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chasingtides Mar. 7th, 2009 11:43 am)
chasingtides Mar. 7th, 2009 11:43 am)I picked up this book in the Americana section of Powell's while I was in Portland. In theory, it's a book about the American roadtrip and why Americans want to travel and how it's related to Manifest Destiny and a bunch of crap I'm actually really interested in. (I've got a massive case of wanderlust - in case anyone managed to miss that part of my personality - and while I don't always have the means to actually feed it, I enjoy feeding it with travel literature.)
My only advice to any decent human being who is looking for a good roadtrip or travel book: Don't read this book.
Really. Don't. I actually ended up going on a feminist and/or queer rights rant to my poor, beleaguered airplane seatmates who did nothing wrong except sit next to me on a cross-country flight while I was reading this. (They very hesitantly reassured me that they were sure I liked cars and that they didn't see anything wrong with that.)
Here's where I admit that I only managed to get a little past halfway through the book. The Distance to the Moon is 316 pages long and I got to page 155, or the end of chapter six. I realised that I wasn't enjoying the book, that I was taking notes on how offensive the author was being, and being generally rageful. No book is worth that, so I put it back in my carry-on, put some Led Zeppelin on my iPod, and started jotting some ideas down about a story I want to write.
However, I will delve back into this to show you why you shouldn't read this. Mostly, the author writes a homophobic, misogynistic book that objectifies women, Others queers, and perpetuates stereotypes I had hoped were long in the past.
For James Morgan, the car is the man's place. It isn't just for men - it's for men's men. Queer men can inhabit the space of the car more readily than women, but queer men, or men who like men, are a strange beast that should stay far, far away from the author. Women are sex objects and can only inhabit the space of the roadtrip if they are accompanying a husband or lover. The disabled belong out of sight. The mentally ill should remain behind the walls of state hospitals because... well, I'll give you some quotes to show you these things that just enrage me.
"... the hospital, with its campus of early twentieth century white buildings shaded by live oaks looked like a perfectly nice place to be insane," (111). This is the author's commentary on the hospital where his cousin, a diagnosed schizophrenic, lived and died. He never mentions this, except to talk about how it's great that he got to use his cousin's awesome car because his cousin was hospitalised. It comes off as beyond callous.
In another section, he recalls hitchhiking. Once he hitched a ride with a fellow who had a disability involving one of his hands - it's not well described. The author spends the anecdote terrified of that hand and writes this perfectly delightful sentence: "Instead, I thought, How can I say no? He'll know it's just because he looks like a monster," (106).
As for homophobia, we get the delight of learning that any man who pays the author a kindness is a gay for him. And then we get some of the worst "gay fear" literature that I've seen in late 1990's literature. (Yes, this was published in 1999). In the first part of the book, while in Miami (where his roadtrip begins), Morgan reminisces about mocking men he and friends perceived to be gay or who approached them in a romantic/sexual manner when he was a teenager in Miami. He titters and then adds the addendum, "this was before Gay Rights" as though that makes it an okay thing to laugh about - because it happened in the 1950's and early 60's, it was okay.
Later, just before the delightful hitchhiking anecdote with the "monster," he recalls this story:
"Almost immediately, I saw a car slow down, make a left turn, and double back to pick me up. I knew what that meant. Who but a lonely gay guy would go around the block to pick up a wet college student and his luggage? ... [Morgan gets in the car and the fellow asks him, after a long conversation, to join him on vacation.] ... I had him put me out at a turn in the road where the comforting image of a mom-and-pop store seemed to promise warmth and safety" (105).
But it's not that Morgan is merely uncomfortable with the idea of strangers have a potential romantic/sexual attraction. It's just that men aren't allowed to have it for men. He later relates this story from a college roadtrip (uh, warning? This made me want to punch things?):
"Before long, dusk closing in, Frank [the driver] started drinking. Probably we all did, though it soon became uncomfortable clear that Frank and alcohol were a bad combination. 'I got a great big hawg," he said suddenly, leering over the backseat at the lone female among us. We were pretty sure Frank wasn't in the pork industry, so we tried to ignore his remark.
'Man, Frank,' I said from the backseat, 'what time you think we'll get to the state line?'
'Whoa,' said the boy riding shotgun. 'Did you see that 'Vette?' The girl didn't say a word.
