Sunday, August 24, 2008

Book recommendation

If you've ever been on that Battan like cross country crawl via Greyhound, this book Greyhound Diary is a good chance to laugh your ass off recalling that experience. The book checks in at a mere sixty pages, but it is a rant full of observations and vitriol on the sadness of the typical bus experience. I read it one day this summer and have been meaning to mention it.

Here is the book description: The Greyhound Diary Travel Guide is a depressingly hilarious roaming narrative. A postmodern Odyssey from the backwoods of Wheatland to the lost highway in West Memphis. From the trashed streets of Newark to the industrial cesspool that is Cleveland. Trapped inside the Turtle Boat with tattooed clowns and freak-show white trash, a grueling masochistic non-stop journey into the heart of fear. Everyone, regardless of age, race, color, creed, sexual orientation, class distinction and/or drug and alcohol dependency will relate to this universal saga steeped in American popular culture. This horrid tour is a cynical account of what it feels like to be out there on the bus in the middle of nowhere crawling around at ten miles an hour with Amelia Earhart's retarded brother at the controls. This is everything you've forgotten on those trips home from college. A fascinating, compelling ride.

2 comments:

KAP said...

Just the title brought a Proustian memory: the smell in the back of some buses.

Only people who have ridden at least several hundred miles on a Greyhound should be allowed to hold office.

Jeff said...

It's a hilarious book. Well worth it.