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.

Monday, August 22, 2016

1972 Ford Country Squire & German Dreams (& Carry Me)

What is it like to drive a 1972 Ford Country Sedan around Germany's most famous--and the world's most dangerous--racetrack?
Is that a question you never thought you'd ask?
The answer is here. 
The German obsession with big wide American wagons is an extension of the German obsession with big wide open American space:
“...So there I was, in Chicago,” said Knesebeck, “soon heading out on Route 66 towards the South, doing the great American Roadtrip in a classic V8 land yacht. It was an incredible adventure. Apart from a fuel tank leak I got plugged at a small garage in Memphis, Lucille provided trouble-free transportation for me and my girlfriend over three weeks of road-tripping...”
It all goes back to Karl May and the Winnetou stories. And you can read all about that in my new novel CARRY ME, which includes the primal German roadtrip, from NYC to Texas and across el Llano Estacado

"Carry Me is almost as dreamlike as its desert setting." —The National Post.

“[CARRY ME] is both poetry and cartography . . . . Behrens has mined truths so skillfully that in reading they can slip by unnoticed; they’re never glaring or contrived. They leave the reader with a feeling Billy describes as he’s driving across Germany . . . . Great writing keeps readers on this threshold, in liminal space, wanting to know and understand more than literature or life will allow, anxious for the next big lesson. CARRY ME is full of this kind of searching, characters looking for a way to map their lives against war and love and change.” —Heidi Sistare, Portland Press Herald







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