'I got a huge hawg.' Frank's eyes flashed into the rearview mirror and penetrated the girl's gaze.
There's a moment sometimes when strangers become family, and this was probably it for Frank's passengers. 'Come on, Frank,' I said.
'Yeah,' said the boy in front.
'Fuck you guys,' Frank said. 'Can't you take a joke?' We were relieved, I suppose, by the word joke, and we all rode in silence for a while. Then Frank leered into the rearview mirror again.
'My hawg's lonely. You think you can take my hawg?'
And that was only the first two hours of a twenty-hour trip. The girl found another ride back the next week" (152).
The absolute double standard of these two stories makes me want to puke. A man the author describes as, "a clean-cut young man with tortoiseshell glasses and a friendly smile," asks the author if he'd like to join him on "a barrier island resort community on the Gulf" (105) and the author absolutely needs to get out of the car in a safe place. However when Frank is, as far as I can tell, trying to harass his female passenger into, ahem, riding his enormous hog, the acceptable reaction is, "Hey, look at that Corvette?" Excuse me?
However, the misogyny, sadly, doesn't end there. Women are continually sex objects throughout the book. On page 122, we get this gem: "They began having a chugging contest, and the man clearly let her win. The husband came back and the other two kept it up right under his nose, but he didn't seem to notice. He just cursed a lot. The husband's colleague put his hand on the wife's back and shoulder, rubbing softly. He started talking about his new Camaro. She had long tan legs that tapered to black sexy sandals. Her crossed legs pumped with the heat of his gaze."
Now, to me, that sounds more like it comes out of a badly written romance novel or maybe the intro to a piece of erotica - but it doesn't sound like it came out of a non-fiction book where the author was simply observing strangers in a bar. (My notes here are: WTF? I want cars, not womanising!"
One of the last pieces that I'll leave you with is this one, the one that pushed me to decide that I would get halfway through the book and put it down. Now, in addition to having a nasty case of wanderlust, I - a woman - like cars. I love to look at sports cars at the dealership in town. I drool over the Mustang Cobra. I like my own car and I call her my baby. I've named her and I do my best to know her (I do the same with my wheelchair and my computer and most anything I own that has moving parts). I grew up knowing and loving cars and can and do hold my own when discussing them with my father and uncle. It never occurred to me that this was a bad thing, though my mother sometimes object. (She also objects to my wearing plaid, so... I never took it seriously.) And then I came across this:
"I'm sure it's a dangerous generalization to say that men respond to cars differently than women do, but I believe it to be true. To men, cars seem more likely to be mistresses - trophy wheels. To women, they seem to be pals... Most of the women I know seem to want a vehicle that's powerful, that puts them up high, that makes them feel equal to the road" (140).
As my mother said when I read her that line, "I was born equal to the road." Now setting aside the fact that that's a fairly disgusting set of lines right there, I also feel the need to explain a few things. When Morgan decided he was going to write this book, he contacted Porsche because he wanted to cross the country in a Porsche. He ended up being the first person in the States to get to drive a Boxster. The Boxster is a drool-worthy car. However, it wasn't until page 140 that Morgan even bothered to figure out what kind of engine the car had and, then, only because, "Otherwise... I'm going to disappoint a lot of men in this country" (136-7). Well, I know he disappointed me (I knew what kind of engine he had when he said what kind of car he was driving) and I'm not a man. (Damn it. If you get to be the first person in the country to drive a fancy new car, know something about the car.)
I could go on even more. There's plenty of rage in this book.
Of course, there are some things that I enjoy knowing. He interviewed some interesting people, has some interesting commentary. ("Americans have always made that connection between geographic mobility and social mobility," David Gartman was saying, "Ever since we landed on this big, unexplored continent, the common way to deal with a problem was to get up and move. To go somewhere else" (128).) However, I don't find the little gems worth it.
In addition to fearing or hating gay/bisexual men, women, the disabled, and the mentally ill, Morgan also has issues with small towns and big cities, people who drive trucks, people who drive sports cars, and men who find companionship at bars (whether picking up women or just making friends). It isn't even a pleasant sort of misanthropy, which I can enjoy in a book. It feels like he actively despises these people specifically for what they do. It makes me uncomfortable. (Also, whenever he's in a small town or sees a man driving a truck, he seems to feel compelled to mention Deliverance. That's not cool on a lot of levels.)
