Review: Sojourner to Stoner by Gordon Schwerzmann

Sojourner to Stoner: The Journal by Gordon Schwerzmann is the second exhilarating installment of the author’s travel adventures, a mix between a memoir, guidebook, and travelogue. This memorable piece of non-fiction feels like a visit to a far-off place, as the best travel memoirs do, full of enchanting and exotic anecdotes, and people who seem like fictional characters.

After Soldier to Sojourner, this book recalls the second phase of Gordon Schwerzmann’s longstanding relationship with traveling the world. Journeying through Southeast Asia in the ’70s, the author breaks down his journeys in snappy episodes, while also allowing himself to linger on impressions, reflections, and portrayals of the people who left a mark on his life. Written in a fun, colloquial style, the memoir is a cohesive and engaging patchwork of experiences, focusing on both the spiritual and the material.

Schwerzmann was exceptionally young when he decided to enlist in the army and leave his devout girlfriend and his quiet life in Kansas. Just before getting into the grim reality of the Vietnam war, he allowed himself a week in Thailand, a week that set the tone for the lighthearted, adventurous, and exciting years of traveling ahead. After three years of service in the army, Schwerzmann spent two years traveling in Asia, exploring countries that once had seemed impossibly exotic and distant.

From Thailand to Malaysia, Borneo to Laos, Schwerzmann dived head first into the culture of each place with a fresh gaze. Interested both in the tangible and the intangible, Gordon spent his time with travelers versed in the use of recreational substances, participating in the pleasures the world has to offer, but also studied Buddhism, and reflected on the meaning of it all.

Meant to be a companion to his book of photography, Sojourner to Stoner: The Photographs, this book is also punctuated by images, quotes, and photographs. Receptive to the changes in Asia, especially the impact of capitalism, Schwerzmann pulls from the cultural background of the time and beyond, bringing in anything and everything that can help him make sense of the world around him – be it Spinoza or the lyrics from a Rolling Stones song. On the one hand, the optimism of the Woodstock generation fueled the author’s hopes for the future, but on the other, the coveted American Dream felt deeply unsatisfying, and he wondered if he is always going to be an outsider, observing and musing on the world, without a strict place, religion, or way of life, to call his own.

While Schwerzmann’s raw, unfettered dialogue with the reader is visceral and engaging, the chronological and physical distances can be a little hard to follow at times, though it adds to the feeling of reading a real account of someone’s experience, which doesn’t necessarily follow a straightforward throughline. Similarly, the author’s detailed accounts of intimate encounters with women can seem more candid than necessary, but they make sense within the author’s diaristic effort that leaves nothing unsaid.

Overall, Sojourner to Stoner may seem somewhat flippant by its title, but it is a fascinating, moving, and frequently hilarious memoir that will inspire a gamut of emotions, and possibly spark the desire to explore Asia, for a truly epic piece of travel writing.