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The Book Review
It's Still Summer. Let's Talk Road Trip Books.
00:31:21
Summer is the season for road trips, and also for road trip stories. Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” may be the most famous example in American literature — but there are so many other great ones. This week the Book Review’s critics Dwight Garner, Alexandra Jacobs and Jennifer Szalai chat with host Gilbert Cruz about some of their favorites.
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- [00:01]
Dwight Garner
The New York Times app has all.
- [00:02]
Jennifer Versalai
This stuff that you may not have seen.
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Dwight Garner
The way the tabs are at the top with all of the different sections, I can immediately navigate to something that matches what I'm feeling.
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Alexandra Jacobs
I go to games always doing the.
- [00:13]
Gilbert Cruz
Mini, doing the wordle.
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Dwight Garner
I loved how much content it exposed me to things that I never would have thought to turn to a news app for.
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Gilbert Cruz
This app is essential.
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Unknown
The New York Times app.
- [00:24]
Jennifer Versalai
All of the Times all in one place.
- [00:27]
Unknown
Download it now@nytimes.com app.
- [00:38]
Gilbert Cruz
I'm Gilbert Cruz, editor of the New York Times Book Review and this is the Book Review podcast. It is peak days of summer here. It's great for those of you who love the heat. It's great for those of you who love the feel of sun on your skin, the grit, the of sand between your toes, the buzz of powerboats on the lake. However, it's also great for those of us who love to take a road trip. I have Dwight Garner, Alexandra Jacobs and Jen Zlai, staff critics for the Book Review, here today with me to talk about their latest project looking at books across multiple decades. This one focused on the great road trip books since Jack Kerouac's on the Road. As they write in their intro, summer is the season for road trips, for tapping into that broad and baked in American narrative of adventure and individualism. Dwight Garner, welcome back.
- [01:30]
Dwight Garner
Hey Gilbert, glad to be here.
- [01:31]
Gilbert Cruz
Alexandra, hello once again.
- [01:34]
Alexandra Jacobs
Hi Gilbert.
- [01:35]
Gilbert Cruz
Jen, it's always a pleasure.
- [01:36]
Jennifer Versalai
Thank you, Gilbert.
- [01:38]
Gilbert Cruz
Let us start with briefly on the Road. Let's get out of the way. This is a book I read once in college. Never again though. When I was an IDIOT in my 20s, I thought the quote, the only people for me are the mad ones, et cetera, et cetera. I thought that was the most romantic and best quote ever. I didn't know anything about life. Dwight tell me about on the Road.
- [01:58]
Dwight Garner
Oh, Gilbert, I'm such an old cliche. The Gen X. Dwight Garner this book changed my life and it changed my life to the extent that a It sent me out there into the world myself, hitchhiking, traveling, trying to find a different place. I was a suburban kid who wanted it out and this book helped get me out. But it also turned me into a reader in a way. A because I loved it. B because it sent me in search of all all these beat writers who then sent me in search of all these 60s characters, the Jim Carrolls and the Velvet Underground and this whole world that this book cracked open for me. I'm so glad I Found it when I did.
- [02:28]
Gilbert Cruz
Jen. Not a fan.
- [02:30]
Jennifer Versalai
I have to say, Dwight, when hearing you talk about it now, I'm like, oh, I should try again to read it. I've never actually finished it. I feel like it's one of those experiences for me that I just felt pretty early on in the book that I into the voice. The sort of rambling quality of it turned me off. I don't know again, to hear Dwight talk about it that way. Okay, maybe I'll try again.
- [02:54]
Gilbert Cruz
That's a sign of a good critic. Alexandra.
- [02:57]
Alexandra Jacobs
I loved on the Road as a window to the beats and just learning about the beat world and what that was. And now when I look at it, I'm completely. I cannot believe that most of the guys in the book are in their 20s. Cause I think of adventuresome and looseness of their travel as opposed to Gen Z and their tiktoking and their geolocation and all that. So I'm probably somewhere in between these two.
- [03:20]
Gilbert Cruz
Let's talk a little bit about what makes a good road trip book. Each of you writes about several books on this list. There are 18 on the list. What is it about the novelistic form maybe that is able to capture the movement? Dwight, the energy, the freedom of an ideal road trip?
