Driving by Memory

By William L. Fox

Book Overview

Road trips to Las Vegas are the occasion for this entertaining meditation on the quintessentially American experience of driving across the desert. William Fox, successively exiled from California, Nevada, and New Mexico, has spent more time than most of us driving to Las Vegas--and he has taken notes on three recent trips, his own way of bringing cohesion to the vast and mind-numbing aspects of the freeway. Approaching the most postmodern city on the planet from three directions, he examines the landscape and what we do to it while also trying to figure out who he is, what that means, and the nature of the transformations of land into landscape through art and architecture, landscape design, and advertising. Fox's history of the region, both natural and cultural, highlights the creep of the urban supergrid across the most extensively traveled desert in the world. This is a profoundly personal, even idiosyncratic book about the most public of subjects--living in the postmodern West at the end of the millennium and what the cities, the freeways, the open spaces, and the billboards tell us about ourselves.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0826319440
• ISBN13: 9780826319449
• Release Date: February 1999
• Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
• Length: 180 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.4" x 7.6"

Customer Reviews

Exploration, Science, and Art: Driving to Mars

When it comes to exploration, there's nothing like being there. Yet at some point, all explorers need to tell others what they have seen - as well as find a way to understand and recall the experience themselves. Exploration is pointless if it is not shared. The first humans to explore new places would return home with verbal descriptions of where they had been and what they had seen. These stories would fade and lose accuracy with each retelling, yet they still had the power to inform and inspire. Over time, the invention of writing and art allowed these tales to take on a greater amount of clarity. Soon, professional illustrators and then photographers would be enlisted. Accurate as these captured impressions were - they were just that: captured impressions - by someone else. Of course, the only way to get beyond that barrier is to go to these places and see things for yourself. Yet even when someone makes the trip, they have to take in what they see before they can appreciate where they are. Some vistas and locations are so utterly alien and novel that explorers need a context with which to integrate what they see. And of course, even the most incredible adventure will fade over time in the mind of an explorer. As such recorded impressions also serve to aid one's own memory of events in years to come. It is the process whereby explorers put new vistas and experiences into a context they can internalize - and then how these impressions are shared with others that fascinates author William Fox. This book chronicles a writer as he sees things for the first time. Yet it is also a book on polar science, astrobiology, planetary exploration, ecology - and art history. Weaved together as part travelogue - part natural history, these books are eminently readable. This book serves as a tutorial for anyone seeking to visit and explore other worlds. As I was reading this book, I was reminded of the way the James Michener often opened his books so as to give readers a portrait of a certain place and time. Michener also sought to show how that place came to be over a broad canvas of history - covering thousands and (sometimes) millions of years. Fox also makes sure that you know who visited these places first - and how these first feats of exploration echo forward to the present day. You also get a sense of the future in what Fox writes. It was little surprise to see such an influence given Fox's friendship with author Kim Stanley Robinson and the referencing of his books "Red Mars" and "Antarctica". People are learning as they explore. They also seek to apply what they have learned - here and off world. In Fox's book you find descriptions of people who are often quite ordinary - yet in many ways are extraordinary, placed in utterly alien and hostile locations. In some ways how they adapt is unusual - yet they also bring a surprising amount of their lives back in the real world with them. Yet despite attempts not to spoil the very location they have