Route 77 is a biography and poetic travelogue; it is wisdom; it is esoteric; it is funny. Spirituality gets Dorian's attention, as does nature, philosophy, psychology, animals, dreams. It offers a paradox of mysticism and the concrete, where eclectic material jumps around like beans in a sizzling pan (he includes a Greek recipe.) Dorian dubs this original format as a kind of Babushka with seven dolls. Imagine each doll decorated with eleven symbols and images. Holograms.
This innovative approach also serves as a creative writing manual, a sequel to his The Writer's Voice (1998). Dorian's mastery of teasing-out the right words prompted one reader to say, I confess I had goose bumps - was it the writing or the red wine? How wonderful when metaphor and fruity tannins coalesce. Bios are often a once-off read. This book deserves a second, or third foray with its poems, prose and personality. We encounter Dorian's commitment to personal development through his insatiable curiosity and his love for the land he treads. The tortoise (his logo) carries him to far off places:
the back of this land is tortoise shell,
its case cast by ancient waves,
its plates taken from ancestral fish.
....
and led by an amphibian chin,
in folk-tale steadiness,
it crawls ever towards water.
(Tortoise Land)