- [03:40]
Dwight Garner
It's such a flexible form. Gilbert. You can do anything with the road trip idea. And so many novels, even that aren't road trip novels contain scenes where one or two of the major characters flees the house and goes away for a few days just to escape what's there, often fleeing in search of something else. And it's as we've said in the introduction and we've all know this is part of the quintessential American narrative. The westward expansion, Manifest Destiny, moving west. And that's why I think most, most great road trip novels are from east to west. Not all, as we've made clear in our selection. Also, it's fun. We tend to like, I tend to like anyway characters who are around other characters being where the people are in my narratives. But it's great when someone of voice who has a lot going for it escapes and goes up by themselves and gives you a chance to meet this character alone in their thoughts while rushing through the American landscape.
- [04:25]
Alexandra Jacobs
The car is also just a great place for conversation. You're trapped. So you know there's absolutely. You gotta have dialogue. If there are multiple people in the car, you've got. You have a stage set for dialogue. It's just such a plot mechanism because you're gonna encounter Unexpected things along the way and unexpected people.
- [04:45]
Gilbert Cruz
What did you discover, Jen, in writing about some of the books that you wrote about here?
- [04:49]
Jennifer Versalai
One of the things that I was also interested in were the road trip books that defy the convention of the road trip books or turn it on its head. And so there was a book that I picked, Sing Unburied Sing by Jesmyn Ward, which is really road trip novel turned into a ghost story. And another book by Valeria Luiselli, the Lost Children Archive, which takes these notions of freedom and escape and turns it into a tale of marriage, family and looking for missing children. You asked the question earlier, Gilbert, about what makes a good road trip novel. I guess maybe the most general answer I can say is, for me anyways, is what makes a good novel in general. And then within that, does it have the road trip as a spine in the book? That was the thing that was on my mind when I was reading these novels, Dwight.
- [05:50]
Gilbert Cruz
Jen's mention of road trip novel as a ghost storied made me think of one of the more recent entries in this project, a book that you wrote about by Lori Moore.
- [05:59]
Dwight Garner
Yeah, it's called I Am Homeless if this Is Not My Home. And anyone out there who's read much, Lori Moore knows that she's just a terrific writer, so fresh in all of her imagery, so funny, so fundamentally humane. And this novel is about a road trip with a man and his girlfriend who is dead. She is undead and they have undead sex, which is pretty grisly and yet almost winning in a way, in a comic way. And it's an unusual book and yet Lori Moore is an unusual, the kind of writer who can pull this kind of thing off.
- [06:30]
Gilbert Cruz
Dwight, what's the best road trip you've ever taken?
- [06:33]
Dwight Garner
Oh, Gilbert. God, of course, with my wife we went south.
- [06:36]
Gilbert Cruz
She's not going to listen to this. That's fine, you can say something else.
- [06:39]
Dwight Garner
I did go on. I did hitchhike. I took six months and hitchhiked from the bottom of Florida up to Indianapolis, then all over the American south and had a lot of crazy adventures along the way. And I look back very fondly on that time, crashing with friends and ending up in some dire spots sometimes. But I proposed marriage to my wife on a road trip through the American South. And this was back before Internet when you really could get lost. And we had big Rand McNally Road atlases in the car and we would go through. There was a book that foodies loved at the time. Jane and Michael Stern wrote this guidebooks called Road Food and they listed the best places to eat in every state. Funky places, homey places, inexpensive places, groovy places. And we would go through our Ram McNally maps and circle every town that had one of those restaurants in it. And so we would drive through the south, but always being pointed towards one of those circles. And I proposed over fried chicken. And that's my great road trip story.
- [07:28]
Gilbert Cruz
What was the fried chicken joint?
- [07:30]
Dwight Garner
It was in a hotel in Talassie, Alabama, and it is now defunct. Alas, I believe it was called the Hotel Talassi. T A L L A S S E E I'm going to screw it up.
- [07:39]
Gilbert Cruz
Okay.
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Dwight Garner
But that's where it all went down.
- [07:41]
Gilbert Cruz
You don't go back to Talassi every couple of years.
- [07:43]
Dwight Garner
Well, we would, but it's not there anymore. Yeah, so it's a little sad.
- [07:46]
Gilbert Cruz
That's a wonderful story. It's terrific fried chicken, Alexandra.
