Robert Redford & Route 66; Patricia Highsmith, Cate Blanchett, & Carol

Route 66 was the first TV show I ever watched. Two straight guys on the road. Sorta clean-cut versions of Dean and Sal--I think at one point Kerouac tried to sue the producers for stealing his On the Road. It was on from 1961-64, and the existential banter was over my head--the 2 young men were looking to 'find themselves'--but I certainly liked that Corvette and the whole idea of taking off across the country. The show was filmed on locations all over the USA, but usually not on Route 66. Robert Redford was in a couple of episodes.

On the subject of road epics, about twenty years ago in London I came across a neat little Bloomsbury Press edition of a Patricia Highsmith novel I'd never heard of. Bloomsbury published it as CAROL, by Patricia Highsmith, but it was first published, in 1952, as THE PRICE OF SALT by Claire Morgan. Highsmith used the nom de plume because it was a novel about two women on a road trip falling in love with each other. There are some scenes at the Broadmoor in Colorado Springs. Under any title it is a great novel, flawed but deft, and strange in the Highsmith manner--she takes her time with time, and she sees things other writers of the period don't notice. Todd Haynes' film of the novel starring Cate Blanchett, premiered at Cannes last spring and is scheduled for limited release in the US in November.