Synopsis
"Engagingly curious open-mindedness . . . an amiable deadpan worthy of Richard Ford." --Pico Iyer, Time
in this offbeat and original road book, cultural observer Mike Bryan takes issue with the traditional idea that the "real" America is to be found somewhere on our scenic backroads. He argues instead that it is right out in the open on the interstates, and he travels the big highways of the Southwest to prove the point.
Bryan engages motel operators, state troopers, and traveling salesmen. He discovers the world's only "No Smoking" ranch; hobnobs with elusive novelist Cormac McCarthy; spars with Bob Sundown, who prefers his covered wagon to any car. Between encounters he contemplates everything from America's pioneering spirit to its history of road building. In the end, he discovers that the interstates, far from producing the homogenous society he feared, nourish a rich community of eccentrics. And that ultimately, as this deeply romantic travelogue shows, there is no such thing as an "ordinary American."
"A wonderful writer, he manages to transmit his enjoyment of the places and people he encounters." --Austin American-Statesman
From the Trade Paperback edition.
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About the Author
Mike Bryan has written and collaborated on books about topics ranging from golf and baseball to travel and religion. His credits include Uneasy Rider, Baseball Lives, and Cal Ripken’s bestselling autobiography, The Only Way I Know. He lives in New York City.
From Kirkus Reviews
Much of this drive-through view of the Southwest is disjointed and overly opinionated, a perplexing blend of Americana, cathartic anger, and ego. From the outset, Bryan (Dogleg Madness, 1988, etc.) searches for an ever-elusive unifying theme that presumably is built on the synecdoche of the interstate highway as representative of present- day America. This works to the extent that the people he meets are a varied and industrious lot. Bryan visits a snake farm where tourists can purchase mice to throw in the pits, and he rides with Texas state troopers apprehending speeders. He spends time with casino dealers in Laughlin, Nev., and with the manager of the sludge dump in Sierra Blanca, Tex., which receives its product from New York City. Motel owners, truckers, hitchhikers, ranchers (including the proprietor of a ``no smoking'' ranch), restaurateurs--they are all here, and one admires Bryan's doggedness and benefits from his wide-ranging interests. However, an equally large segment of the book is comprised of frequently demeaning observations about Texans, Republicans, Christians, and anyone else not smart enough to have moved, like Texas-born Bryan, to New York City. For instance, people who voted for Nixon in 1960 were ``neither imaginative nor creative.'' A particularly extraneous and self-pitying, as well as unnecessarily graphic, section concerns Bryan and his wife's failed in-vitro fertilization treatment. A visit to his aged grandmother elicits a curiously cavalier reaction to her deteriorating mental state: The ``lilt and twinkle in her eye'' when she is unable to remember something from her past is ``enchanting.'' Her burial in the book's last chapter is likewise bloodless. Had Bryan stuck to his often praiseworthy descriptions of lost Texas towns or the small but meaningful pursuits of citizens on and along the interstates, this would have been a far greater pleasure to read. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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