Book Review - Travels with Epicurus by Daniel Klein

 Travels with Epicurus: a Journey to a Greek Island in search of an authentic Old Age by Daniel Klein

Melbourne: Text Publishing, 2012 (first published in the USA 2012)     ISBN 9781922079695

My wife bought this book as she thought it might give an insight into how to approach old age, which is rapidly looming for both of us. I read it because my eighteen year old son who has an interest in philosophy, read it and enjoyed it.

Daniel Klein studied philosophy at Harvard and had co-written a couple of popular philosophy books before Travels with Epicurus. This book is a lightly-paced journey through not only Epicurus, but Plato, Sartre, Kierkegaard, Heidegger and others, as well as Hindu beliefs on end-of-life spirituality.

In some ways the structure of Travels with Epicurus reminds me of Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, with a narrative of Klein on the island of Hydra, watching the old men there enjoying their old age - particularly Tasso, a retired judge who returned from Athens to live in his home town with (one assumes) his childhood friends. The philosophy is interspersed with these observations.

The crux of the book is Klein's contention that we in the West are trying to actively avoid old age by trying to prolong youth: missing old age altogether and going straight from an extended middle age into what Klein calls "old-old age". He shows us, using the example of Tasso and his friends, leavened with philosophy, that old age is a time for reflection and relaxation, to re-find the aspect of play in our lives, and to enjoy the people we have become.

The striving, jockeying, and pursuit of success that drives us when we are younger can be put into perspective, we can reminisce and enjoy the company of our friends without worrying about needing something from them or having to act in a certain way - no more "keeping up with the Joneses." We also have time in our old age to contemplate the bigger questions, for we have the life experience to do so.

Klein does tackle the inevitable decline into extreme old age, and the decisions we must make as we lose the capability to look after ourselves. He comes to no conclusions as to the correct course of action (I note that at the time of writing this review Klein is 86 years old, and I wonder what his thoughts on this topic might be now?).

Overall Travels with Epicurus is a light-hearted look at what awaits all of us. The message Klein has for us is that there is much to be enjoyed in old age, not much objectively to fear, and if we have the right attitude to it, helped by a judicious reading of the great philosophers, it can be very enjoyable.

 If you are heading into old age, and are worrying about how you are going to face it, I can recommend Travels with Epicurus as a guide to taking the first steps.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Wings of the Kite-Hawk by Nicolas Rothwell

 Wings of the Kite-Hawk: a Journey into the Heart of Australia by Nicolas Rothwell

Melbourne: Black Inc., 2009* (first published 2003)               ISBN 9781863954457

Recently, in a book of essays by Tim Parks, I read of his contention that all great literature is trying to come to terms with death, and that all great writers tend to return to one great over-arching theme throughout their works, however varied they may seem to be on the surface.

If that is the case, then Wings of the Kite-Hawk is great literature, and Nicolas Rothwell is a great writer. Many years ago I read his book Quicksilver and felt I didn't really grasp what he was getting at, but after reading Wings of the Kite-Hawk I feel that I have moved closer to what Rothwell is trying to express in his writing.

Rothwell enters the desert country of Australia on a search for meaning: "... the desert always gives those who search in its emptiness the dream, at least, of their desires." Rothwell's dream is to reconcile his life with the never changing rhythms of the desert. He wishes the desert to enter him (as all those who have spent time there wish).

Particularly, as an emigrant to Australia, he tries to find his way into the country through his fellow emigrants, the explorers. Through long meditations on the lives and explorations of Leichhardt, Sturt, Strehlow and Giles, Rothwell muses on life, on dreams of success and the reality of failure, and on the certainty of death - "[y]ou're much closer to death out here than in the city; you can feel it bending humanity to its will." 

The four explorers Rothwell chooses to focus on had a desire for death haunting their lives: Leichhardt, that strange visionary who has haunted the minds of white Australia for over a century and a half, actually did meet his demise in the back country - a demise that one feels he was actively seeking.

Sturt's voyage to the Inland Sea - a romantic folly that ennobled those that undertook it - was a doomed voyage that seemed made for the times. What was Sturt seeking? It surely wasn't an actual sea, which it seems he knew wasn't there: in leaving his wife and child, what was he doing? Rothwell speculates - "[w]here was he bound? Like every noble or beautiful thing, to the kingdom of death - that kingdom he longed to see with his own eyes, to endure, and to return from, with golden words upon his lips." He of course did return, unsuccessful, and with no golden words for recompense.

Strehlow was an explorer of culture rather than land, famously working his way through the traditions of the Aranda people. He eventually saw himself as the keeper of their traditions and (in)famously collected and photographed many sacred objects and events. He spent his life amongst the Aranda, but in the end completely failed to understand the culture he felt he was a part of. Rothwell describes in his recollection of the sale of the Strehlow Collection how Strehlow's efforts to preserve a people and their culture led only to fracture and decay. 

Rothwell himself as represented in Wings of the Kite-Hawk mainly interacts with white residents of the Outback, all the while understanding that it is the Aboriginal people who fully understand the country and its dreaming. In the cast of characters that cross his path, it is those who have absorbed some of the ancient learning that connect most with the spirit of the country which, for Rothwell, is embodied in the Kite-Hawk.

These birds permeate the story of Rothwell's journey: from being a sign of good fortune to a presager of death when his colleague Esterline hits and kills a Kite-Hawk with his car and bewails the bird's and his own demise (when he perished in the desert soon after killing the bird).

I think it is in the story of Giles that Rothwell finds a character most in tune with his own quest. Late to the country, Giles never gets to make a discovery that others would recognise as great or useful "...for in its last phases exploration, like life, becomes a retreat, a silence, a turning in."

In the end, despite his hopes, Rothwell does not find the answer to his quest in the lives and deaths of the explorers as he had hoped. Like him, they traversed across the country rather than into it. It is rather the encounters that Rothwell has on his journeys with those that have embedded themselves into the desert that show him the way. Enlightenment and peace will come if you let them, but not if you chase them.

A deservedly praised book: history, philosophy and a life-lesson. Highly recommended.

* The 2009 edition of this book has new foreword by Pico Iyer and preface by Rothwell that both shed light on what Rothwell was hoping to achieve with this book

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell