In his book “Better Living Through Criticism: How to Think About Art, Pleasure, Beauty, and Truth,” A. O. Scott, the chief film critic for the New York Times, explains why critics write about the books, music, and movies that interest them: “Let’s say that a critic is a person whose interest can help activate the interest of others.” This statement exactly states my purpose. I write about the wonderful books, music, and movies which have inspired my bicycle journey because I want to activate your interest. My hope is that these books, music, and movies, which focus on the American experience, will also inspire your bicycle journey around America.
How will you harvest the fruits of your journey? “Stare,” wrote Walker Evans, the great 20th century photographer. “It is the way to educate your eye and more. Stare; pry; listen; eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long.” Look long and hard at the incredible scene spinning past you. But how are you going to process this visual river of the ordinary, the sublime, and the hideous flowing past you each day?
One way would be to process everything through the lens of your own person. You could keep a journal and record the things you see and what you are feeling. You might want to share your bicycle touring adventures by blogging and posting your photographs on the free Bicycle Joy blog space at www.bicyclejoy.org. You will likely enjoy reading comments posted by your readers. Most bloggers are surprised by how much their readers enjoy reading their blogs. If all this feels too constraining, however, you might decide to simply soak up these experiences, moment by moment.
To take another approach, a history minded individual might relate their journey to those who preceded them. For example, one might study the Lewis and Clark expedition in order to make sense of one’s journey around America. When I started my journey, a friend suggested that I read the book “Blood and Thunder” by Hampton Sides which recounts the life story of Kit Carson. Many months after finishing this excellent book, I just happened to turn down a street in Taos, New Mexico, and there it was, Kit Carson’s home, perfectly preserved! I must admit I really got a thrill out of this random encounter with history! In general, though, I have little interest in the historical perspective. I do stop and read historical markers along the way, but stories of discovery, death, and civic pride do not generally captivate me.
I am looking for ideas that make my spirits soar, touchstones of the human spirit to help organize my thoughts. Below you will find a discussion of three books that changed my journey forever.
Walt Whitman
“Song of Myself”
Whitman is the greatest and most influential of all American poets. “Song of Myself,” which begins “Leaves of Grass,” Whitman’s famous collection of poems, is his masterpiece and is all of his work that you need to read, a mere 65 pages or so for the original 1855 version. “Song of Myself” can easily be read in a single morning over a cup of coffee! Why not set aside a morning to simply sit and read “Song of Myself” in its entirety? This remarkable poem has a way of shifting the way one views the world.
Strikingly modern, gorgeously written, and incredibly sexy, I promise that you will be amazed by “Song of Myself.” It is perfect for reading under a beautiful shade tree with someone you love or with someone with whom you are falling in love. Sit on the grass together in the sun dappled shade and take turns reading favorite passages. This is that kind of book.
The famous portrait of Whitman with one hand in his pocket and his other hand resting on his right hip appears at the front of the book. Take a moment to look closely at this picture. Here is a man at ease with himself, strong and confident, yet still questioning and confronting the world around him.
The title “Song of Myself” suggests an introspective, even egotistical view of the world. Nothing could be further from the truth. The title derives from the idea that each of us contains everything in the world, and the world contains all of us. This is how Whitman defined democracy. Thus, “Song of Myself” is equivalent to “Song of the World.”
“Song of Myself” celebrates every aspect of the world and of our place in the world. It is hard to imagine a more appropriate theme for your bicycle journey. Cold, wind, rain, wild flowers, trash, pieces of tires, convenience stores, discarded beer cans, school buses, and barking dogs! The passionate spectator beholds the world and celebrates its incredible beauty, its discord, its noise, and its unfathomable variety!
Here are the opening lines from “Song of Myself”:
I celebrate myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs
to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease…observing a
spear of summer grass.
On first reading “Leaves of Grass,” Emerson, the most famous man of letters in America at the time, immediately addressed a letter to Whitman with these words, “I give you joy of your free and brave thought. I have great joy in it. I find incomparable things said incomparably well.”
One has to wonder how Whitman felt when he received this letter. Did his heart surge with pride? Perhaps, but I suspect not. I believe great artists like Walt Whitman or Robert Johnson or Bob Dylan know exactly what they have accomplished. That is part of what makes them great.
Let’s take a look at some passages from “Song of Myself.” Here is a passage that perfectly captures what it feels like to take a morning bicycle ride:
My respiration and inspiration…the beating
of my heart…the passing of blood and air
through my lungs,
The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of
the shore and dark colored sea-rocks and of
hay in the barn,
The delight alone or in the rush of the streets, or
along the fields and hillsides,
The feeling of health…the full noon trill…
the song of me rising from bed and meeting
the sun.
He instructs us to experience things for ourselves:
You shall no longer take things at second or
third hand…nor look through the eyes of
the dead…nor feed on the spectres in
books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor
take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from
yourself.
He teaches us not to discount the present moment:
There was never any more inception than there
is now,
Nor any more youth or age than there is now;
And will never be any more perfection than
there is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now…
He urges us not to be distracted by those who surround us:
Trippers and askers surround me,
People I meet…
The real or fancied indifference of some man or
woman I love…
They come to me days and nights and go from
me again,
But they are not the Me myself.
“Song of Myself” is overflowing with sexual imagery. Whitman’s message is that life is sexual, connected, and dynamic:
This is the press of a bashful hand…this is
The float and odor of hair,
This is the touch of my lips to yours…this is
the murmur of yearning,
This is the trade-off depth and height reflecting my
own face.
