Characters: n/a
Writing: B
Plot: B+
Pacing: B+
Poignancy: B+
It's rare to find a biography as thorough and intimate as The Last American Man. Of course, there aren't many subjects out there like Eustace Conway. Since a very young age, Conway has taught and lived self-sufficient living, but he's more than just a naturalist and mountain-man. He's a man that can conquer seemingly any goal he sets for himself, a man that seems to have nearly superhuman physical powers, and a mind to match. At the age of seventeen, Conway left his parent's suburban home, built a tee-pee in the wilderness, made all his clothing out of deer-skin, and has more or less lived like that ever since. Conway's is a complex story that could have easily been told through a lens of hero worship and idealism, but Gilbert does an excellent job of unraveling Conway's complicated motivations, aspirations and frustrations. The two have been friends for years, and it shows in her writing, which is deeply personal — affectionate, yet candid and critical. In trying to demystify this man — who has already become a legend to many — Gilbert leaves out nothing. No one this passionate achieves success without having a dark side, and The Last American Man takes the psychoanalytical risks to show why so many people idolize Conway from afar, then practically flee when given the opportunity to know him up close.
Eustace Conway is the owner of Turtle Island, a nature conservatory and ultra-primitive, self-sufficient farm in North Carolina; a sort of non-profit haven for preaching and teaching his message of environmentalism. Yet despite building and running his own utopia from the ground up, Conway doesn't seem to stay in one place for very long. He has broken multiple world records for long-distance horse riding and hiked the entire Appalachian Trail with only a small knife, wearing a loin-cloth. He makes his own clothing out of animal skin. He's hardcore, to the say the least. Many would be quick to pin him as a hippie, a bleeding-heart liberal tree-hugger. But Eustace Conway turns out to be far more complicated than that. For one, he's shockingly conservative, and a brilliant businessman with a head for self-promotion. He's a strict authoritarian, and often complains that he would run Turtle Island like a rigid military dictatorship if he could. A man like Conway couldn't achieve success without being a control-freak.
While reading The Last American Man, it struck me how similar Conway's basic personality traits are to those shown by Mark Zuckerberg (as he was portrayed by Jesse Eisenberg) in The Social Network. The lives of these men would seem to have little in common on the surface, yet both embody the same relentless drive, the need for absolute control, the perfectionism, the uncanny intellect and talent — and as a result, the tendency to drive away everyone close to them through the sheer intensity of their personality. These men were born to succeed beyond measure, but might as well wear a plaque around their neck that reads: "... at what cost?" What makes The Last American Man (and Eustace Conway) so fascinating is not just the adventures Conway has been on, but the way people react to him. This includes the author, who can't seem to help interjecting her own thoughts and witticisms into the narrative, especially when deconstructing Conway's personal relationships (though to be fair, this might just be her writing style.) That Gilbert is fascinated and perplexed by Conway even after knowing him so well — indeed, after writing such a thorough book on the man — is telling. Many of the apprentices that come to Turtle Island to learn about the primitive life seem to look to Conway as a father figure and spiritual guide, and most end up leaving disappointed, jaded and even heartbroken. Conway has had poor luck with his sexual relationships as well, though he seems to have had no lack of them either. He is a man who is immediately and obviously compelling, who is described as constantly drawing people into his orbit before suffocating them through the intensity of his personality, the extreme demands he places upon himself and others.
As a book, The Last American Man is not perfect. Gilbert's intimacy with Conway gives the reader access that few authors would have been able to obtain, or understand, but her tone is occasionally so casual that it's hard to take at face value. Still, for this style of writing, she could do much worse, and the book has a nice flow and a vibrant, excited energy to match its subject. The pacing suggests Conway's own trajectory, from capable young idealist to jaded, disappointed businessman. This, in a way, makes The Last American Man an unintended but insightful commentary on the very nature of idealism, structured around an idealist who did not himself fail, like so many hippies and would-be-Utopians. Eustace Conway tackled every goal he set up for himself, and he had just as high hopes for America — he truly believed he could save our country by teaching us how live a primitive, knowledgeable, hard-working lifestyle. He really figured out how to do it, showed us that it works. But most people are not like Eustace Conway, and the same problems he saw in his youth are looming larger than ever. Watching this man recognize his own futility through the pages of a mere biography is a tremendously fascinating experience.
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