Thursday, 23 February 2023
To Shake the Sleeping Self, by Jedidiah Jenkins, is part travelogue, part coming of age memoir.
A Re-evaluation after some Discussion
The comments below reflect my opinions upon finishing my first read of the book. After a discussion with my book group — which is the reason this made it to my reading list — and revisiting the last few chapters, I find myself a bit better disposed towards it. Another member commented that the end of the book felt as though it was a recapitulation of the narrator’s birth — it ends with his mother wet and shaking and exhausted, while he has — at her urging — left her behind to complete his trip. It is a nice ending, and leaves me a bit more hopeful that the narrator experienced some meaningful change. I also looked at the few chapters before, where he is reflecting on his trip, and see there that he recounts some important realizations that I don’t really believe came out at the time. Perhaps I missed it, or perhaps he didn’t reveal all his thoughts, in order to get a bigger bang at the end of the book. I think the book would have been stronger if we’d witnessed his changes throughout the journey, rather than in hindsight at the end…
From here on are my original comments:
My Original Comments
For me, the book did not begin well, in part, perhaps, because of a stark difference in temperaments between myself and the author. I was taken aback by the seemingly casual way that Jenkins decided to undertake the challenge of traveling from Oregon to Patagonia via bicycle; I did not get a real sense of his motivations, other than a bit of dissatisfaction with his life. If was taken aback by this, I was appalled by his apparent lack of preparation. He had no experience with long distance cycling, and for that matter did not even own a bicycle until he purchased one just before departing. He took a stab at learning some Spanish, but gave up on it after a week. And note that he was in his late 20’s when he decided that he would leave on his trip when he turned thirty: so he had a couple of years to prepare, but appears to have done little other than announce his intentions to his friends so he wouldn’t chicken out.
Once he gets on the road — joined at the last minute by “Weston,” who makes Jenkins seem like a paragon of preparedness – they head south down the coast of Oregon and California, and blunder along, learning as they go, and serving as living testimony that strangers will be kind when they encounter clueless people undertaking a journey for which they are woefully unprepared. As they cycled south they learned as they went, and camped, and also stayed with friends, friends of friends, and the occasional stranger. They made it to US-Mexico border with very little in the way of self reflection that I was expecting given the poetic title. At this point, if I weren’t reading this for a book group meeting, I’d have put the book in the ‘take to Magers and Quinn’ bag for books that are exiting the house.
However, in an odd sort of parallel, I trudged through the prose as they labored south through the desert of Baja, and became mildly impressed with their continuing their journey after the novelty had worn off and it had become a routine experience of junk food, heat and fatigue. At some point, perhaps in southern Mexico, perhaps a bit farther, the author begins to disclose some of his early life, and as that happens I begin to develop more sympathy for him. He is gay, and appears to have known this since pretty early in his life, and at the same time was raised in a conservative Christian household, believed in Jesus, and believed that being gay was bad. He apparently had some effeminate mannerisms, and to counter teasing and bully developed a highly social and comedic personality, making fun of himself before anyone else could, and apparently successfully developing a large group of friends. His beliefs also prevented him from exploring his sexuality, and he reached his late 20’s without ever having kissed anyone.
I may expand this later, but through the rest of the book he tries to come to terms with the contradictions between Christianity, especially fundamentalist Christianity, and his sexuality and views about the world. He appears to morph from a literalist/funamentalist Christian to a more typical — to my eye, anyway – Christian who is willing to look at Christianity with a more liberal eye. This evolution occurs as he thinks about things as he rides, and also as a result of an interaction with his companion Weston, who shows more depth of thought than I would have expected from the first half of the book. He also has one experience taking psilocybin mushrooms, which perhaps pushes his thinking a bit? He also has interactions by mail, phone, and a few visits, with his mother, and he struggles with dealing with the dissonance between his love for her and her feelings (“disgust”) about his sexuality), gradually developing more independence and self-respect.
Another thing I may expand on later, is the relationship between Jenkins and Weston. Weston is anti-capitalist, and apparently from a very poor background, and is doing the trip in part to show that this kind of thing can be done by someone with crappy equipment, little money, and less forethought. While Weston acquits himself better than I expected, he eventually runs out of money, except what he has budgeted for his daily marijuanna, and Jenkin’s begins paying for Weston’s lodging. Weston does not request this, and says he is willing to camp on his own, but Jenkins feels bad about that and Weston accepts it. To me, it feels like this introduce an imbalance into the relationship that causes it to founder, and when Weston takes a week off to attend a friend’s wedding in Hawai’i, it is not altogether a surprise that he ‘misses’ his flight back, and exits from the trip.
I will add that as they, and eventually just he (after Weston departs), occasionally joined by friends who fly in to do part of the trip with him, they travel through some lovely parts of South America. Occasionally the book has passages that do a very nice job of capturing the experience and environment, but I have to say that these are exceptions rather than the rule, and except for caring about his personal struggles, the book doesn’t engage me very much.
At the end of the book, it’s a little difficult to see what has really changed for Jenkins. Hopefully he is more confident, has more self-respect, and with a more liberal and ambiguous relationship to Christianity is ready to engage in some relationships with guys. But it is difficult to be sure. I am ready to bid him farewell, but I see that he has another book out, and so it appears he has developed an audience that wants more. I am not among them.