Book Review: One for the Road

A Book You Can Buy From Me

Book Title: One for the Road

Author: Tony Horwitz

Author's web page: http://www.tonyhorwitz.com/

Date: 1987

Publisher: Vintage / Random House

Length: 210 pages

ISBN: 006312095X

Quote: "The outback I'd glimpsed from the airplane window was foreign enough, but it seemed impossibly remote from urban Australia...I wanted to see it firsthand."

So Horwitz decided to hitchhike across the continent....which is what I don't like about this book, although you have to keep the historical context in mind. Either walking, driving, or sharing someone else's vehicle would have been better than hitchhiking.

Otherwise, One for the Road is a great read. Up close and personal and very, very funny, it documents a time and places that have changed enough to justify the publisher in reprinting a "revised edition." Which makes this original edition history. With miners, cowboys, fishing boats, Aborigines, desert, lots of drinking and gambling and rough language, and plenty of adventures, including a car crash Horwitz was jolly lucky to survive.

Highlights include a mock regatta in which teenagers handicapped with strapped-on "bottomless boats" (complete with sails) sprint along a dry streambed, an ominous pub encounter with pearl dealers some of whom also traffic in drugs, and a seasickness resistance contest. Horwitz is, at this time, a young man, and Australia is often described as a country for young men. Still, although it's not a coming-of-age story, there's a sort of progression from pub crawls, through the accident, toward a strangely moving Passover Seder, celebrating the existence of religious minorities in a country that's not really known for tolerance.

In one of those quirks of the publishing industry, there's a second paperback edition that's dirt cheap on Amazon, but the first paperback edition is a collector's item, with prices ranging from $10 to $119 plus shipping. I say bosh. What you can physically buy here in Gate City is the first edition, and Oliver's humans will probably accept $5 or less. If you e-mail salolianigodagewi@yahoo.com $5 for a clean copy plus $5 for shipping, given that the revised edition is also cheap, we'll send you the revised edition, and Horwitz or a charity of his choice will get $1. If you insist on paying $10 or more for the first edition, Horwitz or the charity will get $1.50 or more.

Who's most likely to enjoy One for the Road? People who like adventure stories; people who liked "westerns" when they were younger, but now think that if they're going to buy a book the story ought to be true; people who've always been too serious and/or feminine to get into "westerns," but do enjoy a good travel story. Children over age ten might enjoy it if they're good readers, and are mature enough to look up unfamiliar words like "bitumen" rather than fixating on offensive words like the definition of "dingo's breakfast" on page 94.

I'll say this, though, by way of warning to any teenagers who may read this book, because teenagers are 90% guaranteed to like the book, and may need to be warned about the hitchhiking thing. I am a cool Green baby-boomer type who walks whenever possible, shares the car freely when I have to drive, and usually appreciates being offered a lift when someone else is driving the same way. I do not like hitchhikers. That behavior is not cool any more. If you want to get from point A to point B without driving, you start walking. You walk until someone who sees you moving briskly along realizes that you're showing more energy than a typical carjacker, which takes on average about 45 minutes in my part of the world. If I happen to be driving I will practically always stop for anyone who's walking, because I feel that burning gas is a little more justifiable if the car is fully packed...but I don't stop for people who are standing, or worse still sitting, beside the road unless a wrecked car, a baby, or some other evidence of extraordinary desperation is visible.

Do not stand still beside a paved road, Young Readers. Do not sit down. Do not hold out your thumb while you walk. Too many hitchhikers are thieving, woman-harassing, drug-running slacker bums, these days. Too many drivers hate hitchhikers. I just step on the gas pedal, if driving, or walk around them nonverbally screaming "I don't know and would never want to know this person!!!," if walking. Some people express their opinion of hitchhikers in nastier ways.

[Update: Tony Horwitz e-mailed this comment:

Thanks for the kind words, and don't disagree about hitchhikers today but am nostalgic for the old days when it was more accepted. A cheap (and energy efficient) way to travel that is guaranteed to bring adventure. All the best, Tony]