Robert Perkins
“Two natures—both unspoiled, both endangered—meet in these modest classics. Robert Perkins is a gifted stylist. While seeming to travel light, he carries with him not only his weight in culture and philosophy but the kind of urgent personal conflict that besets reader and explorer alike. His success is to have created a narrative medium in which the heaviest burden floats easily, like a canoe in water.”
“Those who have seen his films know that Robert Perkins is a member of that rare and useful species—the different, the slightly bent, gifted with the insight that such apartness can provide. These books help explain, in compelling terms, what that difference feels like form the inside.”
“Robert Perkins’s theme is what Plotinus called ‘the flight of the alone.’ It is in a sense the ultimate theme, and Mr. Perkins’s accounts, like all true attempts to embody it, is a log of different parts of a voyage of discovery—frightening, exhilarating, without promises, but with its own unquestionable reward.”
“Splendid association of autobiographical reverie, regional history, acute observation, and un melting but plainly stated adventure.”
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PRAISE FOR Into The Great Solitude
"[Perkins is] an honest, brave, questioning deeply caring human being, a man who might affectionately, and appropriately be called 'sweet'" —Jeff McLaughlin, Boston Globe
"A splendid association of autobiographical reverie, regional history, acute observation, and unrelenting but plainly state adventure." —New Yorker
"Rob Perkins writes with a radical innocence—one that finds humor in the face of madness, sweetness of life at the core of deepest grief, and the ability to love as the secret to survival." —Robert Finch
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PRAISE FOR Talking to Angels
"Robert Perkins' theme in Talking to Angels is what Plotinus called 'the flight of the alone.' It is in a sense the ultimate theme, and Perkins' account, like all true attempts to embody it, is a log of different parts of a voyage of discovery—frightening, exhilarating, without promises, but with its own unquestionable reward." — W.S. Merwin
"On a transatlantic flight I just finished reading Talking to Angels. It is a haunting book that will stay with me. I read much of it with tears in my eyes and yet it is a life-affirming book. I'm grateful to have had the opportunity to read it." —Howard Gardner, Professor of Education at Harvard University
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PRAISE FOR Kamchatka - Land of Fire and Ice
“Breathtaking vistas and stirring adventures make this a wonderful choice for both and active canoeists and armchair travelers.” — Booklist
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PRAISE FOR Against Straight Lines
"Robert Perkins has struggled with great success to write with the severity of Henry David Thoreau and the moral passion John Muir. Here is a book that is at once a minimalist narrative of wilderness encounter and a rich evocation of more elusive geographies within." — Kevin Starr, author of Americans and the Californian Dream, 1850-1915
"A solo adventure, lit by campfire and rainbow, lighting and flashback: the writing is spare, the vistas it opens immense." —James Merrill