- [07:50]
Alexandra Jacobs
The best road trip I ever took. One of my first jobs was working for a travel guide called let's Go. And I thought I was going to be assigned to research and write about my hometown of New York. And the let's Go editors decided it would be fun to send me to Los Angeles, where I think I'd only been once. Technically, I did have a driver's license, but learning to drive in New York is not the same as the eight lane freeways of la. So I took a friend from college and we drove around Los Angeles. We drove all the way to the Mexican border. We got in a lot of scrapes and I learned how to drive. And I saw this other side of America and we made it all the way to Tucson. At one point, it was actually like visiting another planet. That's how it felt. We got in a lot of trouble.
- [08:36]
Gilbert Cruz
What was one scrape?
- [08:38]
Alexandra Jacobs
There was. Wow. I don't know if I want. I should.
- [08:42]
Dwight Garner
You can do it.
- [08:43]
Alexandra Jacobs
I mean, let's just say that there was a shoplifting incident. There was an angry proprietor on a porch with a gun. There was a squeal of tires. There was a youthful. Wow. It was. Perhaps Thelma and Louise had recently been released.
- [08:59]
Gilbert Cruz
You New Yorker, you. That must have been so overwhelming.
- [09:02]
Alexandra Jacobs
It was terrifying.
- [09:03]
Gilbert Cruz
Now you're an old pro, Jen.
- [09:06]
Jennifer Versalai
I didn't grow up with a car, so my road tripping has mainly happened as a grownup and with my family. And we took a trip from Las Vegas through to Death Valley, then down to the historic Route 66, which was just incredible. I felt like I was really immersed. Immersed in Americana and Death Valley. You know, I Have to say, like, a desert for me is really special. I grew up in Toronto, Canada, and so my notion of a desert growing up was based on basically Roadrunner cartoons. So I thought it would be like a cactus and tumbleweed and sand dunes. And Death Valley does have some of that, but it also has incredible canyons, it has salt flats, it has a few mountains. It was really just sublime. So I highly recommend it. How about you, Gilbert? What about your favorite road trip?
- [10:06]
Gilbert Cruz
I grew up in New York, so I also did not learn how to drive until I was in my early 20s. And I have several that I could talk about. Dwight, I'm going to talk about one that I think you would appreciate. For my 40th birthday, my best friend and I, we took a trip from New York to New Orleans, passing through Nashville and Oxford, Mississippi. And we went to Oxford for food, we went to Oxford for drinks. And we also went to Oxford to go to one of the great bookstores, Square Books, which is actually four bookstores on this courthouse square in Oxford, Mississippi. But we went through Nashville, which had amazing food and music, and we went to New Orleans, which had amazing food and music and cocktails, and it was just wonderful. And that whole time, my good friend Heath, who's a wonderful professor, doesn't know that much about pop culture. Very comfortable calling him out here. So I made like an 18 hour playlist. I was like, okay, these are Bob Dylan's songs, you should know. These are Bruce Stringstein's songs, you should know. These are Outkast songs, you should know. And we just went through the whole thing.
- [11:07]
Dwight Garner
That's great. That's awesome. Don't you ever feel I fight sometimes being a music bully, Meaning that I love my music so much that I will be the DJ on the trip unless someone is there to fight back who has annoying force.
- [11:18]
Gilbert Cruz
It is annoying. I feel the same way. I feel that it is annoying. I am trying to own my annoying. Do you? You know you are.
- [11:24]
Alexandra Jacobs
It's driver's choice. That's the rule. Driver gets to choose. You actually reminded me of road trip I took more recently with my older child from Charleston to Savannah, because it also ended in a bookstore, that beautiful bookstore with a cat in Savannah whose name I'm forgetting. My child's musical taste runs more toward the heavy metal. My driving was already being criticized.
- [11:46]
Gilbert Cruz
Really?
- [11:47]
Alexandra Jacobs
We were in a rented. It was a Mustang. It was very low to the road. It's not the sort of car I'm accustomed to. But anyway, it was beautiful. And again, that feeling of those trees and the different landscape. And it's really just the most marvelous thing about America that you can just see so many different kinds of terrain.
- [12:04]
Gilbert Cruz
Dwight I want to turn to one of the books that you wrote about as part of this project, which is Tramps Like Us. This is a 2001 book by the author Joe Westmoreland.
