Beachcombing at Miramar: The Quest for an Authentic Life

by Richard Bode

Overview

Bode went to a California beach to discover the truth about his life. Contemplating the sea & the shore, tuning in to the rhythms of the tides, he observed, he experienced, he remembers. This book has the power, like the sea, to reshape our lives.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780446672764
Publisher:	Grand Central Publishing
Publication date:	07/01/1997
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	4.90(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.60(d)

Editorial Reviews

It's a common enough fantasy, moving to a hut on the beach, but Bode, author of the word-of-mouth bestseller First You Have to Row a Little Boat (1993), lives it. In this lyrical memoir, he imparts some of the quiet wonder he's found in his simple, unhurried existence. Before Bode came to Miramar, Calif., he toiled for years at a New York public relations firm that promised to make him a millionaire. But he fled, to work as a freelance writer. After 30 years of marriage, his children grown, he divorced his wife and settles on the beach. Bode cautions that "a beachcomber's life is a demanding one that calls for discipline and zeal... it's the endless seeing that causes the psychic strain. It's the richness of life in the tidal zone." The seeing here is clear-eyed and limned in sculpted, resonant prose, as Bode tells of soaking up natural beauty while confronting personal demons. He recoils when an old business associate pressures him to ghostwrite a speech: A "ghost" is what he doesn't want to be. Frantic, lonely people cross his path, as does a vibrant Portuguese woman. A dowdy, elderly couple walk past his porch. The man is bald and the woman has a wart on her cheek, but their smiles are radiant. With contemplative intensity, Bode creates here one of those small miracles of writing able to pierce the heart. Author tour. (June)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

To become a beachcomber and be able to walk the beach at leisure is a dream of many. Bode (First You Have To Row a Little Boat: Reflections on Life and Living, Warner, 1993) leaves a job from which he was deriving no personal satisfaction and a wife of 30 years to become a beachcomber. He gets a beach house at Miramar Beach, California, and uses his time walking the beach and ruminating about sand dollars, jellyfish, and the mist and tide in his self-described journey to the center of himself. The days and nights of irregular and random beachcombing allow him to reflect on who he is, who he wants to be, and what it means to be human. This striving for an authentic life makes this book sensitive and worthwhile reading. Recommended for public libraries.-David Schau, Kanawha Cty. P.L., Charleston, W. Va.

Library Journal

Smarmy advice on how to conduct your life from Bode (First You Have to Row a Little Boat, 1993, etc.).

Jettisoning a marriage of 30 years, Bode takes to the beachcomber's life along California's lovely Miramar coast. He troops up and down the strand, musing on the human condition. These pensées are the fruits of his ambulations. He cherishes the child's wonder, the free life: "Like a migratory bird, I move by instinct, my behavior governed by forces beyond myself." Vraiment. But without leisure and means, said lifestyle is little more than figment. The force at work here is of the white-male-with-connections variety; soft touchdowns await, a phone call away. Money is vulgar, Bode informs readers, then churlishly turns on his wife over their settlement. "I had earned the money, but I didn't need it. She hadn't earned the money, but she did need it . . . She acquired financial security; I purchased my freedom." Such honesty, hombre. Money is vulgar, though he would be nowhere without its reference points. "I might have been a millionaire; I mean that literally." He was a successful public relations man; big bucks awaited; he declined (though the river ran deep and Bode knew where to cast): "It astounds me when I think of the courage it takes to live, to behave as we want to." Most of his time is spent otherwise: crawling over parental injustices, dismissively laughing at a man confusing a sea lion with a dog, patronizing a relative who abandoned the piano. Follow your star, urges Bode, even in a relationship: "He can have his perceptions and she can have hers and the two don't have to jibe." A couple of pages later, though, he notes what a shame it is when two people "don't respond to the world about them in the same way."

Pretentious, aimless, worthless.

Kirkus Reviews