A Fair Trade Book
Title: Road Scholar
Author: Andrei Codrescu
Date: 1993
Publisher: Hyperion
ISBN: 1-56282-878-9
Length: 193 pages
Illustrations: black and white photos by David Graham
Quote: “Roger Weisberg…a TV producer…was wondering if I
would beinterested in making a movie about driving through Florida…I told
him…we should…go way beyond Florida’s roadside attractions. We should make a
movie about America.”
So they did. Road
Scholar was the book to go with the movie, in which formerly car-free
Codrescu got a driver’s license and drove across the United States with a video
crew. Photos are thus an important part of the book, although it contains more
pages of text than of pictures.
It’s a very funny book, and also a thoughtful, sometimes
sad, sometimes worried book. Weisberg was, after all, attracted to NPR
broadcasts by and about a surrealist poet writing in English, which was not his
native language, to comic effect. But not the “me no speak English” kind of comedy;
for those who don’t remember, the short funny essays (collected in other books,
like A Craving for Swan
) were teacherly reflections
on the quirks of English language and literature, most specifically on the
international (and multilingual) surrealist poetry of the twentieth century,
with insights from other genres of art and literature around the world.
Surrealism implied goofiness, sometimes inspired by high spirits (and/or booze
and drugs), sometimes by nightmares, grief, bad trips, and concern about the
fate of humankind. Road Scholar is
mostly real, but some episodes, like the send-off party with the image of Jayne
Mansfield’s head wired to complain of a “splitting headache” before splitting
apart, qualify as surreal…and that’s the way in which Road Scholar is funny. It’s humor for educated adults, or at least
college students; it’s meant to promote serious thought as well as laughter.
You’ll laugh. You’ll feel bemused by people, sorry for people; you’ll wonder
what people are doing now.
) were teacherly reflections
on the quirks of English language and literature, most specifically on the
international (and multilingual) surrealist poetry of the twentieth century,
with insights from other genres of art and literature around the world.
Surrealism implied goofiness, sometimes inspired by high spirits (and/or booze
and drugs), sometimes by nightmares, grief, bad trips, and concern about the
fate of humankind. Road Scholar is
mostly real, but some episodes, like the send-off party with the image of Jayne
Mansfield’s head wired to complain of a “splitting headache” before splitting
apart, qualify as surreal…and that’s the way in which Road Scholar is funny. It’s humor for educated adults, or at least
college students; it’s meant to promote serious thought as well as laughter.
You’ll laugh. You’ll feel bemused by people, sorry for people; you’ll wonder
what people are doing now.
Highlights of the trip include:
* A consideration of immigration, the U.S. government, and
immigrants legal and illegal, in New York City.
* A visit to Allen Ginsberg
, and visits to the graves of
earlier writers buried in New York state.
, and visits to the graves of
earlier writers buried in New York state.
* Tours of the Bruderhof and Oneida “intentional
communities” in upstate New York. (Oneida is also where Sarah Vowell
reported
Charles Guiteau being nicknamed “Gitout.”)
reported
Charles Guiteau being nicknamed “Gitout.”)
* A photo of a wall on which is painted “Say nice things
about Detroit.” Codrescu tries; he reminisces about having lived there, briefly,
and dedicates a long poem to the city. We also meet eccentric artists and some
nice working people in Michigan.
* A brief, vegetarian consideration of Chicago, “Meat Packer
to the World” and home of the first McDonald’s restaurant. Another artist, and
a Christian roller-skating group.
* A real, explicit conversation with cattle breeders.
* Shooting lessons with a topless female teacher near Las
Vegas.
* Pueblo people, ancient caves, Sikhs, hippies, and faith
healers in and around Taos and Santa Fe.
* Biosphere 2, an experiment in which people lived in a giant
geodesic dome.
* Geriatric bikers and rockers in Sun City, Arizona.
* Gambling and drive-through weddings in Las Vegas.
* An interview with Lawrence Ferlinghetti
in San Francisco.
More immigrants; more thoughts on the experience of legal immigration.
in San Francisco.
More immigrants; more thoughts on the experience of legal immigration.
If that sounds like a road trip you’d enjoy taking, or hearing
the stories about, or seeing the photos from, you’ll enjoy Road Scholar. This web site also gets a lot of correspondence from
people who care passionately about some side of some immigration-related issue,
and according to Google it attracts a huge amount of readership in countries
from which we suspect people may want to emigrate; those readers should also read Road
Scholar.
Although some people selling this book on Amazon are already asking for collector prices, I'll stick my neck out and offer it under the usual Fair Trade Books terms: $5 per book, $5 per copy, for a total of $10 out of which we send $1 to Codrescu or a charity of his choice, and although this one is slightly oversized you can probably fit one or two more books into the package.
Although some people selling this book on Amazon are already asking for collector prices, I'll stick my neck out and offer it under the usual Fair Trade Books terms: $5 per book, $5 per copy, for a total of $10 out of which we send $1 to Codrescu or a charity of his choice, and although this one is slightly oversized you can probably fit one or two more books into the package.
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