Adrift in America
Foreword
This is not an on-the-road book. Anyone looking for one of those should try William Least Heat Moon Trogdon’s Blue Highways, John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley, Robert M. Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Richard Brautigan’s Troutfishing in America or the latter-day touchstone in a literary tradition dating back at least to Homer, Jack Kerouac’s On the Road.
No, this is a survival book. In the five years before I started it, I was in two marriages and a third serious love affair that crashed on the rocks and a third marriage that was headed over the same precipice.
Not everyone would have reacted as I did. Or could have. And in that sense, I feel fortunate. So I offer this . . . well, I can describe it only as a spherical poem . . . as a vicarious expiation for anyone mired in the same sort of bullshit.
– Sid Leavitt
• Chapter III. Another Beautiful Day
• Chapter VIII. Stick in the Mud
• Chapter XVII. Doing the Math
• Chapter XVIII. The Big House
• Chapter XXI. National Sanitation Services
• Chapter XXVII. Slocomb Sequel
• Chapter XXXIII. A Hitchhiker
• Chapter XXXVII. North Carolina
• Chapter XXXVIII. A Reciprocal Equation
• Chapter XL. Space-age Plastics
• Chapter LVII. Amazing Grazing
• Chapter LXII. Winter of Discontent
• Chapter LXIX. The Minimalist Mariner
• Appendix: Space-age Plastics
Acknowledgements
To Ma, a fine reader, and Granny, a fine listener, for their help with this book and with the life I owe them.
To Jeremy Roth, for suggesting the book’s main title.
To Da Chen, for the kindness and support that encouraged me finally to get the book published again on this website.