Damned right

by Bayard Johnson

Damned Right is a visceral new incarnation of the American road novel that blasts full-throttle toward enlightenment. Its twentysomething protagonist practices the yoga of speed and motion toward a peculiarly American nirvana at 200 mph. The freeways beyond a mountain community in the Pacific Northwest promise a non-Euclidean geometry of right and wrong, and without fully understanding his mission he is compelled to head south. The bleak sprawl of Los Angeles lies ahead of him, as it lies ahead of us all. In the city of tomorrow he meets a succession of fossilized idealists imprisoned by their dreams. They draw him into a series of adventures and ordeals that reveal an apocalyptic vision of the future.