The Long Way Home

Zarathustra gets off the boat and finds the world smaller than he left it: new houses, low doorways, and a virtue that keeps people comfortable and calls itself moderation. Clancy Martin follows him through the loud chapters first, then into the quiet ones, where silence is defended as a discipline and the road bends home toward the cave. Underneath the walking is a claim Martin has been building all series: solitude is the opposite of loneliness, and you were loneliest in the crowd. Near the end there is also a sneeze. It matters more than any sneeze reasonably should.