Synopsis
Only Andrei Codrescu would have the nerve to undertake an On the Road for the 1990s.
Andrei Codrescu, the inimitable National Public Radio commentator and poet, decided to travel the United States of America in search of its wonderful excesses and ironies. He bought a cherry red '68 Cadillac convertible and drove from sultry New Orleans to old haunts in New York's East Village; from utopian communities in upstate New York to the urban ruins of Detroit; from the thriving commercial kingdom of Chicago to the New Age and Native American patchworks of New Mexico; from the gaudy wonderland of Las Vegas to the spiritual center of San Francisco. Along the way he chats with Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti; with an Illinois woman whose 1964 Pontiac sparks a heated First Amendment debate; with an urban artist whose work is regularly destroyed by Detroit maintenance workers; with a shooting instructor who gives lessons either clothed or (for a higher fee) unclothed; and with a punk band composed of citizens of the Sun City, Arizona, retirement community. Codrescu visits Ellis Island, Walt Whitman's grave, the McDonald's museum in Chicago (a perfectly preserved original 1955 vintage McDonald's restaurant), the National Atomic Museum at Kirtland Air Force Base, and a sausage factory in Detroit, and he gets rebirthed and undergoes crystal therapy in New Mexico. A camera crew followed, and the movie Road Scholar was created simultaneously with the book.
Codrescu's witty and poignant perceptions are always informed by recollections of his unusual upbringing in Stalinist Romania and his experiences of the changes in America from the revolutionary 1960s to the 1990s. Road Scholar is illustrated throughout with photographs of Andrei's odyssey by the acclaimed photographer David Graham, who translates the sometimes absurd realities of contemporary American culture into unforgettably iconic works of art. Funny, moving, and challenging, Road Scholar provides an entirely new perspective on the vast and varied contemporary American experience.
Reviews
Approached by a TV producer to make a documentary about a drive across the U.S., Codrescu, Rumanian-born poet and commentator on National Public Radio's All Things Considered , declined. He didn't drive. But after pondering the tradition of American rediscovery by such notables as Walt Whitman, Henry Miller and Jack Kerouac, he took driving lessons and possession of a vintage (1968) red Cadillac convertible and set out to explore an America not on most maps. For him that country stretches from the Nuyorican Cafe on Manhattan's lower East Side, along the "psychic highway" through the land of the Shakers, Mormons and Oneidists, to the Polish enclave of Hamtramck in the heart of Detroit, to the "holy dirt" of Chimayo, N.M. not far from the community of Sikhs near Albuquerque, through the drive-in wedding chapels of Las Vegas to the San Francisco of poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Vietnamese immigrants. With photos by Graham ( Only in America ), Codrescu portrays with style and affection a hilariously contradictory, paradoxically spiritual and materialistic country.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Romanian-born poet, professor (English/LSU), and NPR commentator Codrescu (The Hole in the Flag, 1991, etc.) drives from East Coast to West, nosing into the sort of lovably wacky Americana that's made the comparable dispatches of fellow wheelman/writer Charles Kuralt so popular. One big difference between Codrescu and Kuralt, though, is that Kuralt responds to American eccentricity with levelheaded wisdom and humor, while Codrescu appears every bit as odd as his subjects. The first step in his odyssey, for instance, is learning how to drive: The 40-ish author never has mastered the skill--and not for want of trying: ``I tried to learn...The third time...I drove right into [a] stream. I had gotten so confident I forgot to steer.'' Nevertheless, Codrescu tries again, taking driver's ed in his adopted hometown of New Orleans--and this time he succeeds, and decides to buy a Cadillac. But the new models look like ``cold mashed potatoes,'' so he purchases a 1968 red Caddie convertible. With camera crew in tow (his trip is to be filmed for theatrical release), he heads to N.Y.C., where he receives Allen Ginsberg's ``blessing'' and begins his journey west. Along his erratic way, he pays homage at Walt Whitman's grave; explores a crime-ravaged Detroit and a still-vital Chicago, where he visits a pig- slaughterhouse; races down to Arizona and up to Las Vegas (``the Kingdom of If''); and winds up in San Francisco. Throughout, he takes special interest in sociospiritual phenomena (religious communes; a Sikh village in New Mexico; rebirthing and past-life regression, both of which he undertakes with zest, etc.), emphasizing that ``paradoxically, the most materialistic country in the world is also the most spiritual.'' Witty, smart, and unpredictable. But America is more than its fringe, and Codrescu, with his yen for the bohemian and the bizarre, never quite uncovers the land's expansive, mainstream heart. (Seventy-four b&w photographs--some seen) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
When a New York TV producer suggested to Codrescu that he travel across America as part of a PBS special, he accepted the challenge. Shortly thereafter, Codrescu, a Romanian American poet and author of The Hole in the Flag ( LJ 6/15/91; "Best Books of 1991," LJ 1/92), set out in a 1968 Cadillac. First, he had to learn how to drive--something he had never wanted to do. Because Codrescu is a commentator on National Public Radio's All Things Considered , his book not surprisingly follows the radio format. In a series of often humorous vignettes, Codrescu--a member of the Sixties generation--brings a new look to what he saw as a fresh young immigrant from Romania. One of the more interesting chapters is his depiction of Santa Fe and the New Age characters who now inhabit that city of harmonic convergences. The few photographs seen add another dimension to this whimsical book. For all collections.
- George M. Jenks, Bucknell Univ., Lewisburg, Pa.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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