- [12:14]
Dwight Garner
Gilbert. Road Trip novels for me at any rate are largely young persons novels. They're books that at least I read when I was in my teens and early twenties. They made me want to get out of town and I still feel like that's a big part of what the genre means for me. And this is that kind of novel. It's called Tramps Like Us. Joe Westmoreland it was published in 2001. It's quasi autobiographical. It describes his trips when he was in his teens and early 20s, from the heartland to New York City, then down to New Orleans, then out to San Francisco and in search, like Kerouac was, of kicks and friends and sex and often drugs. And Joe Westmoreland at the time was a good looking young midwestern man and he found all these things. He found friends, he found lovers, he found great times, he found dark times. What's good great about this book is it's newly republished this summer. It was published by a tiny press, so first of all no one would have heard about it, almost surely anyway. But it so happens that its book launch party was the same week as 911 and so no one noticed it. It just fell away. Even for the writer, it fell away and in the time since it's become kind of a cult classic. And what I love about it is that it's very hard for a writer who is older to recapture the voice of of a 16 year old and then a 20 year old and then a 23 year old. And at every moment in this book you feel like you're reading a character who is exactly that age in this Holden Caulfield kind of way. But he's not much like Holden Caulfield, except for his dislike of phonies. You just feel like you're experiencing what it was like to be these ages. And it's wonderful.
- [13:53]
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- [15:16]
Gilbert Cruz
Welcome back. This is the Book Review Podcast. I'm Gilbert Cruz. I'm here with Dwight and Jen and Alexandra, and we're talking about road trips and road trip books. We have fiction books on here. We have nonfiction books on here. Jen, you wrote about a nonfiction book, a book called Driving Mr. Albert, which came out in the year 2000. It's by the magazine writer and author Michael Paternitti.
- [15:38]
Jennifer Versalai
It was really interesting to reread it because it felt like a bit of a capsule of the late 90s. So the premise is that Paternidi had heard that the pathologist who performed the autopsy on Albert Einstein's brain when Einstein died in 55. I think that this pathologist actually ended up taking the brain and keeping it and also happened to be at one point a neighbor of William Burroughs. So in any case, he decides that he's going to look for this guy and he finds him. And this guy says that he wants to take a trip to Berkeley to meet the granddaughter of Einstein, and he wants to bring the brain, which has been divided among a number of Tupperware containers.
- [16:26]
Alexandra Jacobs
And so they didn't have yeti then.
- [16:28]
Jennifer Versalai
Exactly. No thermos. So it's pickled in formaldehyde. So they drive cross country and Harvey is this really strange, interesting figure. He's in his 80s, he is a Quaker. He's got that aw shucks demeanor. But at the same time, Patterniti is well aware that he must be a pretty cunning person to have come into possession of this brain and has kept it for all these decades. Although he has also given away pieces of it to people, apparently. So there's all this backstory, and they drive cross country. It's about their interactions the whole time. Paterniti really wants to actually hold on to the Tupperware with the brain, but he also feels like he can't touch it necessarily in the presence of this pathologist. The whole thing is just a snapshot of a different time, the late 90s. This is the era of cassette tapes and just a different point in American history. And it also gives Paternini a chance to reflect on who Einstein was, his theory of relativity, how his life and how he fled to the United. United States, fleeing from war torn Europe. It's really just such a charming book, and I was glad to revisit it all these years later.
- [17:50]
Gilbert Cruz
That sounds great. Sounds a little wacky.
- [17:52]
Jennifer Versalai
It is. You know, I will say Patterniti is, you know, a really great magazine writer and really knows how to tell a yarn. And so it's. It's a really enjoyable book. And there are all these big themes in it and deep thoughts in it, but he weaves it in such a way that it goes down easy. I appreciated that.
- [18:11]
Dwight Garner
He's a great writer. I would never refer to Michael Paternini, whom I revere, as a hack writer, but it is. It is a move one can do to go on a road trip with something. If you. What's a weird relic? Napoleon's penis. Okay, that's not a good book. But if I take Napoleon's penis on a road trip, right.
- [18:25]
Jennifer Versalai
All of a sudden you've got this.
