| Description: |
|
Product Description
The Distance to the Moon is about America's love affair with the car and the open road--what James Morgan calls "the epic entanglement that's defined this century and reshaped the face of America." Morgan takes us on an unforgettable road trip from Florida to Oregon, interviewing everyone from automobile collectors and designers, historians, psychologists, road builders, city planners, and barflies in an attempt to reveal why we're so obsessed with our automobiles. These car stories, he found, serve as our common mythology, and tell of our collective coming of age, our youthful aspirations, our loves and losses. Morgan also discovered that the simplicity of life on the road can give us the clearest picture of who we are as Americans.
"The human case for the automobile has never been more persuasively presented."--New York Times Book Review
"I was immediately caught up in The Distance to the Moon. It's a fine reflection on America's complex relationship with cars and the road."--Larry McMurtry
"An entertaining traveling companion...The book's title...comes courtesy of John Updike [who] calculated that the average American male drives the equivalent of the distance to the moon every 17 years. Morgan's book takes us a long way toward understanding why."--Bruce McCall, The New York Times Book Review
"A thoughtful, eloquent contribution to the road book canon."--Forbes FYI
Amazon.com Review
In his early 50s, James Morgan yields to a restless urge and hits the road in a fast car. In The Distance to the Moon (a title owing to the speculations of John Updike, who wrote that every 17 years, the average American male drives the distance to the moon), Morgan takes the reader from Miami to California via America's fast lane of dreams, into what he calls a love story, where "the affair is between us and our automobiles." The vehicle? A new silver Boxster on loan from Porsche, of course. The envious crowds soon form, and throughout the journey, Morgan wrestles with his new identity--going from a "two-van man" to a driver who regularly gets the approving thumbs-up.
Morgan's story is well-researched and intelligent, as well as introspective. He sets himself knowingly in the American literary genre of great road trips--among Kerouac, Steinbeck, Pirsig, Least Heat-Moon. But these authors all traveled back roads looking for America, Morgan notes. The America Morgan sought during his 47-day trek "was a moving target, one traveling faster than the speed of reason. The other real America." Along the way Morgan explores the changes the auto has brought to the country, and talks with urban planners, historians, psychologists, and scores of others. "For us," Morgan writes, "the beauty of a road trip is the travel that takes place inside ourselves.... we can drift into a place where we're finally the person we might have been, could be, maybe still will be if things work out right." As such, though the narrative is wonderfully entwined with Morgan's life, and the journey and its ponderings are truly his, they are also often ours--even if his speedy Porsche Boxster is not. --Byron Ricks
|
