Driving Home: An American Journey [ラフカット] [ハードカバー]

The subtitle of Jonathon Raban's book, DRIVING HOME, "an American journey," is somewhat misleading. We readers travel along as he gives broader view to our normal image of driving home with global stories about existing and traveling. Along the way he picks up numerous luminaries, some living and others long dead, and proceeds to comment on their lives and purpose as we go along. He reflects on what values, if any, they bring with them and offers his opinion of where we've all been and where we're likely to end up. In short, he takes the long way home.

Driving home is a metaphor for the settled life. It's a trip we probably make thousands of times over the years. It's a predictable and comfortable routine during which we see the same streets, make the same turns, dodge the same kids, and drive into the same garage that needs a good cleaning. There's a sense of relaxation as we walk through the front door, perhaps to the fragrance of fresh baked goods. Raban has taken that image from a piece of chocolate cake and glass of cold milk to an intricate multi-layered wedding cake accompanied by a flute of Dom Perignon.

Examples of his circuitous route include a retelling of Sir Ernest Shackleton's "white warfare" assault on Antarctica and an account about Donald Crowhurst's deceitful actions during an around the world race. We're told about Seattle's class residency where young über millionaires rule. A modern whale hunt is described featuring the views of both the hunters and "save the whale" advocates...the whale's opinion is the only one missing. Sarah Palin, Mark Twain, Robert Lowell, Barack Obama, and Sir Francis Chichester, along with many others, are jammed into Raban's bus with us as we make the drive home. It's crowded but does it work? I'll get to that later.

This bus that Jonathon Raban was driving me home in seemed like a real car pool. There was a wonderful assortment of passengers and much conversation. It got a little political at times, a subject not advisable to introduce in a car pool. There were times I wanted to shout, "Where are we going, Jonathon?" as I got ready to bail out. But he was adept at keeping his hand on the wheel, steering more or less a straight line. He spent a little too much time on the left side of the road for my liking, but he went right at times, narrowly avoiding a culture crash. I never jumped.

The forward is hard to navigate. In it the author laboriously explains the art of reading and his introduction to it. He moves on to discussing the complexities of language and how to reproduce it through effective writing. From there he tells us about his arrival in Seattle, combining history with the newness of his settling in, and finishes up with his thoughts on English literature and reviewing techniques. I thought Raban got a little wordy, a writing trait I find trying (although I occasionally get caught in the same snare, i.e. this review).

After the forward, order is restored when his book begins. He ventures into numerous topics and because of his extensive research, crisp writing, and sense of order I was able to settle into an enjoyable book because I like this kind of informative stuff. I am an information nut. Curiosity is my passion and I suspected there was more to driving home than having cake and milk afterwards. Raban has shown me the way. If you are the curious type and interested in well researched information on a car load of disparate topics, I believe you will find much to enjoy about DRIVING HOME. You name it and Raban writes about it. Raban has created the perfect read for me, full of interesting information that can be trusted, and one I can enjoy at my own painstaking pace. If that formula fits your reading style, get this book...you'll be the smarter for it. And it goes very nicely with a glass of cold milk.

This collection of essays by travel writer Jonathan Raban has some very strong articles that are among his best, most often having to do with water. In Mississippi Water, for example, Raban revisits many of the places, now ravaged by flood, that he first visited in in 1979 for his book Old Glory : A Voyage Down the Mississippi

The current book shows many of Raban's strengths as a writer and travel companion. If you haven't read him before, this book could serve as a sampler. But overall, the book is a disappointment compared to his earlier books, like Old Glory, Bad Land, Hunting Mister Heartbreak and a Passage to Juneau, which for the most part were organized around a theme.

I am a little puzzled because contained within this collection are enough pieces to cobble together a book on Raban's adopted city of Seattle. It seems like a quarter to a third of the pieces are about the Pacific Northwest, but they are scattered throughout the collection. With a little reworking these could have been made into a serviceable, more focused book.

Also, and I say this as someone who probably agrees with Raban on a lot of political issues, the political pieces in here, many pretty recent, already seem dated, even simplistic. And he actually seems to seek out crazy eccentrics to support his view of the US swinging far right.

Mr. Raban writes well in some instances. I liked his fly fishing essay and his reflections on Larkin. But frankly, in my opinion, much of what he writes isn't that insightful, witty or even interesting. He strikes me as a mediocre writer, looking at American culture and life with critical English eyes, often in love with his own intellectualism, but sometimes not really "getting it". Raban is at his best when writing observational pieces......as he does with his description of the Mississippi floods. But overall, I read the same sorts of things he muses upon in many blogs-in fact, often written far better and with much greater wit and insight on Huffington or the Guardian. This begs the question-why spend money on this book? I wish I had not.