- [18:26]
Dwight Garner
All of a sudden you can just say some things. And anyway, it's a great way for a writer to work materially. A lot of great nonfiction books are road trips of a way of a sort.
- [18:35]
Gilbert Cruz
Hoover's Pinky, Pinky Bone. Alexandra, you also wrote about another nonfiction book, a book about a burlesque entertainer.
- [18:46]
Alexandra Jacobs
Yes, I was amazed that they let me sneak Gypsy onto this list, because most people, of course, think of Gypsy as the musical, the latest iteration of which is sadly closing on Broadway in a couple of weeks with Audra McDonald. Go and see it if you can. But Gypsy is the source material for what many people say is the greatest musical in American history. And I'm pleased that it holds up. It's certainly a period piece. Mama Rose, as we refer to her, is in charge of this ragtag troupe of performers, including her two daughters, Louise and Dainty June. Baby June, who becomes Dainty June. And they go through all these scrapes and she's completely determined to make a success of them. And so they troupe. T R O U P e around. There's trooping, you know, and a lot of it is in train. But at a certain point in the book they acquire a student. It's always a Studebaker in these. Why is it always a Studebaker in these mid century narratives? But anyway, and it's just. It's an amazing document of. It's probably not entirely nonfiction, but it certainly her the resourcefulness of this famous stage mother rings very true. There's a moment in this book when wolves are actually at the door of the Studebaker. It's a little heavy handed, but it's completely charming and worth a reread.
- [20:09]
Gilbert Cruz
How many times have you seen the musical Gypsy?
- [20:12]
Alexandra Jacobs
I've seen probably about five different versions of Gypsy. Maybe half a dozen if you count the movie.
- [20:17]
Gilbert Cruz
Dwight Best road trip snack?
- [20:19]
Dwight Garner
Best road trip snack. Oh God. I just read. I just reviewed a book this week in which the guy eats Slim Jims which he's cooked on his mail truck. He's a US postman. So I have Slim Jims on my mind even though I loathe Slim Jims. Sorry. Beef jerky's okay. Road trip snacks. I would go with. What's that yummy popcorn you buy in the bag?
- [20:37]
Alexandra Jacobs
I was just gonna say that's the worst one. The worst one. The powder. It's disgusting.
- [20:42]
Dwight Garner
Delicious.
- [20:43]
Alexandra Jacobs
It's all over the end.
- [20:44]
Gilbert Cruz
All over the wheel.
- [20:45]
Dwight Garner
I always look like that. I always look covered with gross stuff.
- [20:47]
Gilbert Cruz
Listeners, you should see him now. Alexandra, your favorite road trip snack.
- [20:54]
Alexandra Jacobs
Well, my favorite road trip snack is a date shake. A date shake. You've never had a date shake?
- [21:00]
Dwight Garner
A what?
- [21:00]
Alexandra Jacobs
A date shake. Healthy. If a rest stop offers a date shake, then you know you're okay.
- [21:04]
Gilbert Cruz
No one in this room knows what it is. You have to tell us what it.
- [21:07]
Alexandra Jacobs
A milkshake with dates. Sweetened by dates.
- [21:10]
Dwight Garner
So it's not a proper community.
- [21:11]
Alexandra Jacobs
This is not a.
- [21:12]
Gilbert Cruz
This is very LA like bougie road trip look.
- [21:16]
Alexandra Jacobs
I think a road trip. The best road trip snack. I think the best road trip snack is a regional. I think it's worth if you can seek out the regional cuisine. That's the way to go because otherwise you're going to feel depressed or I'm going to.
- [21:26]
Jennifer Versalai
Is this California?
- [21:28]
Alexandra Jacobs
That. That would be. Yeah, the California, the south, the desert. I'm surprised. Las Vegas. I have an account desert hot springs that have amazing de chi. But I think you gotta get like if you're in Cincinnati. You have to get that spaghetti they do with the meatballs. Or chili. Chili and spaghetti, Right.
- [21:44]
Gilbert Cruz
That's a great road trip snack.
- [21:45]
Alexandra Jacobs
Yeah, it's not, but you know what I mean. I think.
- [21:46]
Dwight Garner
I don't know that my smart food makes.
- [21:48]
Alexandra Jacobs
Maybe I don't believe in eating in the car. Maybe I. After having two children.