Distance to the Moon was published in 1999. I decided to go back almost 50 years, to Kerouac's On the Road, to find a less prejudiced, less painfully biased book. And I think that says all I need to say.
My only advice to any decent human being who is looking for a good roadtrip or travel book: Don't read this book.
Really. Don't. I actually ended up going on a feminist and/or queer rights rant to my poor, beleaguered airplane seatmates who did nothing wrong except sit next to me on a cross-country flight while I was reading this. (They very hesitantly reassured me that they were sure I liked cars and that they didn't see anything wrong with that.)
Here's where I admit that I only managed to get a little past halfway through the book. The Distance to the Moon is 316 pages long and I got to page 155, or the end of chapter six. I realised that I wasn't enjoying the book, that I was taking notes on how offensive the author was being, and being generally rageful. No book is worth that, so I put it back in my carry-on, put some Led Zeppelin on my iPod, and started jotting some ideas down about a story I want to write.
However, I will delve back into this to show you why you shouldn't read this. Mostly, the author writes a homophobic, misogynistic book that objectifies women, Others queers, and perpetuates stereotypes I had hoped were long in the past.
For James Morgan, the car is the man's place. It isn't just for men - it's for men's men. Queer men can inhabit the space of the car more readily than women, but queer men, or men who like men, are a strange beast that should stay far, far away from the author. Women are sex objects and can only inhabit the space of the roadtrip if they are accompanying a husband or lover. The disabled belong out of sight. The mentally ill should remain behind the walls of state hospitals because... well, I'll give you some quotes to show you these things that just enrage me.
"... the hospital, with its campus of early twentieth century white buildings shaded by live oaks looked like a perfectly nice place to be insane," (111). This is the author's commentary on the hospital where his cousin, a diagnosed schizophrenic, lived and died. He never mentions this, except to talk about how it's great that he got to use his cousin's awesome car because his cousin was hospitalised. It comes off as beyond callous.
In another section, he recalls hitchhiking. Once he hitched a ride with a fellow who had a disability involving one of his hands - it's not well described. The author spends the anecdote terrified of that hand and writes this perfectly delightful sentence: "Instead, I thought, How can I say no? He'll know it's just because he looks like a monster," (106).
As for homophobia, we get the delight of learning that any man who pays the author a kindness is a gay for him. And then we get some of the worst "gay fear" literature that I've seen in late 1990's literature. (Yes, this was published in 1999). In the first part of the book, while in Miami (where his roadtrip begins), Morgan reminisces about mocking men he and friends perceived to be gay or who approached them in a romantic/sexual manner when he was a teenager in Miami. He titters and then adds the addendum, "this was before Gay Rights" as though that makes it an okay thing to laugh about - because it happened in the 1950's and early 60's, it was okay.
Later, just before the delightful hitchhiking anecdote with the "monster," he recalls this story:
"Almost immediately, I saw a car slow down, make a left turn, and double back to pick me up. I knew what that meant. Who but a lonely gay guy would go around the block to pick up a wet college student and his luggage? ... [Morgan gets in the car and the fellow asks him, after a long conversation, to join him on vacation.] ... I had him put me out at a turn in the road where the comforting image of a mom-and-pop store seemed to promise warmth and safety" (105).
But it's not that Morgan is merely uncomfortable with the idea of strangers have a potential romantic/sexual attraction. It's just that men aren't allowed to have it for men. He later relates this story from a college roadtrip (uh, warning? This made me want to punch things?):
"Before long, dusk closing in, Frank [the driver] started drinking. Probably we all did, though it soon became uncomfortable clear that Frank and alcohol were a bad combination. 'I got a great big hawg," he said suddenly, leering over the backseat at the lone female among us. We were pretty sure Frank wasn't in the pork industry, so we tried to ignore his remark.
'Man, Frank,' I said from the backseat, 'what time you think we'll get to the state line?'
'Whoa,' said the boy riding shotgun. 'Did you see that 'Vette?' The girl didn't say a word.
'I got a huge hawg.' Frank's eyes flashed into the rearview mirror and penetrated the girl's gaze.
There's a moment sometimes when strangers become family, and this was probably it for Frank's passengers. 'Come on, Frank,' I said.
'Yeah,' said the boy in front.
'Fuck you guys,' Frank said. 'Can't you take a joke?' We were relieved, I suppose, by the word joke, and we all rode in silence for a while. Then Frank leered into the rearview mirror again.
