back to previous page Book review: First pass under heaven
Author: Nathan Gray. Review by Chris Ord
A lawyer, a monk, a photojournalist, a recording artist and a Mormon golfer go for a walk. Don’t expect a punch line, there isn’t one. It’s not a joke. Rather it’s the beginning of New Zealander Nathan Hoturoa Gray’s first book, First Pass Under Heaven. Gray’s the lawyer by the way.A stand out in the now ubiquitous ‘there’s gotta be an out-there angle’ travel book genre, this offering gives new meaning to the phrase ‘hitting the wall’. For that is exactly what the five did: they hit the biggest wall in the world, the Great Wall of China, on foot, in an attempt to march its entire length.
Brave? Yes. Foolhardy? To a degree. Nutters? Certainly. Inspirational? Undoubtably.
Not that you’d want to, ahem, follow in their footsteps, most of which are long buried under China’s forever shifting sands or blown away by its gales. We’re talking 4,000 kilometres in all, interrupted by blizzards, lightening strikes, thirst, starvation, snakes and police detention. It’s no gap year brochure, that’s for sure.
In fact when approached by Diego, one of his fellow adventurers, Gray himself says “no” without hesitation, describing the mission as “kamikaze”.
Of course, he goes anyway. Gray’s book is a delightful respite from the superfluous and, I find, often acerbically degrading travel tomes being pumped out with as much an eye to the punchline as to an unveiling narrative. Gray is refreshingly more down the line in his approach.
Okay, the structure – day-numbered entries, emails and the like - isn’t classic Theroux. But he makes it work nonetheless with a storyteller’s judgement of how to keep the narrative moving forward, how to weave in the Wall’s history, the odd parable, a poem or so (some his own) and a few quotations to boot (which on occasion annoy me a bit, but only the ones where I don’t ‘get it’, so I’ll chalk that down to intellectual inferiority complex), without drowning in the smugness a commentator of the travel-scribe kind is often prone to.
Gray does, in turn, get back to the basics of sensation when needed:
“Here I am, twenty-six years old, alone, with a 20-kilogram pack, walking through China and being chased along the Wall by the Chinese Army. Fuck…”
Quickly followed by some welcome humility:
“I tremble. ‘Please let me walk. I just want to enjoy your Great Wall.’ Tears blur my vision.”
Now, I’ll forgive him his introducing his life from birth, something I can usually go without in my travel literature – after all the story is the foreign country, not whether the author is a twin or not. (He is). But it’s painlessly quick and useful for the journey of ego and learning that unfolds. Indeed, it informs his impetus for travel in the first place.
As with his journey, Gray’s writing stumbles somewhat as the story unfolds towards the last 1000 kilometres or so, his descriptions and time-space jumps becoming more scattered and, disappointingly, just as he’s getting into some good character analysis or even a historical enlightenment, he jarringly jump cuts, leaving me wondering; frustrated because I want to know where his thoughts were going or what transpired.
For me a major disappointment is that the journey is not actually done in one stretch, or indeed all on foot. I had visions of the guys walking the entire length, without straying, and following its line when it disappeared courtesy of time’s ravages. The reality is more prosaic – bus trips, hitch hiking, trains. It’s more about walking the wall in sections, skipping the missing bits and diverting around other hard bits. So it’s not what I’d call purist. There are also ‘holidays’ from the walk; good stretches away from the adventure as the protagonists take leave to Beijing or even Thailand and New Zealand.
But therein is the hook: heroes aren’t perfect, nor are their escapades. Gray is upfront about this even if the publisher’s marketing isn’t. His battle to get back to the wall, the splitting of the team, the personality clashes and the waxing and waning of commitment is more purist compared to the over-hyped macho-adventurer fables often put out there as ‘the way it happened’ (when it’s clear that other literary adventures conveniently omit disappointing realities. Yes Bear Grylls, I’m talking to you see www.bearisfullofbull.com).
And so Gray’s account still stands as an achievement, one most of us won’t ever do, write about of even dream of. And for that fact alone it’s worth the read.
Over one million people died building the wall, and a great many have died in connection since. Gray nearly added to the number on occasion (there’s the swashbuckling drama again - even reviewers are prone). Thankfully Heaven wasn’t to grab Gray on the first pass and hopefully he’ll do something just as stupid again – and write about it.
DETAILS
Buy it at Amazon www.amazon.com.
See excerpts of a video account of the journey at www.greatwalldvd.com.
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