Most of us are familiar with Nietzsche’s words, “All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking” or Thoreau’s famous line, “The moment my legs begin to move my thoughts begin to flow.” And so we assume that walking, somehow, oils the brain. We move our feet in a forward direction, and our brain simultaneously begins to crank out new ideas.
But, as I discovered when I walked in the footsteps of legendary feminist Simone de Beauvoir, this is far too simplistic. Writers, artists, thinkers and musicians, walk for very different reasons, in very different ways, and with very different outcomes.
I was walking around the city the other day and maybe it’s just me or maybe it’s because I like things I used to like and dislike new things I don’t like (though I will say I do like new things I do like), but it just seemed to me that New York has really changed.
Right?
Like, you know what I mean, right? Like . . . it’s different.
Right?
Seethaler’s subtly understated voice remains warmly welcome in a literary culture that often displays its intentions too obviously. Many will love this calming, gentle and unsentimental story. Certainly, Seethaler remains admirably true to his creative vision. A poet of the small, the random and the event without consequence, his is a world we can all enjoy.