On the Road: Indianapolis, Indiana

Click on Thumbnail for MapUnfolding the Map

Back across the heartland goes Sal, making out as he makes his way to Indianapolis.  Click on the map to travel with him.

Book Quote

"The bus roared through Indiana cornfields that night; the moon illuminated the ghostly gathered husks; it was almost Halloween. I made the acquaintance of a girl and we necked all the way to Indianapolis. She was nearsighted. When we got off to eat I had to lead her by the hand to the lunch counter. She bought my meals; my sandwiches were all gone. In exchange I told her long stories."

LS Ayres Department Store lunch crowd in 1940s Indianapolis

Indianapolis, Indiana

I've never been one to take the straightest and quickest route to where I'm going unless I absolutely have to be someplace and I only have a certain amount of time to get there.  Nor do I like taking routes around cities, the loops that allow motorists to avoid the downtowns and their traffic just like one might take a circular path around a person one doesn't really wish to see at a party or gathering.  So, while on a road trip one day approaching Indianapolis from the east and faced with the choice of taking I-465, the loop around to the north of the city that eventually joins with I-65 on the northwest, and shaving a few minutes off my trip back to Milwaukee, or heading into downtown Indianapolis, I aimed my bumper straight toward the downtown and didn't look back.  After all, I'd never seen Indianapolis.

I find the interstates to be another manifestation of our "Bowling Alone" syndrome in the United States.  Where once motorists, pre-interstate system, had no choice but to brave the unknowns of a city or town because the road would take them right through the center of it, now we have interstates looping us around towns and cities and even when we go through, we zip past at 55-65 miles per hour and barely register what we see.  We miss all the businesses flashing their products and services and are unhindered by stoplights making us take a moment to see place and surroundings.  We might get into a traffic jam that slows us down, but then our glimpse of where we are is spoiled by our anger and frustration at not being able to get up to speed and get the hell out.  We never get the tenor of a place because we don't have to stop and eat at a local establishment or converse with local people.  If we do stop to dine, it is at fast food chains that look the same wherever we are along the highway.

Personally, as I'm driving toward a city, especially an unknown one, I have a thrill as I see the buildings rise higher on the horizon.  I think it might remind me of a favorite movie when I was a child, The Wizard of Oz, where in later scenes the Emerald City shone in the background, full of mystery, adventure and hope for Dorothy.  As I enter a city, it feels like I'm privy to something special, and the way I enter a city makes a big difference.  Entering by the interstate, I see the city in all of its finery.  The glittering buildings proudly stand with erect postures almost as if they have been coached in charm school.  If I look carefully, sometimes I can see that all the glitz is really makeup caked over blemishes, or false elegance on a faded beauty.  Entering by a back road, I often see a more intimate portrait of the city, sometimes one that perhaps the city doesn't really want me to see - the tattered hem or the ragged holes concealed behind the glittery curtain.  Either way, it is more interesting to me to see these aspects of a place than to avoid them altogether.

I sometimes wonder whether, in our country's increasing polarization, our avoidance of place and of each other degrades our sense of community and country.  I wonder if the interstates were torn down and the fast food chains went belly up, and we went back to a simpler age where once again our travels made us wander into the hearts of strange towns and cities, and we had to interact, however briefly with local people, if we might once again find our sense of national community and solidarity?  Whenever I approach Indianapolis, or any other city for that matter, I will always try my best to take the road through, not around, and I will even try to stop awhile, just as Sal gets off the bus and heads with his female acquaintance to the local lunch counter.  After writing all this, I almost feel like I owe it to my country.

If you want to know more about Indianapolis

Indianapolis Bloggers Ring
Indianapolis Convention and Visitors Association
Indianapolis Star (Newspaper)
Indy Social Media
Nuvo Newsweekly
Star Neighbors
Wikipedia: Indianapolis

Next up:  Columbus, Ohio

On the Road: St. Louis, Missouri

Click on Thumbnail for MapUnfolding the Map

Sal hits the Gateway City, before the Gateway Arch was built, but for him the gateway points east.  Click on the map to see his progress.

Book Quote

"We arrived in St. Louis at noon. I took a walk down by the Mississippi River and watched the logs that came floating from Montana in the north-grand Odyssean logs of our continental dream. Old steamboats with their scrollwork more scrolled and withered by weathers sat in the mud inhabited by rats. Great clouds of afternoon overtopped the Mississippi Valley."

On the Road, Chapter 14

Littourati Intersection

Blue Highways: St. Louis, Missouri

Quiet downtown St. Louis street, 1940 (at Shorpy.com)St. Louis, Missouri

Once, while flying over St. Louis on a cloudless day, I looked down from my window seat and saw the Gateway Arch from about 30,000 feet.  Even from that height, it was clearly visible as a landmark at the edge of the Mississippi River.  I vowed to myself that I would see the Arch someday from ground level.

In spring of 1993, I got my chance.  I had to drive to St. Louis for business, and after 8 hours from Milwaukee I could see the Arch, it's magnificent metallic parabola beckoning travelers to pass through it to the wide open spaces of the West.  Unfortunately, you can't drive underneath its span, but the symbolism is very clear.