- [21:51]
Gilbert Cruz
That's a very valid taste.
- [21:52]
Alexandra Jacobs
After two children, I don't think you should eat in the car. It makes the car gross.
- [21:56]
Dwight Garner
All right.
- [21:56]
Gilbert Cruz
I love it. I love it. This is what I was looking for.
- [21:59]
Alexandra Jacobs
A drive in. That's the best road trip snack.
- [22:01]
Dwight Garner
What are you eating, Gilbert, on your road trip?
- [22:03]
Gilbert Cruz
The stinkiest potato chips you could find. Like Maui onion, like something like that.
- [22:07]
Jennifer Versalai
Why stinky?
- [22:08]
Gilbert Cruz
Because to me, that indicates that they are incredibly flavorful. And so I love those. Sorry. To the people I'm riding with. And then anything. Again, to Alexandra's point, that's like overly regional. I love potato chips. Potato chips are like 33% of my diet on any given day. And so if I can drive somewhere and see a bag that I've never seen before because it's a Midwestern pack of chips or Southern pack of chips, I have to dip into them.
- [22:33]
Dwight Garner
I have to name one more thing. Twizzlers. Because you put them up in your visor and they dangle like flowers and you pick one out every 10 miles or so.
- [22:42]
Gilbert Cruz
What about what's yours?
- [22:43]
Jennifer Versalai
Oh, for me, I will say that. Pringles. For some reason, you know you can.
- [22:47]
Gilbert Cruz
Eat them with two fingers.
- [22:48]
Jennifer Versalai
Yeah, they're pretty neat. They come in a good container that's resealable, which I feel like is key if you have kids. And I would. I never encounter them anywhere other than at a rest stop, gas station. I know I see them in the grocery store, but I'm never tempted to buy them. It's just when I'm on a road trip, it seems like, okay, now we're on the road, we're gonna eat Pringles.
- [23:13]
Alexandra Jacobs
I think it's like flying and the normal rules don't apply.
- [23:16]
Jennifer Versalai
Exactly. Yeah.
- [23:17]
Gilbert Cruz
Dwight, you wrote about a book and an author that I have never read, which is my bad. Cause I've always wanted to read. True Grace, the Dog of the south by Charles Portis.
- [23:27]
Dwight Garner
Charles Portis. What a weirdo. Portis was a genius. Just a sort of master southern stylist with an off kilter sense of humor. And everything about his novels is odd and offbeat. I also love, by the way, he wrote a lot of travel writing and his nonfiction stuff is collected in a different book, which I recommend highly to listeners. But Dog of the south is just this crazy road trip novel. A woman runs away with her husband's best friend and his name is, I believe his name is Guy Dupree, which is exactly the kind of name that Portis would use. And the man goes chasing after them and this crazy road trip ensues down into Mexico and there's a van named the Dog of the south that has a part in the. In the book. And someone said about Charles Portis, I think it might have been Roy Blunt Jr. Said that Portis is so gifted a writer that he could have had the kind of career that Cormac McCarthy had if he had wanted to go that way. But he didn't want to tamp down his own sense of humor. He was having too much fun as a writer. And it comes across in this book, like in all of his books.
- [24:21]
Gilbert Cruz
Jen, I was delighted to see that the last book on this list was an unexpected one, mostly because the road trip that occurs in the book is like a 28 minute road trip or something like that. We talked a lot about on this podcast about this book last year. Was it only last year that it came out? Why is All Fours by Miranda July here?
- [24:40]
Jennifer Versalai
I mean, it just, you know, it's so funny. Yeah. I was thinking of it earlier as the reductio adcertum of a road trip. It punctuates the list, I think, in a way where you have this woman deciding that she's gonna drive from California to New York City and then she gets about 30 minutes away from her home and she's, you know what? I'm just gonna stop here and stay at this hotel for a couple of weeks and have this sexual odyssey and redecorate the room, you know, to a tune of thousands of dollars and everything that when I describe it that way, it sounds like exactly the kind of book that I would hate. But I ended up really enjoying it. And yeah, it's a different kind of journey.
- [25:24]
Gilbert Cruz
Yeah. Yeah, it sure is. Alexandra Jacobs. Tell me about Hartz Hartz, who wrote Hartz? Who is she?
