Losing both your daughter and your wife through separate tragedies over the course of ten months are unthinkable events most people can’t even fathom. RUSH drummer Neil Peart's world and meaning system crumbled and left him searching for any way and reason to carry on. Shortly before passing away from cancer, his wife told him to just get on his motorcycle, a BMW R1100GS, and ride after she was gone. He took that to heart and loaded up the bike with bare essentials, taking his grief on the road, or, as he puts it, "taking his little baby soul for a ride".
Through journal entries, letters, and observations, Peart weaves a narrative of a broken man picking up the pieces. His travels cover Canada, Alaska, , Mexico, Belize, and a good portion of the US. While the prose is good and engaging, enabling one to pick up the book and fall right into the story at any point, some of the subject matter gets a bit laborious and repetitive. Peart includes extensive letters that he has written to friends on his journey. As anyone who has written Christmas cards knows, the same information and "news" tends to be respeatedly when describing the same period of time and personal growth to different people. The pace of the book would benefit from some additional editing of his letters and commentary.
Another tedious aspect of the narrative is Peart's use of fractured aspects of his personality (referred to as alter egos in the third person) to describe his different needs and reactions. There is Chef Ellwood the homemaker, John Ellwood Taylor the Hollywood playboy, Gaia the 14-year old "girl" who cries at love songs and longs for romance, and, of course, the "Ghost Rider", a shell of a man floating disconnected through the world of the living, a phantom gypsy. Yes, these are all Peart. While a useful way to illuminate the fractured and disparate needs of his wounded soul, it becomes a bit tiresome and "cutesy" after the umpteenth time you hear about how Gaia cried over a 70's love song. Not to sound callous, as surely the man endured horrors that would break most, but the excessive self-indulgence became taxing by the middle of the 450 page book.
I admire Neil as a man who took control of a bad situation the best he could and searched for meaning when none was left in his life. However, if you are expecting an exciting travel narrative (in the order of Ted Simon's "Jupiter's Travels"), you may not be satisfied. "Ghost Rider" is like having a friend cry on your shoulder for a week, repeating the same woes and insecurities, and slowly pull himself together. There's not much you can do besides listen, and while you are glad he is feeling better, you need to go have some time to yourself afterwards, because you're just so damn tired.
