Title: Riverman
Author: McGrath, Ben
Published by: 4th Estate
Year: 2022
First published: 4th Estate, 2022
Date reviewed: 10.24
ISBN: 978-0-00-822112-6
Also published in the USA by Alfred A. Knopf, 2022

The author is a long-term staff writer for ‘New Yorker’ magazine who lives outside the city on the banks of the Hudson river. In 2014 he happened to meet a stranger, a big grizzled man wearing “denim overalls, a faded baseball cap, and muddy brown boots, … [he] had a patchy rust-colored beard … [and] the complexion of a boiled lobster, to go with the build of a manatee.” This was Richard (‘Dick’ or ‘Dicky’) Conant, and Dick was slowly travelling to Florida by canoe, living rough with what he could pack in his flimsy vessel. McGrath discovered Conant had been leading this waterborne itinerant life intermittently, but more on than off, since 1999 and in that time he had covered much of the United States using its network of rivers and canals.

McGrath searched for and met Conant again several times. In their conversations it emerged that Conant quite liked the idea of his story being published in the ‘New Yorker’. He had kept detailed, rambling notes of his journeys and showed some to McGrath; the journalist set about writing an account of the man and his travels. Before publication he set out to verify the stories he had been told, and this was ultimately to become if not an obsession, at least an enduring interest and investigation of the life of Dick Conant.

Through contacts with Conant’s family and people who appeared in his accounts, McGrath was chasing a ghost, trying to resolve the enigma of Conant’s life and experiences. During his search he came across more and more people who live in the liminal spaces alongside America’s waterways; not a community as such but a sub-culture which McGrath calls “the State of Riverbank”. It became clear that Conant affected strongly the people he came across – they all remembered him. McGrath writes:

“… the mere mention of Conant’s name was like a social lubricant, a fast track to making unlikely new friends of my own. Free plane tickets, moonshine, an apartment in New Orleans, a cabin on the James [river]: these were all offered to me, no strings attached, for the simple reason that I’d inquired about a mysterious man who meant something different to each person he met.” (p158)

< – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – spoiler alert! – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – >

The book does not have a strong narrative stream; it is more a catalogue of incidents and anecdotes. It is as much the story of writing the story as about Conant himself, but still an intriguing attempt to get to know and understand a remarkable man. Conant disappeared in 2014 and the manner and cause of his disappearance is unresolved in the book. By the end we may know more about Conant’s life and travels but are no closer to really understanding the man than we were after the first chapter.