American.
The "bull" of the title refers to one's true inner nature, from which we have almost all become alienated. And, as in so many stories of spiritual search via a Bohemian life-style, the journey, especially the mountain journey, takes on the shape of a search for that lost inner self. This derives from the Oriental mystics such people frequently take as their masters, but it's probably a universal feeling, an archetype. For McClave, the spiritually-tinged journey takes the form of the hike along the John Muir Trail with which the book concludes.
Given the commercialism of the present era, it's good to find that the legacy of Kerouac and the Beats, for all its many shortcomings, hasn't entirely vanished. McClave understands his literary origins perfectly clearly -- he comments at one point that almost everyone he met trekking appeared to be, like him, in their 50s, trying to recapture (he surmises) the dreams of their youth. And American Bohemianism of 40 years ago, which quickly became a worldwide phenomenon, was essentially the expression of a youth culture. Its problem was always what its followers would do when they were no longer young. McClave, in this brave and often fascinating book, demonstrates that for such people, the years that follow are by no means without hope.
The author grew up in Flushing, Michigan, and even hopped freight trains, Kerouac-like, when he was young. Today he is today married to a Taiwanese and works in Taipei as an English teacher.
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