Book Review: Canoeing with José by Jon Lurie
Reviewed by B.J. Hollars
Canoeing with José
Nonfiction by Jon Lurie
Milkweed Editions, June 2017
$16.00; 328 pp.
ISBN-13: 978-1571313218
In his seminal 1935 nonfiction work Canoeing with the Cree, reporter Eric Sevareid recounts his 2250-mile canoe trip with friend Walter Port from Minneapolis, Minnesota to New York’s Hudson Bay. Along the way, the pair experienced any number of hardships and adventures, most notably reporting on their time spent among the Cree people.
71 years later, writer Jon Lurie and his former student, a 20-year-old Lakota-Puerto Rican named José, decided to retrace the route themselves. While on the river the pair face their own array of external pressures brought on by heat, chill, hunger, aches and pains. Though ultimately, it’s the internal pressures that prove most engaging—notably, Lurie’s attempt to find himself post-divorce, and José’s own unexpected bildungsroman on the water.
Lurie, a seasoned writer and journalist with years of teaching experience in native villages, provides a candid account of his time with José, a young man who, in his first encounter with his teacher, questioned his authority, brandished a butterfly knife, and drew blood by slamming an ink stamp into Lurie’s shoulder. Though their relationship improved, it remained complicated, a complexity reaffirmed throughout every mile logged on their journey. Lurie describes himself as José’s mentor, but their oft-fraught relationship feels more akin to dysfunctional brothers: there is love buried deep, though from the outset, most of what we see is the rivalry. This becomes most apparent by way of Lurie’s continual critique of his fellow canoeist, and though José often deserves it, for some readers, the incessant haranguing may make Lurie hard to like. Yet perhaps Lurie and José’s mutual frustrations toward one another ultimately serve a greater purpose by heightening the emotional wallop when at last the pair manages to metaphorically paddle in sync. As expected, by book’s end, Lurie and José more fully understand one another’s differences, and though they maintain their tough outward demeanors, readers can’t help but glimpse the mutual respect shining though.
It’s easy to place José neatly within literature’s “troubled youth” trope, though the book is at its best when Lurie transcends this. Once Lurie strips away José’s hardened façade, readers are left viewing a vulnerable person whose pain is not unlike their own. Lurie, too, is at his most admirable when he lays himself bare: revealing himself as José’s stern guide, his tenacious friend, and a man continually prepared to steady them both amid the rocky waters.
B.J. Hollars is the author of several books, most recently Flock Together: A Love Affair With Extinct Birds and From the Mouths of Dogs: What Our Pets Teach Us About Life, Death, and Being Human, as well as a collection of essays, This Is Only A Test. Hollars serves as a mentor for Creative Nonfiction, a contributing blogger for Brain,Child and the founder and executive director of the Chippewa Valley Writers Guild. An associate professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, he lives a simple existence with his wife, their children, and their dog. For his writing, visit www.bjhollars.com; for his podcasts, visit www.snippetspodcast.com.
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