'My hawg's lonely. You think you can take my hawg?'
And that was only the first two hours of a twenty-hour trip. The girl found another ride back the next week" (152).
The absolute double standard of these two stories makes me want to puke. A man the author describes as, "a clean-cut young man with tortoiseshell glasses and a friendly smile," asks the author if he'd like to join him on "a barrier island resort community on the Gulf" (105) and the author absolutely needs to get out of the car in a safe place. However when Frank is, as far as I can tell, trying to harass his female passenger into, ahem, riding his enormous hog, the acceptable reaction is, "Hey, look at that Corvette?" Excuse me?
However, the misogyny, sadly, doesn't end there. Women are continually sex objects throughout the book. On page 122, we get this gem: "They began having a chugging contest, and the man clearly let her win. The husband came back and the other two kept it up right under his nose, but he didn't seem to notice. He just cursed a lot. The husband's colleague put his hand on the wife's back and shoulder, rubbing softly. He started talking about his new Camaro. She had long tan legs that tapered to black sexy sandals. Her crossed legs pumped with the heat of his gaze."
Now, to me, that sounds more like it comes out of a badly written romance novel or maybe the intro to a piece of erotica - but it doesn't sound like it came out of a non-fiction book where the author was simply observing strangers in a bar. (My notes here are: WTF? I want cars, not womanising!"
One of the last pieces that I'll leave you with is this one, the one that pushed me to decide that I would get halfway through the book and put it down. Now, in addition to having a nasty case of wanderlust, I - a woman - like cars. I love to look at sports cars at the dealership in town. I drool over the Mustang Cobra. I like my own car and I call her my baby. I've named her and I do my best to know her (I do the same with my wheelchair and my computer and most anything I own that has moving parts). I grew up knowing and loving cars and can and do hold my own when discussing them with my father and uncle. It never occurred to me that this was a bad thing, though my mother sometimes object. (She also objects to my wearing plaid, so... I never took it seriously.) And then I came across this:
"I'm sure it's a dangerous generalization to say that men respond to cars differently than women do, but I believe it to be true. To men, cars seem more likely to be mistresses - trophy wheels. To women, they seem to be pals... Most of the women I know seem to want a vehicle that's powerful, that puts them up high, that makes them feel equal to the road" (140).
As my mother said when I read her that line, "I was born equal to the road." Now setting aside the fact that that's a fairly disgusting set of lines right there, I also feel the need to explain a few things. When Morgan decided he was going to write this book, he contacted Porsche because he wanted to cross the country in a Porsche. He ended up being the first person in the States to get to drive a Boxster. The Boxster is a drool-worthy car. However, it wasn't until page 140 that Morgan even bothered to figure out what kind of engine the car had and, then, only because, "Otherwise... I'm going to disappoint a lot of men in this country" (136-7). Well, I know he disappointed me (I knew what kind of engine he had when he said what kind of car he was driving) and I'm not a man. (Damn it. If you get to be the first person in the country to drive a fancy new car, know something about the car.)
I could go on even more. There's plenty of rage in this book.
Of course, there are some things that I enjoy knowing. He interviewed some interesting people, has some interesting commentary. ("Americans have always made that connection between geographic mobility and social mobility," David Gartman was saying, "Ever since we landed on this big, unexplored continent, the common way to deal with a problem was to get up and move. To go somewhere else" (128).) However, I don't find the little gems worth it.
In addition to fearing or hating gay/bisexual men, women, the disabled, and the mentally ill, Morgan also has issues with small towns and big cities, people who drive trucks, people who drive sports cars, and men who find companionship at bars (whether picking up women or just making friends). It isn't even a pleasant sort of misanthropy, which I can enjoy in a book. It feels like he actively despises these people specifically for what they do. It makes me uncomfortable. (Also, whenever he's in a small town or sees a man driving a truck, he seems to feel compelled to mention Deliverance. That's not cool on a lot of levels.)
Distance to the Moon was published in 1999. I decided to go back almost 50 years, to Kerouac's On the Road, to find a less prejudiced, less painfully biased book. And I think that says all I need to say.
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Also, when I first read "hawg," my first thought was "ooh, what kind of Harley?"
Guess I can join you in the club of scary, disabled, queer-paradigm identifying, women who like vehicles.