Category: United States

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Bill Porter in China

Two articles with photos.

1. A New York Review of Books item on author Bill Porter (also known as Red Pine) visiting China, where translations of his books on Chinese hermits — Road to Heaven: Encounters with Chinese Hermits and Zen Baggage: a Pilgrimage to China — have made Porter very popular. The recent translations have prompted commissions for Chinese-language works not presently in English. The NYRB blogger notes that “Last year, Porter says, he earned $30,000 from his China book sales, pushing him out of the world of food stamps and into the realm of the tax-paying lower-middle class.” Porter’s present visit will include 20 interviews. Features a photo.

URL: http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2012/may/29/zen-book-contracts-bill-porter-beijing/

2. A China Daily article calls Porter an “eastern mystic” in a straightforward summary of Porter’s biography and recent interest in his writings, translations, and visits to China. Also includes a photo.

URL: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/life/2012-06/05/content_15474162.htm

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Dugout Dick’s caves

The colorful Idaho hermit Richard Zimmerman, called “Dugout Dick,” left many caves for itinerant visitors beofre his death in 2010. A brief article in the Idaho Press-Tribune reports that the Bureau of Land Management has filled in most of the caves because they were hazardous. A cabin inhabited by Dick will, however, be maintained, with relevant signage.

URL: http://www.idahopress.com/news/state/dugout-dick-s-central-idaho-caves-filled-in-by-blm/article_3f638dd0-1222-57c4-9f85-e54c74d4467d.html

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Alex Soth interview

Alex Soth is an American photographer and filmmake. The theme of his most recent exhibition “Broken Manual” is hermits, mentioned previously in this blog. Soth is currently exhibiting at New York City’s Sean Kelly Gallery. Soth was interviewed by the Blouin ArtInfo website. The article is titled: “How to Run Away: Alec Soth on What He Learned From His New Series of Hermit Portraits,” printed Feb. 17, 2012. Additionally, the mainstream Huffington Post also features Soth in an article titled “Alec Soth’s Photographs Capture Males Outside Of Society” (because the hermits Soth photographed are all men).

Here is an excerpt from the interview, followed by a quoate from the Huffington Post article.

ARTINFO: Hermits aren’t exactly easy to pin down. How did you actually find your subjects?
SOTH: In many cases, I found people on the Internet, which always seems like a contradiction. The whole thing about this project is that it’s a contradiction. One of the resource materials that I looked at a bit… there’s this blog that I read on hermitry. And I just think that’s really funny. All these people reading this blog–
ARTINFO: A blog on hermitry seems like the ultimate irony.
SOTH: Yeah, exactly. …

Huffington Post:

What is the inner life of a hermit like, you ask? There is something unsettling about the men in Soth’s images; they quietly address the interior struggle between savagery and civilization, between masculinity and sensitivity. It is clear that the men place great trust in Soth; the natural urges for both bold masculinity and sensitivity lurk in the shadows of their honest faces. Their haunted, faraway expressions create equally haunting imagery, the wilds of the woods mirroring the recesses of the mind.

URLs:
ARTINFO: http://artinfo.com/news/story/760382/how-to-run-away-alec-soth-on-what-he-learned-from-his-new-series-of-hermit-portraits
HP: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/17/alec-soths-hermit-photographs_n_1285167.html

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“Hermit of Lost Island,” Bahamas

Article in “Island Notes,” a feature column of Bahamaislandinfo, titled “Sadly Lost to the World: The Hermit of Lost Island,” about the American Trappist monk Gerald Groves.

Groves spent time at the Abbey of Gethsemani and knew Thomas Merton, then spent a little while in Martinique, followed by six years as a hermit in Bahamas beginning in 1960, a period described by the article. Groves lived in an abandoned and dilapidated Baptist Church built in 1902 until development drove him out, returning to the U.S. to study and teach. Groves died in 2003.

(Groves published an article about Merton in a 1979 issue of American Scholar.)

An updated URL (2014): http://www.thebahamasweekly.com/publish/author-historian/Sadly_lost_to_this_world_-_the_hermit_of_lost_beach33846.shtml

URL (no longer available): http://www.bahamaislandsinfo.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=10087:island-notes-sadly-lost-to-this-world-the-hermit-of-lost-beach&catid=113:island-notes&Itemid=228