On the roundabout road to not much to do about not much new or now

via Goodreads

On the Road with Charles Kuralt by Charles Kuralt
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Read through my 2017 eyes, this vignette collection is occasionally sweet, rarely--though not never--provocative, and always repetitive. Besides a few gestures at poverty, which is never confronted, just overcome through good will--none of the stories incorporates conflict. It's a picture of the people on the back roads of the US that is too comfortable in nostalgia and its yearning for authortative, meaningful, cohesive, harmonious pastness: The Past and The Old Ways which must be glorified because goshdarnit they're the good ol' guys. The book works as it's designed, in spurts of short and vivid anecdotes. But if I weren't reading it to get some genre context for a comparable current project I'm editing, I'd have had no drive to keep reading to the end.


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