J.W. Burleson photo / Boquillas del Carmen, Coah.

PHB

My photo
Brooklin, Maine, United States
We own a 1975 GMC Sierra Grande 15 in Maine and a 1986 Chevrolet Custom Deluxe 10 in West Texas. Also a pair of 1997 Volvo 850 wagons. Average age in the fleet is 28 years--we're recycling. I've published 3 novels: THE LAW OF DREAMS (2006), THE O'BRIENS (2012), and CARRY ME (2016). Also 2 short story collections: NIGHT DRIVING(1987) and TRAVELLING LIGHT (2013). More of my literary life is at www.peterbehrens.org I was a Fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study for 2012-13. I'm an adjunct professor at Colorado College and in the MFA program at Queens University of Charlotte. In 2015-16 I was a Fellow at Harvard University's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. The Autoliterate office is in Car Talk Plaza in Harvard Square, 2 floors above Dewey Cheatem & Howe. SUBSCRIBE TO THE AUTOLITERATE DAILY EMAIL by hitting the button to the right.

Friday, August 3, 2012

George R. Stewart & US Highway 40

Has anyone out there read George R Stewart? His book US 40 was a narrative, with photographs, of an auto trip across the United States on US Highway 40, from San Francisco to New Jersey, in 1952. He had a good clear eye for landscape and roads and architecture, especially for the way the US landscape had been changed and organized around the automobile....Stewart was one of the first to look at ordianry, vernacular, roadside America. I followed his trail 50 years later and tried to duplicate the exact frames of as many of his photographs as I could. I plan to scan these, and will start putting them up, as they are very close to the heart of what Autoliterate is all about, whatever and wherever that is. I guess it's mostly about paying attention.

1 comment:

  1. Just stumbled across this and thought I'd comment. "US 40" is one of my favorite books and, like you, I followed some of his route and snapped photos some 40+ years after his journey. We're not the only two with that idea. One couple actually published a complete work called "US 40 Today" in 1983. A few years back, another guy was trying to get funding over the internet to do it yet again - he was using modern technology to take photos from the exact same location whenever possible. Don't know if anything came of that effort. Best regards....

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.