- [25:33]
Alexandra Jacobs
Hilma Wolitzer is a wonderful writer who happens to be the mother of the writer Meg Wolitzer. And this was actually a book that was recommended to me by my editor, Scott Heller. And I took it out of the library and I was enchanted with it. It's about a 26 year old widow and the brain in the jar is her late husband's ashes. And also in the car is his 13 year old daughter who's very understandably grumpy cause her father's died. You know, the idea is this daughter's gonna be rehomed by her brief stepmother, a 26 year old woman. Oh, and by the way, Linda, the widow is pregnant secretly. It's. I wouldn't say it's the most unpredictable book in terms of how these two. And I won't say young women, because we would never call a 13 year old a young woman today. And yet she's smoking pot, she's mature in ways that perhaps 13 year olds today might not be, but it's just tremendously warm. It's set in 1980s or thereabouts, maybe late 70s. It's this moment like post second wave feminism, but right on the cut, right when America's about to take a turn toward conservatism. There's a. There's an abortion clinic is visited and there's a demonstration there. And it's just, it's a book that takes on big themes in a very light, warm way. And I was charmed by it.
- [26:57]
Gilbert Cruz
If we were to take a step back from the books that the three of you put as part of this project, would any of you say that you've had a particularly memorable experience reading a book on a road trip? Like you associate a certain book with a certain trip that you have taken?
- [27:13]
Alexandra Jacobs
I get sick when I read in the car. I'm trying to think.
- [27:15]
Dwight Garner
I don't. I feel very lucky because my wife does too. I can read.
- [27:18]
Alexandra Jacobs
You can read in the car?
- [27:20]
Dwight Garner
Yeah, in the master's seat.
- [27:21]
Alexandra Jacobs
And forget the phone. I want to pass out when I'm on the phone in the car? Yeah.
- [27:25]
Gilbert Cruz
Think of how much more reading you could have. I'm the same.
- [27:27]
Alexandra Jacobs
You can read in the car. That's amazing. Well, so we haven't talked about audiobooks yet.
- [27:32]
Gilbert Cruz
Okay, audiobooks. Audiobooks are absolutely valid.
- [27:35]
Alexandra Jacobs
Carol Burnett reads her own memoir, or one of them. I think she's on more than one memoir. I mean, who doesn't want to Dr. With Carol Burnett talking to you? What's more comforting or grounding than that? Right?
- [27:48]
Jennifer Versalai
Yeah. So I have a very different one. I really love John Le Carre's memoir the Pigeon Tunnel, where he reads it. He has this beautiful British accent. And as a former spy, he's very good at doing all the voices of all the people that he writes about, all the different accents. And it's one of those books that I'm not sure it's better than the actual Printed version, but it's a different experience, which. So cozy.
- [28:18]
Alexandra Jacobs
I think I wanted to put that down, too. It will actually put me to sleep in a good way.
- [28:22]
Gilbert Cruz
So now while you're driving.
- [28:24]
Alexandra Jacobs
Yeah. Not when I'm driving. Nobody wants me driving, Gilbert.
- [28:27]
Gilbert Cruz
Now I want to take a road trip with you. All the things I've learned today. Dwight, have you had a particularly memorable reading experience while on a road trip?
- [28:36]
Dwight Garner
Sort of. When my wife and I were just married and broke and we were in Mexico driving around and bumming around, and I was reading one of my favorite novels. I didn't know that at the time, Jane Ann Phillips's Machine Dreams. And I was making so many orgasmic noises while reading it and reading bits aloud that Cree said, I want to start. And so we tore it in half, and she started with the front while I read the back. And now it's sort of a prized thing that we have. We've taped it back together and now.
- [28:58]
Alexandra Jacobs
This podcast is suddenly X rated.
- [29:02]
Gilbert Cruz
You guys are quite sensual. Readers rip the book in half while making orgasmic noises. Passionate readers. I just bought a copy of that book last summer. I haven't read it yet, but Machine Dreams get there.
- [29:14]
Alexandra Jacobs
Warn your wife.
- [29:16]
Gilbert Cruz
I read Lonesome Dove on a road trip through the Southwest. I had left my job at Entertainment Weekly at the behest of my boss, put it that way. And I was at loose ends. And I took a trip from Austin, Texas, to El Paso to Albuquerque to Santa Fe to the Grand Canyon to Las Vegas. And the whole time I was reading Lonesome Dove for the first time. Nice. Which is celebrating, I think it's 40th anniversary this year.
