[The Walker] is an erudite book that moves at a pace alternating between brisk and leisurely ... Like his prose, Beaumont's mind is anything but pedestrian. He is as attuned to matters of medicine and science, anthropology, economics, philosophy and psychology as he is to literature and the visual arts ... Beaumont uses the language of contemporary literary theory, but with none of the rebarbative jargon-mongering of others in the professoriate. His references to the usual suspects-from Marx, Freud and Adorno through Lacan and Derrida, to Deleuze and Guattari, Zizek and Agamben-are never gratuitous, but always helpful in understanding the literary, historical, and psychological terrain he explores.
-Willard Spiegelman, Wall Street Journal
Matthew Beaumont's prose is the golden thread of elegance and erudition we need to guide us through the labyrinth of the modern city. These essays confirm him to be simultaneously the possessor of a coherent and convincing overview of emergent Modernist thought and creativity in the urban context, and the inheritor of all the radical subjectivities he engages with. This is a superb and always engrossing collection.
-Will Self, author of Psychogeography
[The Walker] is absolutely fascinating and [Beaumont's] literary references are wonderful ... I absolutely loved it.
-Jo Good, BBC Radio London
The Walker seeks to take its reader on an intriguing journey ... if you're looking for some escapism that goes beyond the cliches of repetitive travel literature, this could well be the book for you.
-Northern Soul
[Beaumont's] style is a treat-elegant, intelligent and entertaining as he describes the ways we read a city with our feet and mind, and guides us through a history of walking writing from Dickens and Poe to Marx and Zizek.
-Edwin Heathcote, Financial Times
An uncanny and haunting foreshadowing of our cities as they now appear to us ... familiar subjects are given revelatory new interpretations ... thought-provoking.
-Margaret Drabble, Times Literary Supplement
Drawing on numerous literary sources, both familiar and obscure, Beaumont takes the reader on a labyrinthine journey into the literature of walking and thinking.
-Sean O'Hagan, Observer
[A] heady blend of history and theory.
-New Yorker
Fascinating ... those interested in how literature has explored urban modernity are sure to find ample food for thought.
-Publishers Weekly
Dazzling.
-Eminetra
Dazzlingly erudite.
-Chris Moss, Guardian
Elegantly written and compellingly argued ... A highly commendable, engaging, and thoroughly researched study, The Walker infuses the poetics of walking with the politics of homing.
- Maxim Shadurski , English Studies
Striking ... a poetic heft rings resoundingly throughout [Beaumont's] commentary, justly inviting a reader's own imagined extensions.
-Patrick James Dunagan, Rain Taxi Review of Books
From start to finish a delight to read, The Walker is the beginning of wisdom in all things metro-pedestrian.
-Ian Thomson, New Statesman
[The Walker] fascinates and informs from beginning to end ... Beaumont has positioned himself as the foremost theorist of walking working in English literary studies today.
-Jeremy Withers, The Wellsian
