Bigfoot is an instantly recognizable figure. Through the decades, this elusive primate has been featured in movies and books, and on coffee mugs, beer koozies, car polish, and CBD oil. Which begs the question: what is it about Bigfoot that's caught hold of our imaginations?
Buoyant, wide-ranging ... The author crisscrosses the country to talk to both believers and skeptics. He attends festivals and participates in night expeditions. Having written about attending a Bigfoot festival myself, I can attest that he nails the vibe.
There’s some great stuff here. About myth and imagination. About the power and importance of wilderness and wildness to the human psyche. About belief, and the lies our own eyes relay to us each and every day. But The Secret History of Bigfoot is a frustrating read. The Bigfooters O’Connor hangs out with come across as overgrown adolescent nitwits desperate for fellowship and purpose ... Ultimately, though, the hunt for Bigfoot reveals much about the poverty of the American psyche. Or, at least, the poverty of the American male psyche, which can’t seem to distinguish between fact and fiction.
O’Connor crafts a comprehensive popular history without getting bogged down enacting nerdy stunts. He is especially sure-footed in the terrain of writers, citing Thomas Bernhard, Peter Matthiessen and Henry David Thoreau ... The insights he gleans from his literary and topographical surveys are often strikingly original. He’s especially engaging when he compares Bigfooters to other kinds of trackers ... O’Connor lapses into laziness only when comparing Bigfoot fixation to Trumpism ... However refined O’Connor’s reading list, however ironic his approach, it’s hard to forget that defiance isn’t all fun and games; it can, taken too far, end in plots to kidnap governors or hang vice presidents. But O’Connor is affable in the extreme, and funny, and in Bigfoot he has found an object of desire that unites in real intimacy conservationists who long for wilderness and seekers who long for transcendence.
