An April Across America
In April, 2005 Matthew Stevenson-author of the acclaimed Letters of Transit and Mentioned in Dispatches, both collections of travel essays-flew from his adopted home in Switzerland to his native United States and set out on a cross-country journey. ("Thus I blocked out several weeks in April, booked a plane to New York, and made my plans to head west.")
Traveling south from Princeton, New Jersey ("the exception to my conclusion that George Washington was a mediocre general who survived mostly with good luck. "), he visits Baltimore and the Babe Ruth Museum, Washington, D.C. ("inaccessible behind an imperial facade"), and the Civil War battlefields of northern Virginia before heading south through North Carolina, Alabama, and Mississippi. On these roads he visits the home of William Faulkner and the sieges lines at Vicksburg ("Only a man such as Grant, so well acquainted with failure, would have persisted"). He then drives across Texas, from Dallas to Waco, including a stop in Crawford ("I confess I was stunned by the nothingness of it"). The trip ends on the West Coast, with visits to Los Angeles ("Friends had told me that Hollywood was seedy and full of tourists, but I found that part of the appeal") and San Francisco.
Written in the accessible style of a long letter home, this book combines the narratives of travel, memoir, sports, and history, which blend together in Stevenson's wry sense of observation.