Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road
by Neil Peart
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Book Summary Information
Author: Neil PeartEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2002-09-01
ISBN: 1550225480
Number of pages: 460
Publisher: ECW Press
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9781550225488
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Book Reviews of Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road
Book Review: More Travelling Than Healing
Summary: 3 Stars
Neil Peart, the talented lyricist and gifted drummer for Rush, uses "Ghost Rider" to indulge his desire to travel - and write about it - within the context of the seminal event of his life: the death of his daughter and wife within about a year of each other. The result is both a travelogue primarily of his trip across Canada, through the western US, into Mexico, and into Belize, and an accounting of the author's coping with the demise of his family. Once he parks his beloved BMW R1100GS motorcycle (the model number pops up all too frequently in the book) after that epic journey, he winters at his lake house, and then rounds out his healing road with several smaller trips. His cross-continent healing odyssey to recovery concludes on a brief note when he meets his future wife and again returns to work making music with Rush.
Disclaimer: I am a long-time Rush fan, and as a drummer myself would list him as my favorite in that profession. I have also appreciated his intellectual approach to that craft and his lyric-writing. That said, I read this book hoping to get some insight into one of my idols.
From a literary standpoint, the sort of tragedy Peart experienced and the ensuing restless urge to escape and heal should make for riveting reading from an author willing to bare his soul. The major caveat here is that Peart isn't a conventional sort of person and that is reflected in his approach to this healing process and how he writes about it. As many other reviewers here have pointed out, he dwells surprisingly little about his fragile psyche (his "little baby soul") and instead lavishes much more attention on the scenery, bird watching, and other diversions. The reader does come away with a sense that the long road trip in the first half of the book serves more to distract Mr. Peart from his grief than to force him to face it. As one of his lyrics goes, "The point of a journey is not to arrive." The incremental progress he makes in recovering is evident as the book marches on, mainly because he tells the reader it is so, but one is left with wondering exactly why. The problem is that the author mostly assumes the reader understands his situation and what's going on in his head as the book begins, and then can follow him as he climbs out of that "deep, dark hole" (to quote "Driven"). But what we're really looking for is for him to tell us his unique feelings here. For example, several times he mentions being afraid of and avoiding his "dark thoughts," but never tells us what those are. The reader can make some inferences: suicide? The readers want to peer into those depths to see what's there, even if the author is reluctant to go there after the fact. In that sense, Peart never gives the reader the sort of travelogue through his emotions in the same detail as he does the roads through Mexico. We're left without the level of empathy the author would otherwise justly deserve.
Ironically, the absence of such emotional insight in fact tells the readers much about Mr. Peart. We do in fact get a strong sense of who he is, even if we're not entirely sure what he's feeling (or at least why). As Rush devotees can tell you, Peart has long been known as the atypical rock star. He's intellectual, introverted, libertarian (small "L"), contrarian, agnostic, fiercely loyal, and intensely private. These traits make him appear elitist at worst, again as others have criticized, or standoffish at best. In other words, he's not unlike many other "Type A" personalities who demand perfection from themselves and expect little worse from those around them. He is, at the very least, not one to suffer fools gladly. Before criticizing him too harshly for being this way, it's those same qualities that brought him to the pinnacle of his craft. Regardless of how the readers interpret these traits, Mr. Peart wears them on his sleeve when discussing traffic, tourists, fellow diners, and law enforcement. Interestingly, he seems to drop his high standards when it comes to his friend Brutus, to whom he writes the many letters that compose the bulk of the second half of the book. Brutus is jailed for apparently attempting to smuggle a large amount of marijuana from the U.S. into Canada. Peart acknowledges his friend's guilt (and his acceptance of the risks involved in such endeavors), yet spends a great deal of time bemoaning the injustice of the situation and even spends his own money to hire the best lawyers to free his friend. Apparently his own vices (drinking, smoking, speeding) and those of his friends (drug using and dealing) are somehow more acceptable than those of everyone else (gluttony, driving too slowly, recognizing him in a public place).
Mr. Peart's personality clearly shapes how he wrote this book. As many of his lyrics show, he is better able to articulate the intellectual understanding of life (one hemisphere, to borrow another lyric) than its emotional equivalent. In fact, when faced with raw emotions like the attentions of a woman in his grieving state, he doesn't know what to do or say - so he flees. The other activities he slowly adds as the book moves on further illustrate his ready facility with intellectual engagements, particularly to distract him from the emotional voids. The ultimate lesson he learns is that time does indeed heal all wounds (leaving scars), but a good woman sure helps, too.
The book's construction left something to be desired, in my opinion. The major road trip of the first half essentially forms its own volume, with Peart narrating and supplemented with a few quoted journal entries and letters to friends. Once he returns to Canada, this narrative and the journals all but disappear in favor exclusively of letters to his friends (mainly Brutus) and family. In light of the author's privacy and close friendships, the reader would expect to see Mr. Peart really bare his soul in these writing. But in fact, he engages in more of the same accounts of the sites and sounds of the road, while waxing philosophically about what he's learned. These letters are perhaps a bit more candid and certainly more casual than the previous narrative, but they are only marginally "closer to his heart" than the rest of the book. The various addressees unfortunately make the latter half of the book somewhat disjointed. This approach makes it appear as if the author ran out of time to finish the book or simply lost the desire to rewrite his source material into a coherent narrative for this portion. Perhaps he felt his original, raw accounts spoke more directly to the situations at hand than he could do looking back at them. This wasn't an option for the first part of the book because he was unable to write any letters at that point (or engage in any other previously-enjoyed pastime) and only rekindled his correspondence when he was sufficiently healed.
One conceit the author uses to great effect is the quotation of his own lyrics to open and close chapters of the book. His choices are always impeccably apropos, revealing his gift for poetic lyrics. With some irony, these bookends do more to show his insight into the human condition than the thousands of words between them.
In sum, Neil Peart has written a book that is quintessentially and unequivocally his. What he writes about and how he approaches those topics show us who he is, for better or worse. I'm sure he would be delighted to know that readers are critically assessing his work and holding him to high standards. As a reader looking for more than a book about a sad road trip, I found it demanding to really engage and understand beneath its surface. Once finished I felt like I had indeed gained some insight into one of my long-time idols in unexpected ways. But as a fan, I was saddened to read that if I recognized him in a bar, he'd later curse me in his journal for interrupting whatever task to which he had currently set himself.
Summary of Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road
In less than a year, Neil Peart lost both his 19-year-old daughter, Selena, and his wife, Jackie. Faced with overwhelming sadness and isolated from the world in his home on the lake, Peart was left without direction. This memoir tells of the sense of loss and directionlessness that led him on a 55,000-mile journey by motorcycle across much of North America, down through Mexico to Belize, and back again. He had needed to get away, but had not really needed a destination. His travel adventures chronicle his personal odyssey and include stories of reuniting with friends and family, grieving, thinking, and reminiscing as he rode until he encountered the miracle that allowed him to find peace.Composers & Musicians Books
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