< The Latest 2025-05-31T01:37:01+0000

How ‘Is a River Alive?’ author Robert Macfarlane found himself an elder

Plus, more in the Book Pages this week!

The Pasadena Star-News | Fri 05/30 06:37pm PST | Erik Pedersen

Robert Macfarlane was out in the mountains climbing with his older son recently when the teen asked him, “So Dad, when are gonna write your memoirs?”

“And I was like, ‘I’ve been writing them for 21 years,” laughs Macfarlane. “It’s just you haven’t read them.”

If so, Macfarlane’s 19-year-old may be the only person who hasn’t been reading the author, whose new book “Is a River Alive?” is out now. Macfarlane has become one of the most popular writers about the natural world and only seems to be getting more so for his collaborations with people like musician Johnny Flynn, artist Luke Adam Hawker and the filmmakers behind not one but two new films, “Underland” and “River.”

So how popular is he? Well, since his book tour in June doesn’t stop in our area, two separate acquaintances – without prompting – told me they’ll be road-tripping to see him discuss the new book, one driving north to attend one of the Point Reyes Books events and the other south for his San Diego appearance.

I’ve been fortunate to interview Macfarlane about his previous book, “Underland,” as well as about a pandemic book club he organized to help ease the isolation of lockdown, and I can verify that he’s a warm, engaging speaker well worth the commute.

How Robert Macfarlane’s book ‘Is a River Alive?’ delivers a call to action

Macfarlane and I spoke recently about “Is a River Alive?” and I hope you’ll take a minute to read our conversation (or, uh, maybe a few minutes, there’s a lot in it). He talked about the growing movement to grant rights to rivers, his journeys around the world and the books and writers that subtly inspired this latest work.

Also, a detail I couldn’t squeeze into the story that’s indicative of his love of great writing, Macfarlane was wearing a baseball cap a friend had made for him that was emblazoned with the name of W.G. Sebald, the influential and indefinable author of “Austerlitz,” “The Rings of Saturn” and more.

I told Macfarlane I appreciated how you could track his development from young writer learning from mentors like Barry Lopez and Roger Deakin to becoming an elder himself, albeit one still in his 40s. (Regarding mentorship, there’s a beautiful moment in “Landmarks” that occurs after Deakin dies. Having been appointed his late friend’s executor, Macfarlane is going through a mess of papers when he finds a folder with some early letters he’d written to Deakin, and he’s touched to learn the older man had cared even then to hang onto these early messages.)

“My first book I began writing when I was 21, 22. That was a young man’s book,” Macfarlane says, recognizing things have changed. “I had one of those moments where I suddenly realized that a number of younger writers were coming to me for advice and mentorship, as I’d gone to Barry and Roger and others.”

Macfarlane swivels around as if in search of where some wise elder might be hiding behind him before pointing, incredulously, at himself. “This elder? I think you’ve made a terrible clerical error,” he jokes before admitting that he’s ready. “I’m happy to step into that.”

As Macfarlane includes maps in the books, I said I hoped someone would make him a map of Robert Macfarlane’s Travels around the World, and that led him to share a throughline running from his previous book to this new one – and his work as a whole.

“This book begins where ‘Underland’ ends, exactly – in the spring wood,” he says, referring to a spring so choked and ailing that his younger son asks if the water has died. “I have an increasing sense of the whole six big books now as pretty much a kind of landscape in large scale.”

SEE ALSO: How Robert Macfarlane’s ‘Is a River Alive?’ delivers a call to action

While I won’t be at the Point Reyes event when Macfarlane is there, I did go up a few weeks ago to see a friend of mine who lives in the area.

How good a friend is he, you ask?

So good that even after going to Petaluma’s Copperfield’s Books, which was setting up for a huge event for “Remarkably Bright Creatures” author Shelby Van Pelt, he suggested we drive out to Point Reyes Books, a terrific store that’s not exactly local to him.

He didn’t flinch as I yelled, “YES!” and ran to the car before he’d finished the sentence. And once we were there, he affably entertained himself as I inspected the shelves and tables with the kind of intense focus of someone looking for a lost contact lens.

Yes, that’s how good a friend he is. (How good a friend am I? Well, I could have stayed another couple of hours in the snug shop, but I wrapped things up in a brisk 90 minutes or thereabouts … so yeah, not that great a friend.)

I left with some books I’ll probably write about in the future, and I reluctantly left behind a bunch I’ll have to come back and scrutinize in the future.

Speaking of lovely bookstores, Southern California’s own North Figueroa Bookshop is a gem, a small, well-curated space in Highland Park cofounded by two L.A.-based independent book publishers, Unnamed Press and Rare Bird.

And they’re hoping to do something about its size. The bookstore is fundraising to create what it’s calling the Citizens’ Brigade Art Hall (CBAH), a community-focused art gallery that will also help double the footprint of the bookshop space, which means more room for performances, art and, of course, more books.

“Our expansion, and our campaign slogan ‘Reading is a Human Right,’ is a direct response to the times we live in. Access to quality education at every level is imperiled, public arts funding canceled, international perspectives banned, and freedoms of all kinds stripped. The expanded North Figueroa Bookshop and Citizens Band Art Hall is the only answer we had for these issues,” said Chris Heiser, the publisher of Unnamed Press, in a statement.

“We can’t solve everything, but we can offer a place for us to come together to share ideas, be exposed to art, and come up with solutions. In our humble opinion, despair is not an option.”

If you’re interested to learn more, check out the shop’s website or the IndieGoGo page to learn more about the project and its goals.

(P.S. If you’re still in a giving mood, you could always subscribe to this newspaper for $1 a year. I know I’m biased on this topic, but that seems like a good deal.)