Zoellner, the politics editor of The Los Angeles Review of Books and the author of several previous works of nonfiction - including “ Train: Riding the Rails That Created the Modern World” - is an old-fashioned American vagabond.
“Today our country is slowing down and staying in place - an effect that Covid-19 only accelerated,” Zoellner writes in “The National Road: Dispatches From a Changing America.” “A country on the move seems to be more reluctant than ever to pick up and go.” The compulsion to head for the frontier has marked history on a grand scale, from the brutal wars of conquest that “won the West” to the ambitions of countless individuals who have hit the open American road to chase personal destinies.īut in the 21st century, have Americans lost their urge to roam? Tom Zoellner thinks so. Huck and Jim drifting south on the big river, Paul Bunyan hacking his way through the North Woods, Chuck Berry’s Odyssean trek to the California “promised land” via bus and train and jumbo jet, Thelma and Louise’s desperado ride to the edge of the Grand Canyon and beyond - time and again, American literature, lore and pop culture have returned to tales of great migrations, last-chance power drives, epic schleps. The Great American Story is a travelogue.
THE NATIONAL ROAD: Dispatches From a Changing America By Tom Zoellner
0 kommentar(er)
