Overview

"""A road-tripping travel memoir that's graced with humor, adventure, and wisdom."" -Foreword Clarion Reviews A Transcendental Journey is the insightful and often humorous account of playwright and author Stephen Evans' journey across America, exploring America and American Transcendental Philosophy. Ralph Waldo Emerson's life, thought, and influence is explored through five of his most important essays. These famous works transform the journey, just as the journey transforms the author's experience of Emerson, a combination that made for a life-changing, truly Transcendental journey. This edition, published to commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the journey, includes a new Afterword describing the author's visit to Emerson's home town of Concord, Massachusetts."

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9781953725288

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Reviews

"""Author and playwright Stephen Evans's memoir, in a new edition, revisits his journey through natural landmarks of the mid and western U.S. and the philosophical rambles they inspired. ""We live on the surface of the past,"" Evans begins, but it's his past, including a painful divorce, that he's driving away from when he leaves Washington, D.C. with no itinerary but with maps, books, and a toy moose named Bernard. A thoughtful diarist, Evans records meals, conversations, scenery observations, and random musings, many regarding spirituality and philosophy. The diary avoids becoming claustrophobic with cuts to outside history and knowledge, including reactions to what he's reading on the journey-Ralph Waldo Emerson essays-and information about the places he visits, like the geology of the Badlands or the origins of Devil's Tower...Although more anecdotal than transcendent, Evans's book, with its beautiful description, poignant moments, and interesting philosophy, will resonate with any reader who has set out for new places to find something ""barely remembered, yet vaguely familiar: joy."" -BlueInk Review ""A Transcendental Journey is a road-tripping travel memoir that's graced with humor, adventure, and wisdom."" -Foreword Clarion Reviews ""For almost everyone there is a call to adventure and, if heeded, small opportunities in the course of our lives to wiggle out of the tightly constructed worlds and obligations we have created for ourselves. Few of us heed the call, and of those who do, even fewer write about it in such a delightful way. Evans' soulful and completely intuition-driven trip through a large swath of America is a great read."" -Amanda Larson, Author, Healing from a Grandmother's Heart  ""Stephan Evans' A Transcendental Journey manages to be warm, wise. and humorous at the same time. Addictively readable."" -Izzy Ballard (Author of Fearless in Alaska)"

For almost everyone there is a call to adventure and, if heeded, small opportunities in the course of our lives to wiggle out of the tightly constructed worlds and obligations we have created for ourselves. Few of us heed the call, and of those who do, even fewer write about it in such a delightful way. Evans' soulful and completely intuition-driven trip through a large swath of America is a great read. Amanda Larson, Author, Healing from a Grandmother's Heart Stephan Evans' A Transcendental Journey manages to be warm, wise. and humorous at the same time. Addictively readable. Izzy Ballard (Author of Fearless in Alaska)

Author and playwright Stephen Evans's memoir, in a new edition, revisits his journey through natural landmarks of the mid and western U.S. and the philosophical rambles they inspired. We live on the surface of the past, Evans begins, but it's his past, including a painful divorce, that he's driving away from when he leaves Washington, D.C. with no itinerary but with maps, books, and a toy moose named Bernard. A thoughtful diarist, Evans records meals, conversations, scenery observations, and random musings, many regarding spirituality and philosophy. The diary avoids becoming claustrophobic with cuts to outside history and knowledge, including reactions to what he's reading on the journey-Ralph Waldo Emerson essays-and information about the places he visits, like the geology of the Badlands or the origins of Devil's Tower...Although more anecdotal than transcendent, Evans's book, with its beautiful description, poignant moments, and interesting philosophy, will resonate with any reader who has set out for new places to find something barely remembered, yet vaguely familiar: joy. -BlueInk Review A Transcendental Journey is a road-tripping travel memoir that's graced with humor, adventure, and wisdom. -Foreword Clarion Reviews For almost everyone there is a call to adventure and, if heeded, small opportunities in the course of our lives to wiggle out of the tightly constructed worlds and obligations we have created for ourselves. Few of us heed the call, and of those who do, even fewer write about it in such a delightful way. Evans' soulful and completely intuition-driven trip through a large swath of America is a great read. -Amanda Larson, Author, Healing from a Grandmother's Heart Stephan Evans' A Transcendental Journey manages to be warm, wise. and humorous at the same time. Addictively readable. -Izzy Ballard (Author of Fearless in Alaska)

Author and playwright Stephen Evans's memoir, in a new edition, revisits his journey through natural landmarks of the mid and western U.S. and the philosophical rambles they inspired. We live on the surface of the past, Evans begins, but it's his past, including a painful divorce, that he's driving away from when he leaves Washington, D.C. with no itinerary but with maps, books, and a toy moose named Bernard. A thoughtful diarist, Evans records meals, conversations, scenery observations, and random musings, many regarding spirituality and philosophy. The diary avoids becoming claustrophobic with cuts to outside history and knowledge, including reactions to what he's reading on the journey-Ralph Waldo Emerson essays-and information about the places he visits, like the geology of the Badlands or the origins of Devil's Tower. The philosophical topics are engaging and wide-ranging, from quantum physics to animal behavior, but like the spare glimpses at his own history-his marriage, his plays-these probings lead less to self-awareness than whimsy: As we...make a path sacred to ourselves, the essential human choices are breakfast and poetry, Evans writes as he mulls the universe's size and the human search to impose order and meaning. Gentle and sculpted, the prose is highly readable, and much of Evans's experience is deeply relatable. His vibrant descriptions bring the scenery alive, as when he hears a symphony in a stream at Pipestone Monument. [S]lowly I was awakening, Evans writes. The revelations that astonish him don't always hit readers with the same impact. When Evans informs Bernard We're home. And everything looks different, readers may miss what epiphanies he's arrived at. But the journey, perhaps, is the point: Even where there is no happiness, there is the next joy and the next, he writes. Although more anecdotal than transcendent, Evans's book, with its beautiful description, poignant moments, and interesting philosophy, will resonate with any reader who has set out for new places to find something barely remembered, yet vaguely familiar: joy. -BlueInk Review For almost everyone there is a call to adventure and, if heeded, small opportunities in the course of our lives to wiggle out of the tightly constructed worlds and obligations we have created for ourselves. Few of us heed the call, and of those who do, even fewer write about it in such a delightful way. Evans' soulful and completely intuition-driven trip through a large swath of America is a great read. -Amanda Larson, Author, Healing from a Grandmother's Heart Stephan Evans' A Transcendental Journey manages to be warm, wise. and humorous at the same time. Addictively readable. -Izzy Ballard (Author of Fearless in Alaska)

Author Information

Stephen Evans is an American playwright, philosopher, and author. His works include A Transcendental Journey, Painting Sunsets, The Island of Always, and Funny Thing Is: A Guide to Understanding Comedy.

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