Motion study by Eadweard Muybridge (public domain)

I’ve been reading a great book I stumbled onto in a used book shop, River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West, by Rebecca Solnit (2003). I am delighted to discover an author I was for some reason unaware of before. Looking up reviews of some of Solnit’s many other books, I can see that she has many enthusiastic admirers — and her writing is not to everyone’s taste. It suits mine perfectly. Two of her other titles, Wanderlust and A Field Guide to Getting Lost, are wonderful metaphors for what attracts me, both as a reader and writer: finding the connections between seemingly unrelated but erotically connected ideas and facts (“erotic” meaning that, placed together, they mutually shine, and give unique and unexpected pleasure and excitement). Solnit is especially good at finding these felicitous things. One amazon.com reviewer of her book Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics says it all: “Solnit makes a breathtaking connection between the bikini waxes of Playboy bunnies and clear-cutting in the Sequoia National Forest — and makes a pertinent point of it.” (Bartolo, 12/11/07)

The ravishing idea for me in River of Shadows is following Solnit as she connects threads, of technological development (the nascent technology of photography and the search for the secrets of fast motion), social upheaval (dis-memberment of local time and place) and unbridled bonanza capitalism (railroads, mechanistic exploitation of labor, and land grabbing robber barons) across this and other continents, stitched together by the peregrinations of a singularly affectless individual (although, did you know that Muybridge committed a murder? I didn’t ). The (other) surprise has been to be vividly transported to the 1860s and 70s, especially to 1872, when “a man photographed a horse,” to see through Solnit’s eyes the massive transformations offered by sudden speed: of trains over travel by horse or foot, representing the massive, giddy and thorough-going re-organization of society’s relationship to time (a century and a half ago, each spot on earth measured its own, local solar time). It is a heady treat to think of earlier times as transformed by technological advance, for good (some) and ill (much) in ways as dramatic as the digital and network revolution. It is so easy to forget that we’re no more human than the sepia strangers stiltedly gazing at us from so very long ago. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose– and vice-versa.

My grandmother lived from 1896 until 1970. She used to marvel at the advances that occurred during her own lifetime, when travel by stage was replaced by cars. Lindbergh remained a lifelong hero to her. She lived to see the lunar landing on TV. Her own mother’s favorite song was “There’s a Song in the Air,” (a Christmas poem by Josiah G. Holland from 1872, set to music in 1902). And, my grandmother mused, wouldn’t her mother have been amazed by radio!

There’s a song in the air,

There’s a star in the sky,

There’s a mother’s deep prayer

And a baby’s low cry….