The Great American Bus Ride: An Intrepid Woman's Cross-Country Adventure

After living abroad for thirty years, the author returns to her native America for an insightful journey across the country by bus

As the Greyhound ticket clerk in Memphis quickly discerns about the middle-aged woman with a British accent: "Y'all travelin' fo' the adventure." To which this New Jersey-raised expat of 30 years responds: "I like the bus." And indeed Kurtz does, as amply evidenced by her exuberant, knowing, witty, human-scaled journal of a recent meander through America's heartland. Comprising 65 bus changes and a span of three months, the fall trip took her across the northernmost reaches of the country to Seattle, down the West Coast, east along the Mexican border, then back to her Manhattan starting point. Among her fellow passengers, Kurtz observes "varieties of pathology . . . as well as poverty, madness and exhaustion"; she overhears conversations about "wonky ventricles" and male complaints of women who "know all about the bedroom but not a damn thing about the kitchen." The travel could be rough. One episode lands Kurtz in an isolated, frigid depot waiting for an already two-day-overdue bus to Duluth; another time, impulsively deciding to visit Dinosaur National Park (in Utah), she disembarks on a nighttime roadway only to discover she is alone in the back of beyond. But always she soldiers on, reveling in freedom "with no strings attached," in the pleasure of a journey that has no purpose but itself. The ingratiating Kurtz, who writes the Cosmo "Agony Column," even convinces one that touring America by Greyhound is akin to "doing the Nile on a barge or joining a caravan across the Sahara." Photos not seen by PW .
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Cosmopolitan columnist Kurtz (Mantalk, 1987, etc.) chronicles her voyage of discovery made by criss-crossing the country on Greyhound buses. An American expatriate residing in London, Kurtz--with Australian raincoat and flask of bourbon in hand--set out to explore her native land with three one-month Ameripasses, good for unlimited bus travel. She journeyed north from Manhattan to Maine, then west to Seattle and back east as far as Nashville; west again to San Francisco, by way of Denver; down to L.A., back east across the southern route to the Florida Keys, and back to New York. Deliberately seeking out obscure places, she found herself stranded in Minnesota blizzards; dumped off at 4:00 a.m. in Dinosaur, Colorado; and sampling the Basque restaurants in a long string of western towns. Kurtz has a good ear for American speech, and gives us samples of talk from midnight conversations with strippers, cowboys, teenagers, crazies, tourists--all the bizarre variety of Yanks on the road. And she records the unwritten customs of bus travel: who gets which seats; how much to reveal in conversation; ways to repel unwanted companions. There's no deep revelation of the spirit of America here, but the ride is good fun, and the characters and dialogue are as alluring as in many novels. (Eight pages of b&w photographs, map- -not seen) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Kurtz, an advice columnist for Cosmopolitan magazine and the author of several novels, left New York's Port Authority bus terminal one fall day and returned three months, ten days, and four hours later. In between, she traveled to Los Angeles on big Americruisers, taking a northern route there and a southern route back. Kurtz describes her adventures in serviceable prose, but she emphasizes the people she meets rather than the ground she covers. Her companions are an eccentric bunch, including a Russian grandmother traveling alone and a morose American Indian. This book will interest readers as intrigued by fellow travelers as they are by scenery; recommended for general collections.
- Caroline Mitchell, Washington, D.C.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.