Anonymous
Posted April 30, 2001
Scott Carrier is driven to lead the primitive life. He tore his house down to bare studs in order to live like a primitive and almost lost his family. He seems to be seeking the best way to follow his interests and feed his family at the same time. His quest takes him into Cambodia, Chiapas, Kashmir, and of course Salt Lake City. His tales are human at the most basic level. It seems that Carrier himself wants nothing more than life's most basic necessities, and in his accounts of his various foreign correspondent trips, he meets a variety of characters who also dream of having their daily bread--nothing more. I disagree with the critic who found these passages extraneous. Carrier's arrogance and the deflation of that arrogance on several occasions serve to bring him back down to his flawed humanity, which was the goal of this book. In his interviews with the members of the primitive cultures who subsisted on deer and antelope they had chased and killed with their bare hands, we see that Carrier's conclusion is that life is better in a primitive society. The surviving Indians he meets in Mexico can no longer hunt on foot--they have forgotten the skill, and deer have become scarce--but they regret that time has changed them; they believe that life was better before they were 'civilized.' It is a great debate, and Carrier's uncertain voice held my interest throughout.
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More About This Textbook
Overview
Like In Our time, which unifies its disparate contents through between-the-acts episodes drawn from Hemingway's war experiences, Running After Antelope strings its many-colored beads on a single narrative thread—Carrier's ongoing, passionate attempt to run down a pronghorn antelope. Scenes from this picaresque quest—odd, inspired, and most times futile—are juxtaposed with stories about little league, sibling rivalry, falling in love, and working in the journalist's trade. Together they form a most unique record of a most unique life, a life that embraces discovery and celebrates pursuit for the sake of the chase.
About the Author:
Scott Carrier was born in Lawrence, Kansas. Since 1983 he has been an independent producer for public radio, and is now a regular contributor to Ira Glass's "This American Life." he lives in Salt Lake City with his family.
Editorial Reviews
Charles Bowden
Jesus, I've been waiting for someone to cut through the crap, stop the stancing, and finally love this pug-ugly monster of a country and the brutal, bigfoot tracks it leaves around the planet. Scott Carrier has the fresh voice and wide-open eyes to take us inside ourselves and our ground and our disease. And if you don't want to run down an antelope, you don't understand the pace of our appetites and dreams. This is the book to end the boredom of our stock market minds and return us to all those lusts and hopes that fuel the fires of our love. Something wonderful is happening here and it is about time.David Sedaris
When I call Scott Carrier's essays sad and spooky, I mean it in a good way. Running After Antelope grips, shocks, and then settles in for a long and satisfying haunt.Sarah Vowell
Somebody call the President. Scott Carrier should be designated a National Park. His humor is as dry as Death Valley, his stories have more striations than the Grand Canyon and you can count on his passion to bubble out of the ground more often than Old Faithful. After reading Running After Antelope you'll want to hang the Yellowstone entrance sign around his neck: For the benefit and enjoyment of the people.Terry Tempest Williams
Scott Carrier is an American original, a voice with both edge and empathy. To have his words on the page is a delight and an inspiration, reminding us that the path of any good writer is to be both observer and participant. Running After Antelope is smart, quick-witted, heartbreaking in its truth, and alive. Carrier is a great storyteller. Perhaps our generation has found its own B. Traven.Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly
Radio meets print journalism in this slim, entertaining anthology of outtakes from Carrier's last 20 years as a writer, hitchhiker, radio producer and occasional war correspondent. The book consists of stories originally broadcast on National Public Radio's All Things Considered and Public Radio International's This American Life; magazine articles originally published in Harper's and Esquire; and a narrative detailing Carrier's obsessive attempts to literally run down a pronghorn antelope. As with all anthologies, some pieces are more successful than others. The best story, "The Test," chronicles a temp job in which Carrier interviewed people on Medicaid support for schizophrenia, taking the agonizing responses and reducing them to statistics and cold data; in the piece's shattering climax, Carrier turns inward and forces himself to answer the same questions. Other stories focus on Carrier's rough-and-tumble encounters with memorable, oddball characters like his brother (a vertebrate morphologist who collected roadkill in the name of science) or the fundamentalist carpenters of "Windfall" (who were obsessed with Star Trek, the Trilateral Commission and Ted Kennedy). The least effective parts are Carrier's experiments as a foreign correspondent in Kashmir, Cambodia, and Chiapas, Mexico, where his touristic narratives are too thin for the gravity of the tragedies he's writing about. ("You'll never figure it out in ten days," a woman in Chiapas told him angrily. "It's pretty arrogant and stupid to even think you could.") The rest of the book, however, is more perceptive and honest, as well as funny. While this "greatest hits" selection may not propel Carrier into the celebrity ranks of fellow NPR alumni David Sedaris and Sarah Vowell, it's a fine performance. (Mar.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.Library Journal
Carrier, a regular contributor to Ira Glass's This American Life, sees the experiences of life as a series of little stories to be shared. In this slim narrative, he gathers his autobiographical essays from radio as well as longer stories that have appeared in Harper's and Esquire, organizes them in chronological order, and envelopes the reader with his quests. He shares his pursuit of a pronghorn antelope and the challenges in his ultimate mission in search of adulthood, happiness, and success. Carrier's trek takes him from Lawrence, KS, through the American West to an assignment in Cambodia that left him exhausted and sad, to other foreign lands and back to Salt Lake City, where he is happiest. Carrier writes with humor and wit while inviting his readers into his thoughts, his stories, and his imagination. Recommended for all libraries. Cynde Bloom Lahey, New Canaan Lib., CT Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.Booknews
Independent radio producer Carrier has written a series of essays around his attempts to fulfill the unlikely dream of running down a pronghorn antelope. This collection of stories chronicles his travels, the people he met and the landscape, not only in the American West, but also in Cambodia, Kashmir, and Chiapas, where he was a correspondent for National Public Radio. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)Kirkus Reviews
This remarkable collection strings together a broad range of bright, engaging personal essays along a common thread: the author's dream of outrunning a pronghorn antelope. Carrier has been writing about the American West since 1983 for outlets as varied as Harper's and Esquire in print and All Things Considered and This American Life on the radio. His insight and wit render with the panache of good fiction his real-life experiences, from interviewing Medicaid-receiving schizophrenics in Utah and renovating a house to hitchhiking across America and exploring Cambodia, Kashmir, and Mexico. Memoir-essays about his family, neighbors, solitude, exploration, and pursuit of the antelope are simultaneously a relentless and exultant investigation of the quests and passions of the people he encounters along the way. Crystallized details that feel like excerpts from much longer stories afford brief, Technicolored glimpses into other people's lives: a modern dancer's feet are like suspension bridges; a Serbian truck driver tries to sell his cousin's religious paintings in the basement of a renovated Pennsylvania pizza parlor; an idealistic young American woman among the international observers in Chiapas smokes a pipe. Not for Carrier the self-aggrandizing bravado of the journalist who has seen and done it all—rather, he expresses the humble awe of someone who has been lucky enough to see a bit of the world's beauty and tried to make some sense of it. His concise mastery of language is an absolute joy. Surreal and surprising, funny and unsettling, Carrier's ebullient work defies common sense and annihilates the commonplace.Product Details
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Read an Excerpt
"What do you think we should do?" I ask.
"I think we should try it again. Let's find some more."
"And so we do. We chase antelope off and on for two days, but, basically they just ditch us every time."
—excerpt from Running After Antelope
Table of Contents