I don't know of any other landmark in any large cities where I've been that so captures a spirit of exploration and discovery.  Most landmarks are some form of large, upthrusting buildings that attempt to touch the clouds.  Even though the Arch is high, it doesn't point anywhere.  It's simplicity belies its amazing architectural and engineering accomplishment.  One's eye travels from base upward but is then led back down to its base again.  The sun's rays do not bounce off it in angles like they do off large skyscrapers, but instead seem to play around and glint in different directions.  And the Arch's unique design is visible from practically everywhere in the downtown, where it frames most buildings within its arc.

I took the opportunity to take the clunking little cars, themselves an engineering marvel, up to the top of the Arch.  There, in the little viewing area, I looked out across the country but, it wasn't the same as actually looking at the Arch itself from the ground.  From up there, it was like looking out of any other tall building, except that I knew that instead of 50 floors stacked below me, there was nothing but air underneath the thin skin of metal holding the arch in place.

And then, I was brought back to reality as I looked down toward the river and noticed my car, which I parked in a parking area that gently sloped to the water.  When I parked there, the river was some way away, but in the intervening time that I took in the museum below the arch, and then the trip up into the arch itself, the river had somehow risen and its waters were lapping at the passenger side wheels.  I got on the next car down, and by the time I got to the car, water was up to the passenger door and the car was slightly bobbing on the right side.  I barely got it out of there before it was claimed by the great Mississippi floods of 1993, which actually flooded the basement museum and closed the Arch.

Of course there was no Gateway Arch when Jack Kerouac came through St. Louis.  But even then, St. Louis has always been seen as a gateway to the West.  While much of its architecture and culture is influenced by the East Coast, it still has a Westward lean and was the last stop where travelers from the East Coast would find things that were still familiar.  From there, they traveled into alien and hostile lands.  The Arch, to me, is a fitting and elegant monument to this reputation as a portal to someplace different.  In their travel back from the West, Jack and Sal probably found that in St. Louis, they passed through the portal back into the familiar.

If you want to know more about St. Louis

Commonspace Blog
Explore St. Louis
Gateway Arch website
Pretty War STL
The Riverfront Times Blog
St. Louis Beacon (Online newspaper)
St, Louis Daily Photo
St. Louis Places to See
St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Newspaper)
STL A La Mode
Urban Review STL
Wikipedia: St. Louis

Next up: Indianapolis, Indiana

On the Road: Flagstaff, Arizona

Click on Thumbnail for MapUnfolding the Map

I'm back.  After a year and a half since the last post, I'm finally set about finishing this trip and making this blog a regular occurrence.  First, it's exciting to be on Squarespace where I can host my maps as well as the blog.  Second, I'm excited about what this blog will be.  Littourati is not supposed to be academic criticism.  The blog's subtitle is "Life, literature and maps."  That's what it is.  The life is mine; it is what the literature evokes in me.  It is my points of reference on my own inner map, revealed by the physical map that is referenced in the work I'm reading.  You are all free to add your own points of reference; in fact I encourage it.  It is my hope that the melding of all of our inner and geographical points of reference will enrich our understanding of the literature we read.  After all, what is literature unless we can connect and relate it to our experiences?

So, strap in for the bus ride back to Paterson, New Jersey, and to whatever literary works, points in our imagination and points on the map this blog takes us!  And if you haven't figured it out by now, click on the map to see where we've been and where we are.

Book Quote

"Then we swung north to the Arizona mountains, Flagstaff, clifftowns. I had a book with me I stole from a Hollywood stall, Le Grand Meaulnes by Alain-Fournier, but I preferred reading the American landscape as we went along. Every bump, rise, and stretch in it mystified my longing."

On the Road, Chapter 14

Postcard of 1940s FlagstaffFlagstaff, Arizona

Flagstaff lies at the base of the San Francisco Peaks in Northern Arizona.  When I think of it, I think of it in an alpine setting, surrounded by mountain meadows in the midst of pine woods.  At least, that's how I remember Flagstaff on my four or so times visiting or passing through the area.

My first visit was when I met my wife in Sedona after a conference she was attending.  I drove past the outskirts of Flagstaff on I-40 and picked up my wife.  We wandered around the vortices and red rocks, and then camped in Slide Rock State Park in Oak Creek Canyon.  We visited Flagstaff, and then made a stop at some of the cliff dwellings that Jack speaks of in the quote at Walnut Canyon National Monument.  The other times I've been to Flagstaff, it has been mostly passing through.

Flagstaff is, I believe (but I don't know for sure), the highest point along I-40.  Route 66 traveled through here - the route that Jack's (and Sal's) bus probably traveled as it made it's way east.  To the north, past the mountains, lies the Grand Canyon and this juxtaposition of high points and deep chasms offers an interesting landscape of contrasts.  To the south, one descends toward Phoenix and its present air-conditioned, rip-away-the-desert life.  To the east, one marches along a plateau through Albuquerque until making a long, slow descent into Texas.  To the west, the road descends into California and eventually, the LA area.

