WANDERING CLOUDILY

 Fresh over the transom comes a copy of the revised edition of the excellent The Art of 

Wandering by Merlin Coverley, subtitled ‘The Writer as Walker,’ published ten years after the 

first edition of 2012.

 

As yet I haven’t been through it all looking for changes and updates, but because of vanity and narcissism I obviously did check the index.  There you’ll find 8 references to Geoff Nicholson, as opposed to a mere 2 in the first edition. These are the small things that keep us writers going.

 

On the other hand there is no reason to be smug.  Wordsworth is in there with 12, up from 10; and Walter Benjamin is up from 4 to 8.  But best of all Lauren Elkin is there in with a bullet – 7 citation, up from not there at all in the first edition but that’s because her book Flaneuse wasn’t published until 2016.  So good for her.  Good for all of us.

 

         I can hardly wait to see the next edition of the Art of Wandering in 10 years time.