Off the Road: A Modern-Day Walk Down the Pilgrim's Route Into Spain

This book has been so much more than I expected. Hitt is about 35 years old when he decides to up and walk to Santiago de Compostela. He seems to have many and few reasons, none of which he can articulate to inquirers. He starts with a visit to the Cloisters in New York City. After months of planning, he's finally on his way to France to start off this medieval pilgrimage. His narration is rich with history about Charlemagne and Roland, the Knights of Templar, the Basques, and so much more. I found myself with new interests just because he makes it all sound so interesting. The best part is that the book is hilarious. Whether he's shrieking from thunderstorms, getting drunk on Spanish wine, or growling at dogs, he's brutally honest and humble with his audience. The people he meets along the way are as colorful as the history of the walk itself. I found myself laughing out loud at many of his anecdotes. Ever since my music history class where I learned that Santiago de Compostela has a relief of a hurdy gurdy and other musical instruments, I've had an interest in traveling there myself. I hope I will someday! I'm so glad I found this book again. I had picked it up in a public library many, many years ago. I did not get a chance to finish it. I had to return it, but I could never remember the name or the author. Finally, after much googling and searching, I found the book. It was worth it.

For my recent compilation of pilgrimage quotations ("Ultreia! Onward! Progress of the Pilgrim") I read all 40 or so contemporary English journal accounts available about the various routes. Hitt's is clearly within the first grouping of 8 or so best such books (i.e. largely those written by established authors and/or academics). This was the third or fourth pilgrimage account I read and after plowing through another couple of dozen of such I remained impressed by both the sense of humour and critical eye that Hitt brought to describing his trip. One finds much here about the various characters that one is likely to encounter along the route and Hitt is accurate in his portrait of the moving circus that the camino has unfortunately become.

Having just completed the Road to Santiago myself, reading Jack's book again was refreshing and helped me recollect a lot of what I saw. He does a great job describing the life and mind of a pilgrim and the history of the road. I would reccommend this book for people interested in walking the ancient road and for those who have completed it. It captures Spanish culture and history and combines it with the humor and challenges that the Camino brings.

I'm about as "religious" as Jack Hitt, but this book piqued my interest in the North of Spain, Romanesque churches and pilgrimages. Why would I do it? Well, the same reason as the author did; historical, architectural, for the connection with the past. In the Middle Ages, it seemed that pilgrimages were a great excuse to travel and there still is a culture of the pilgrim that exists on the pigrim road. When I travel to Spain I will most assuredly travel a part of the Pilgrims Road. I won't get to see as much as Jack Hitt did but I hope I will see enough to recall his ironic humor. When my daughters are old enough I hope to travel the road with them, as pilgrims.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The author is frank, spares neither himself nor others, and his writing is often screamingly funny. His fellow pilgrims are a motley collection of rogues, jocks, fanatics, earnest believers, and clueless tourists -- but even in more pious eras, people went on pilgrimages for all sorts of reasons, few of them lofty (witness the Canterbury Tales). Hitt never manages to pin down his own motivation for making the trip, doubtless disappointing readers who expect every journey to end in a blinding flash of insight. But I found his candor refreshing: he tells it like it is and doesn't pretend to a piety he doesn't feel, even when he's momentarily overcome with emotion upon reaching his goal. Chaucer had it right: a pilgrimage is a metaphor for life itself, we're all on this road together, and, if you keep your eyes open, you'll learn that the journey IS the destination.