FAR OUT MAN

The founder of the Utne Reader tells his story.

Hippie, vision quester, early New Age acolyte, and member of the “mythopoetic men’s movement,” Utne is best known as the publisher of his eponymous magazine of politics and culture, which he founded in 1984 and sold in 2006. But as he observes in his memoir, all of these terms are just labels and signifiers, facets of an existence that has been eclectic in the most encompassing of ways. Born on Aug. 6, 1946, the first anniversary of Hiroshima, the author prefers to frame his narrative in terms of history—not as a set of incidents arrayed against its backdrop but in the more immediate sense of having been a participant. That such a reading is equally accurate and overstated is the conundrum at the heart of this alternately enlightening and myopic book. On one hand, Utne was everywhere, and he has never been afraid to offer dissenting views and intriguing, provocative observations. Although he visited Haight-Ashbury during the Summer of Love, he was far from a true believer. “If San Francisco is the mecca of love,” he told a friend, “then I’m an infidel.” So, too, his relationships with Michio Kushi, who spearheaded the macrobiotic movement, and Robert Bly began as productive before becoming increasingly fraught. Unfortunately, that independence—that posture of being inside and outside at the same time—grows increasingly self-serving as the narrative progresses. For Utne, the central subject is his spiritual journey. “This is my prayer,” he writes. “May our actions come out of hopelessness. May our actions be expressions of love.” While it’s difficult to argue with the sentiment, the framing of the language is telling. The author too rarely shifts the gaze from his own centrality. “While you are alive, be alive,” his stepgrandmother, Brenda Ueland—who operates as something of a muse in these pages—told him. In heeding her call, Utne fails to account for the bigger picture, making his book just another song of the self.

A fascinating life recounted in an uneven memoir.