About The Book
Road Trips, Head Trips and Other Car-Crazed Writings is a delightful, eclectic look at all things automotive. Including fiction, journalism, and poetry, it offers such classic voices as Ernest Hemingway during his newspaper days, John Steinbeck and his search for America (accompanied by his French poodle, Charley), Bob Ottum’s hysterical report on a trip to France with NASCAR champion Cale Yarborough (Le Mans hasn’t been the same since Ol” Cale’s Camaro), and the wonderfully witty S. J. Perelman, whose letters to the neighbors tell of a disastrous cross-country voyage by car to California.
Whether fact or fiction, playful or contemplative, the selections in Road Trips, Head Trips, and Other Car-Crazed Writings comprise a riotous anthology that fully explores our love affair with the automobile.
Includes:
David E. Davis, Jr., “The Freedom of Wild Ducks’
David Halberstam, “How the Car Changed America”
Kathleen Spivack, “As Animals’
Denis Jenkinson, “A Fascination That Was’
Denise McCluggage, “Juan Manuel Fangio’
Ken Purdy, “The Man Who Could Do Everything”
John Weitz, “A Letter”
Bob Ottum, “Heck, Mes Amis, It’s Only Ol” Cale”
Griffith Borgeson, “Tragic Superhero of American Racing”
Bill Nelly and Bob Ottum, ‘stand on It!”
Dan Gerber, “Out of Control!”
Jim Harrison, “Followers’
Bruce McCall, “History of the Studebaker Corporation, 1852-1923”
Ken Purdy, “The Bugatti”
L. J. K. Setright, “Car v. Bike”
Jean Lindamood Jennings, “One Fake Ferrari”
Ronald Barker, ‘down the Hatch”
Noel Harrison, ‘rex Harrison Memorable in “Amateur Driver” Role”
Nick Brittan, “Wilf the Wheelman”
Hunter S. Thompson, “Back Door Beauty”and Finally a Bit of Serious Drag Racing on the Strip”
Ian Fraser, ‘streaked!”
Jim Harrison, “Log of the Earthtoy Drifthumper”
Dave Barry, ‘slow Down and Die”
Ronald Barker, “On the Horns of a Dilamba”
Calvin Trillin, “On the Road”
Joyce Carol Oates, “Night Driving”
Lydia Simmons, “Not from the Back Seat”
Ernest Hemingway, “Car Prestige”
Jamie Kitman, ‘my Brave New Face”
Allen Ginsberg, “Hiro Yamagata’s Holy Ghost XX Century Automobiles’
P. J. O’Rourke, “Border Patrol”
John Steinbeck, “Travels with Charley”
S. J. Perelman, “Ruth and Augustus Goetz”
Peter Egan, “The Great GP Trek”
Jack Kerouac, “On the Road”
Praise
“As these essays, poems and stories attest, the automobile is more to us than just a transportation device. Steinbeck, Hemingway and Kerouac, along with thirty otherswrite passionately of the road, documenting the special bond we have with our vehicles and celebrating the places, people and things we meet.””Ann Arbor News
“A consistently entertaining book.””Car and Driver
“If you enjoy the heart, soul and philosophy of cars as much as the sheet metal, this book is a ‘don’t miss.“””European Car
‘many of these works have deserved to be reprinted for a long time, and this anthology offers an array of voices.””Library Journal
Atlantic Monthly Press
