, even when couched in the life of wealth and fame, and that adds to the story here, rather than detracts.  I'm not recommending it to most people, though, because of its lack of polish as it doesn't feel finished.  Instead, it really felt like he got tired of writing and just filled pages at the end with these letters and journal entries.

​No recommended.

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