Flagstaff is also a city of trains.  Sal does not mention the trains, but Flagstaff is a major railroad crossing point, with anywhere from 75-85 trains a day passing through.  When we got a motel room there, we made sure to stay away from the railroad tracks so that we could get some sleep.  I'm sure that when Jack passed through, the trains paralleling his bus had the assortment of down-and-outs hiding in boxcars, ready to jump off before they hit the Flagstaff railyards so they wouldn't get beaten and arrested by the railroad bulls.  I wonder if Jack ever rode the rails?  When I lived in Milwaukee in the 80s, I knew a modern day hobo, who would hop freight trains every so often to get to another place, and once I saw, standing on an overpass while a freight train passed underneath, a small group of people riding in an open car.  They waved up at me as they went past.

I see Flagstaff as a high point, where depending on one's perspective and direction, they can stop and take a look at the possible directions they can travel.  However, Sal's mind is set directly on East.  The book he mentions, but is not interested in, tells the story of a hopeless romantic at the crossroads of childhood and adulthood.  Perhaps Sal is at his own crossroads, passing from his previously romantic dream of the West, tarnished a little by his experiences and his lost love, and longing for that simpler worldview represented by the American landscape as his bus hurtles east, toward adult responsibility and the comfort of the familiar.

If you want to know more about Flagstaff

Arizona Daily Sun (Flagstaff newspaper)
City of Flagstaff
City of Flagstaff Blog
Flagstaff Convention and Visitors Bureau
Flagstaff Daily Photo Blog
Northern Arizona University
Wikipedia: Flagstaff

Next up: Dalhart, Texas

On the Road: Salome, Arizona

Click on Thumbnail for MapNote: First published on Blogger on October 20, 2008

Unfolding the Map

Hello again. We are continuing the zoom with Sal Paradise back across the country to New Jersey. Today he goes through Salome, Arizona. Click the map to see our progress.

Book Quote

...Salome (where she danced); the great dry stretches leading to Mexican mountains in the south."

On the Road, Chapter 14

Salome, Arizona

Before I met my wife, I had never been to nor seen an opera. Wasn't interested. But when we first lived in Texas, she signed us up for season tickets to the opera in Austin. Every month in the opera season we would make the hour and a half trip up to the opera, and watch something by Puccini, Verdi, Mozart, and other composers.

One opera that made a huge impact on me was Salome, by Richard Strauss. Some operas I could take, some I could leave, but this had me riveted. I found that I liked the tragic operas best. The comic ones were okay, but to me you needed a good tragedy in an opera. That's what all those booming voices were for. To weep, and cry and gnash their teeth and die tragic deaths from consumption or something.

I was raised Catholic, and Catholics don't know the Bible for anything. We are all in to community and common good, but I think the many centuries of priests translating the Bible for us and telling us that we will get our reward by coming to Church on Sunday, not eating meat on Friday, and giving to the collection plate means that, compared to fundamentalists and evangelicals, we know next to nothing about the Bible which serves as the basis of our faith. Evangelicals can quote the Bible. Catholics might be able to recognize the Bible in a stack of books. So, that long evocation was simply to let you know that I really did not know the story of Salome very well.

Well, along comes Strauss and his opera. And at the end, when Salome dances the Dance of the Seven Veils for Herod, and produces the bloody head of John the Baptist, well, that's when I really decided that opera was all right. There was just such a sexiness, yet horrifying aspect to it that I found myself thinking that I wouldn't really mind getting beheaded by a woman like that.

If you want to know more about Salome

The Arizona Outback Online
Salome, Arizona
Wikipedia: Salome

On the Road: Blythe, California

Click on Thumbnail for MapNote: First published on Blogger on October 23, 2008

Unfolding the Map

First, an apology. It has been over a year since I have posted to this blog. In the intervening time, I got my Ph.D. and I am now doing a one-year position at a university somewhere in Texas. But I've always had this at heart and wanted to return. So now, I will finish this. When last we left Sal, he was on a bus heading back home. Here's the updated map - click the thumbnail - and it will only go forward from here until we finish this trip of Sal's.

Book Quote

"...Blythe..."

On the Road, Chapter 14

Blythe, California

That wasn't much of a quote. I'd like to think that Kerouac put Blythe in the book, out of the other small towns he passed through, because of some literary allusion. Perhaps it was because he seemed to blithely leave California after his various adventures there. Perhaps it was because he had a blithe spirit. Perhaps Kerouac just liked the sound of the town, or the look from his bus window. It's hard to know. Given that Sal doesn't have much to say about it, in fact he is just ticking off the places until he arrives home, I really don't have much to say about it either. It doesn't really bring out any kind of feeling in me at all. Perhaps I'm being too blithe about it. I don't know.

If you want to know more about Blythe

Blythe Chamber of Commerce
Blythe Intaglios
City of Blythe
The Desert Independent (Newspaper)
Wikipedia: Blythe

Next up: Salome