To Say Nothing ─ A Diary of Memory

"Soy vago y vago." I am vague and I wander.It doesn’t get easier for our hapless hero in Act Two, and if you were lucky enough to read TO SAY NOTHING, A DIARY OF MEMORY, VOL. 1, you will know already that our protagonist is a creature of no great force of character or dignity, and you are as likely to be irritated by him as to sympathize. But this should not stop you from reading VOLUME 2 of Neil Hansen’s delightfully daft memoir. It is a vagabonding picaresque, a hippie "Bildungsgeschichte," or close enough, of a young man, as sincere as he is passive and lazy, buggering around in the last half of the twentieth century, a lover and a leaner. He describes his adventures, the places he sees, and the people he meets in occasionally charming, occasionally repulsive, detail, honest and genial--usually. And when he airs his views on the difficulties, confusions, and haphazards of a man of his singular disposition, he remembers, well, most of the time, and occasionally proves, that philosophy is best left to philosophers.It is now 1978, and Neil has wandered up and down the world as a "grown-up" for ten years. He has realized that if you focus on your career and work hard for many years, you will undoubtedly learn a great many things, you will acquire and hone a number of skills, and build a good foundation for yourself and your family, but other than that, really, what have you accomplished? In modern western society you will have consumed far more than your fair share of the earth's blessings and been a nuisance to yourself and others. Better perhaps to tread lightly and live a life of little resistance?But even in a wandering life, blown east in the morning and west in the afternoon by the strength of your own sighs, there are many rocks and many hard places.Fortunately, there's sexy stuff, too.