Long Quiet Highway
 Natalie Goldberg
 (Reviewed by The Editor - Rebecca Brown)
 1994 Bantam Books NY USA
  ISBN: 0553373153


From the profound sleep of suburban childhood, thru the first time she listened to the rain, to her years as a student of Zen Buddhism, Goldberg captures the moments of illumination, the long discipline of daily practice, the hilarity of error & the grief resistance to change brings.

Taking up a Natalie Goldberg book has become one of the great treasures in my life. I like the way she engages me from the first word on. I like how the world disappears: rain, husband, wood stove, dog & dreamy music on the stereo all evaporate as my mind connects with this author's words & worlds.

I first met Natalie Goldberg in a Berkeley bookstore when her Writing Down The Bones leapt of its shelf into my hands, hurried me to the cash register where I gladly paid so that I could carry this vibrating volume to the nearest bench to sit in the bright Californian sun & read the thoughts therein. As one writer to another.

Here in her Long Quiet Highway: Waking Up in America Ms. Goldberg recounts the memories, scenes & feelings of her life. She recapitulates how it was to be an outcast in school, lonely & different; of the moments when she was jolted from her torpor of isolation into the fervid alarm of aliveness; of the moments when she was seduced by the intensity of the mob & knew the shame of conspirators. Her observations about losing control to the crowd versus breaking loose of the controls of situations, are well taken.

As with her other books, Natalie Goldberg brings teaching into this, her memoir. When she sets writing tests for her students, I am right there jotting down my memories, examining my life. When she asks her friends to tell her about a teacher, I see my Geography Mistress with her green cardigan hung over her long body; her huge front teeth so strong & white & I remember her entrancing grasp of our world. That Miss Borchardt had brothers in Singapore, Saskatchewan, Johannesburg & Brisbane who wrote to her often, sending packets of postcards & profusions of exotic postage stamps only added to her stature.

To read Natalie Goldberg's Long Quiet Highway is to revisit a way I've paralleled or crossed-over all my life. She often reminds me of Kathryn Hulme's memoir Undiscovered Country [also reviewed] in that she's a thoughtful writing female who's been in a stupor, on auto-pilot - going through the motions of what is expected of her, resisting all the way, until she comes across the one conduit that will break through her torpor & rouse her to her life. Her conduit was Zen Buddhism & her teacher, the Dainin Katagiri Roshi.

How Natalie Goldberg, well-known feminist & much-travelled writers' workshop teacher, suffered & survived those long, fleeting years in the Minnesota Zen Meditation Center & the deep northern winters, is the stuff of hilarity, grief, stubbornness & illumination.

Heartily recommended!

Also by Natalie Goldberg: Writing Down The Bones and Wild Mind
(05/30/99)

Rebecca