RoadFrames

by Kris Lackey

RoadFrames surveys America's fascination with highway travel. In a lively discussion of books written as early as 1903 and as recently as 1994, Kris Lackey reveals the crucial roles that highway and automobile travel have played through generations of American writing. RoadFrames illuminates many of the grandiose myths and unsentimental realities that have shaped modern American life. Lackey examines - and debunks - the theme of rediscovering America, with drivers seeking to escape industrialized America and recover a mythic innocence and independence. He also traces the influence of Thoreau, Emerson, and Whitman in such automobile travelers as John Steinbeck, Tom Wolfe, and Jack Kerouac. There is an insightful discussion of road books by African American writers who reverse the romantic assumptions of many white travelers, creating highway narratives in which escape and nostalgia are not possible. The book concludes with a discussion of seven novels, extending from Sinclair Lewis's Fr