- [29:43]
Dwight Garner
I think it is. McMurtry has said that he sometimes in Texas, where you can see for miles, he can read and drive at the same time.
- [29:49]
Alexandra Jacobs
Oh, my Lord.
- [29:53]
Gilbert Cruz
I would maybe only trust McMurtry to do that. Is there anything that we were not able to get into this list that you wish we.
- [30:01]
Alexandra Jacobs
I am absolutely furious that Lolita is not on this list. I don't know how it dropped off. I know it's.
- [30:07]
Gilbert Cruz
I think it has to do with, like, years, Right?
- [30:09]
Alexandra Jacobs
No, that was.
- [30:10]
Dwight Garner
I thought it just didn't fit our.
- [30:11]
Alexandra Jacobs
No, maybe you're right.
- [30:12]
Gilbert Cruz
Lolita was 55.
- [30:14]
Alexandra Jacobs
Well, it was published in Paris in 55, but it was published here in 58, I think. Oh, it was. Anyway. Christopher Isherwood once called Lolita the best travel book ever written about America. And it was the first one I thought of. And to my delight, I saw that the Times some Years ago, published an article by Landon Y. Jones that's followed in Nabokov's tracks. There are many biographies of Nabokov, and there's one that's entirely about his time in America and spends a lot of time on the research trips he took with his wife, Vera, because, of course, he was a butterfly enthusiast.
- [30:50]
Gilbert Cruz
So you are furious.
- [30:51]
Alexandra Jacobs
I'm furious.
- [30:51]
Gilbert Cruz
You're not only disappointed, you're furious.
- [30:53]
Alexandra Jacobs
I'm disappointed. I'm furious. I would have written the greatest blurb.
- [30:56]
Gilbert Cruz
Was not to be okay, missed opportunities.
- [30:59]
Alexandra Jacobs
But instead I would. Yeah, I'd refer readers to this great Landon Jones article that ran in the Travel section in 2016.
- [31:06]
Gilbert Cruz
Excellent, Dwight.
- [31:08]
Dwight Garner
It's before the time of this project, but I miss not talking about the Grapes of Wrath. I adore that book. A and B, you know, the things that stick with you about novels are never the things you think should stick with you. But scenes from that book, Tom Joad hitchhiking, getting out of prison, the way it starts, and that truck driver who swerves to hit a turtle not to avoid it while on the road, and little things like that have just stuck with me. And I think that's an undervalued novel to this day.
- [31:30]
Gilbert Cruz
Excellent recommendation, Jen. Is there something that you wish you had seen on here?
- [31:35]
Jennifer Versalai
So this was a book that fell. Also fell outside of the time frame of our project. And it's the Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith. And it's about the forbidden love between these two women. A shop girl who sees this very intriguing older woman come into the department store where she works, and they start up a relationship and then hit the road. And there's intrigue in it. There's blackmail, there's marital issues, there's all kinds of stuff. And I would have loved to have included it on the list.
- [32:08]
Alexandra Jacobs
And it was originally written under a pseudonym, Claire Morgan. Yeah, that's right. Which gives it a name which makes those early copies are especially coveted on the secondary market.
- [32:19]
Gilbert Cruz
This is the story that was made into the Todd Haynes movie, Carol. And for those of you who think that Patricia Highsmith is just the author of the Ripley stories, she's much more than that. That's a very good suggestion, Jen. Alexandra, Dwight, thank you so much for coming on to the book review podcast as you do all the time gaslighting and as you will going forward. Jen, thank you. Thank you, Alexandra.
- [32:43]
Alexandra Jacobs
Delighted, Dwight.
- [32:45]
Dwight Garner
This was fun. Gilbert.
- [32:46]
Gilbert Cruz
That was my conversation with our critics, Dwight Garner, Jennifer Versalai, and Alexandra Jacobs, about their recent piece, 18 Great Road Trip Books. Since on the Road. Check it out if you haven't already, and email us@booksytimes.com let us know about your favorite books set on the road. I'm Gilbert Cruz, editor of the New York Times Book Review. Thanks for listening.