Tim Cahill - Hold the Enlightenment

Acclaim for Tim Cahills
Hold the Enlightenment

Cahill does more than beguile with great storytelling. What Cahill does bestwhile talking in your ear about the Northern Congo or great white sharks or a yoga retreat in Jamaicais leave you wanting more. More of his empathy and humor, more of his cheekiness and intelligence.

The Denver Post

Cahill [writes] with such self-deprecating humor and insight that youre more than happy he enjoys putting himself in harms way.

The New York Times Books Review

One of the best things about Hold the Enlightenment is [the authors] unexpected mixture of fact, legend, seriousness and whimsy, often in rapid succession. So [with] Cahill youre always assured of a trip that is anything but ordinary and as far from boring as the great white sharks off South America are from a tuna melt on white toast.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Cahill has done the hard part for us. Now, all we have to do to experience exotic corners of the earth is read Hold the Enlightenment from the comfort of our fluffy sofas. Thanks, Big Guy.

Fort Worth Star-Telegram

Offers Cahills usual mix of humor, insight and carefully crafted prose. Highly entertaining and informative.

The Tampa Tribune

Hold the Enlightenment is vintage Cahilladventures to thrill the armchair traveler.

The Decatur Daily

Cahill returns with another collection of perceptive, hilarious and touching travelogues disguised as misadventures. Beyond the grand hilarity and bluster, Cahill is chasing a richer worldand he usually succeeds, or at least limps home with one hell of a story.

Book

Along with his habitual irreverence, Cahill has a fine appreciation of irony and the absurd. A fine, funny, thoughtful and varied collection.

The Portsmouth Herald

Tim Cahill
Hold the Enlightenment

Tim Cahill is the author of six previous books, including A Wolverine Is Eating My Leg, Jaguars Ripped My Flesh, and Pass the Butterworms. He is an editor at large for Outside magazine, and his work appears in National Geographic Adventure, The New York Times Book Review, and other national publications. He lives in Montana.

ALSO BY TIM CAHILL

Buried Dreams

Jaguars Ripped My Flesh

A Wolverine Is Eating My Leg

Road Fever

Pecked to Death by Ducks

Pass the Butterworms

FIRST VINTAGE DEPARTURES EDITION, SEPTEMBER 2003

Copyright 2002 by Tim Cahill

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Villard Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 2002.

Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage Departures and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Hold the Enlightenment previously appeared in Yoga Journal; Bug Scream, The Platypus Hunter, Fire and Ice and Everything Nice, The Caravan of White Gold, The Terrible Land, The House of Boots, This Teeming Ark, Near Massacre Ranch, Fubsy Hors Doeuvres, Gorillas in Our Schools, The Entranced Duck, Castle and More Castles, Culinary Schadenfreude, Swimming with Great White Sharks, Atlatl Bobs Splendid Lack of Simple Sanity, Fully Unprepared, Evilfish, Collision Course, The Big Muddy, Professor Cahills Travel 101, My Brother, the Pot Dealer, Dirty Money, Panic, and Trusty and Grace all appeared in Outside magazine, sometimes in a slightly different form and often under a different title; The Search for the Caspian Tiger, Powder Keg, The Worlds Most Dangerous Friend, and The Cowpersons of Tanzania all appeared in Mens Journal, sometimes in a slightly different form and, in one case, under a different title; Stutter appeared in Modern Maturity.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the Villard hardcover edition as follows:
Cahill, Tim.
Hold the Enlightenment / Tim Cahill
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-1-58836-085-4
I. Title.
PS3553.A365 H65 2002
813.54dc21 2002074263

www.vintagebooks.com

v3.1

To Rollie Bestor and Phil Cibik

Thanks to Larry Burke and everyone at Outside, both past and present. I am always proud to appear in the magazine and to work with editors like Hal Espen.

Todd Jones at Yoga Journal let me have an awful lot of fun, and the readers didnt cancel their subscriptions in droves, or so he said. Maybe hes just being nice.

Mark Cohen at Mens Journal could get it done even when the volume got a little high. Sid Evans edited a prizewinning story under great pressure. Thanks also to John Wood at Modern Maturity.

And an all-embracing thank you to Mark Bryant, who edited stories of mine at both Outside and Mens Journal. The finest compliment any writer can give to any editor is the one I offer you here: Mark, Id work for you again in a heartbeat.

I ntroductions, I feel, in my mean-spirited way, are an appropriate forum to even the score, settle old debts, avenge insults, spew a lot of invective, and basically have fun decimating the wicked or the undiscriminating. Unfortunately, I am currently living in a hell of insufficient aggravation. Critics have generally been kind, or if not precisely kind, then at least fair. In fact, two of the stories in this collection were selected to be included in the Best American Travel Writing books: This Teeming Ark, in 2000, and Powder Keg, which appeared under the title Volcano Alley Is Ticking, in 2001.

The truth is, I actually had to look for someone to kick around here. Happily, after a quick root through my files, I found Hal Clifford, a columnist for the Aspen Times. Hal published his interview with me and, in what I suspect was meant to be a humorous aside, he suggested that I was unattractive to the opposite sex. Somehow I had not been aware of this previously. I wondered how Hal knew.

Another fellow, a newspaper critic, noted that in a previous collection, I had included a piece written for Modern Maturity, the magazine of the American Association of Retired Persons, and from that concluded that I was getting tired. It is probably for that reason Ive included the only piece Ive written for Modern Maturity of late. Im not so tired that I mind drawing fire from imbeciles. On the other hand, the article in question is very short indeed, and its very brevity may supply munitions to the moron.

Similarly, I havent been vigorous or virtuous enough to thank the hundreds of people who have written me letters over the years, and Ill do it here, all in a lump. Thank you. Really. Im glad you liked the books, your letters truly do brighten my day, and Im sincerely sorry that I havent written back. Its not you. I never write back. I do, however, spend a lot of time feeling guilty about not responding to all the well-written missives. Somebody writing to a writer works on the letter and that is obvious. To do even half as well as you in reply, Id have to work on it too, and, hey, thats what I do for a living. Im not a guy who writes letters, as my mother reminds me from time to time.