Do you guess I have some intricate purpose?
Well I have…for the April rain has, and the
mica on the side of a rock has.
Urge and urge and urge,
Always the procreant urge of the world.
He says we are holy inside and out:
Welcome is every organ and attribute of me, and
of any man hearty and clean,
Not an inch nor a particle of an inch is vile, and
none shall be less familiar than the rest.
Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy
whatever I touch or am touched from.
He instructs us to embrace the earth as we would a lover:
Winds whose soft-tickling genitals rub against
me it shall be you,
Broad muscular fields, branches of liveoak,
loving lounger in my winding path, it shall be you.
Hands I have taken, face I have kissed, mortal I
have ever touched, it shall be you.
I smell the white roses sweetscented and
growing,
I reach to the leafy lips…I reach to the
polished breasts of melons.
He says love is best expressed outdoors:
I swear I will never mention love or death inside
a house,
And I swear I never will translate myself at all,
only to him or her who privately stays with
me in the open air.
He describes physical intimacy with a searing intensity:
I mind how we lay in June, such a transparent
summer morning;
You settled your head athwart my hips and
gently turned over upon me,
And parted the shirt from my bosom bone, and
plunged your tongue to my barestript heart,
And reached till you felt my beard, and reached
till you held my feet.
He considers questions for which he has no answer:
A child said, What is grass? Fetching it to me
with full hands;
How could I answer the child?…I do not
know what it is any more than he…
I find these lines regarding death strangely comforting:
The smallest sprout shows there is really no
death,
And if ever there was death, it led forward life, and
does not wait at the end to arrest it,
And death ceased the moment life appeared.
All goes onward and outward…and nothing
collapses,
And to die is different from what any one
supposed, and luckier.
Has anyone supposed it lucky to be born?
I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to
die, and I know it.
Here is his perfect phrase to describe the sound of a city:
The blab of the pavement…
Yes, that’s exactly the right word, “Blab!”
Later, he reminds us to keep a positive attitude regardless of the hardships of our day-to-day lives:
I do not snivel that snivel the world over,
That months are vacuums and the ground but
wallow and filth,
That life is a suck and a sell…
It is easy to forget how overwhelmingly rural the majority of the United States is. I am sure I observed tens of thousands of cattle, especially while crossing the vast grasslands of the great plains. I was often struck by how contented the grazing cows seemed. They had water and all the food they wanted stretching to the horizon. Here is what Whitman has to say on this subject:
I think I could turn and live awhile with the
animals…they are so placid and self-contained,
I stand and look at them sometimes half the day
long.
They do not sweat and whine about their
condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for
their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty
to God,
Not one is dissatisfied…not one is demented
with the mania of owning things,
Not one kneels to another nor to his kind that
lived thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or industrious over the
whole earth.
Here is what he has to say about God:
I hear and behold God in every object, yet I
understand God not in the least.
I only wish the proselytizers I have met on my journey were half so honest!
Whitman reminds us that we are all fellow travelers. Here is how “Song of
Myself” ends:
Failing to fetch me at first, keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.
Sherwood Anderson
“Winesburg, Ohio”
“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”
Plato
Imagine for a moment that you are out and about in a typical town or city in America. Perhaps you just locked your bicycle and you are doing some shopping at Walmart, or perhaps you are having coffee and watching the world go by at a Starbucks. Either way, you are surrounded by the usual hustle and bustle of commerce that dominates the public square in America. People are smiling and spending money. Children are making noise. The parking lot is full.
Who is missing from this lively scene? How about individuals who are stuck at home because they are disabled in some way? These might include individuals with physical handicaps so severe they cannot leave home. These might also include the troubled, the angry, and the terrified. Or, even if they are present, no one pays the least attention to them. We cannot read minds or understand someone’s story with our eyes alone.
This hidden world is the world which “Winesburg, Ohio” inhabits. You immediately sense that this is going to be an unusual book when you look at the table of contents:
Hands
Paper Pills
Mother
The Philosopher
Nobody Knows
Godliness
A Man of Ideas
Adventure
Respectability
The Thinker
Tandy
The Strength of God
The Teacher
Loneliness
An Awakening
Queer
The Untold Lie
Drink
Death
Sophistication
Departure
I first read “Winesburg, Ohio” as a young man in my twenties. I felt like a voyeur as it led me behind the scenes of small town America. I was used to thinking in terms of Thoreau’s famous phrase, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” The world of “Winesburg, Ohio” was much stranger and much sadder, however. These tales of wasted lives and wasted loves were powerful and unforgettable. Now, forty years later, these stories are just as powerful, perhaps even more powerful, than when I first read them. There is a Buddhist saying that instructs us to “breathe in the suffering of the world and exhale the compassion.” This saying captures the effect “Winesburg, Ohio” had on me as I sat and re-read Anderson’s extraordinary stories.
Each story is different, but one thing they all have in common is that there doesn’t appear to be any way to escape. How can you escape the person that you are? How can you escape the things that have happened to you? Here is a hidden world of men and women who have lost their way in life. In each story, one of the characters reaches out for human connection. George Willard, the young reporter, helps tie the stories together. He is the one person who can listen to these stories and perhaps understand.
This short, captivating book has been a touchstone for me ever since I first came across it. To understand America one needs to recognize that not everyone is whole or even really capable of living a full life. This sad truth reminds us that part of the American experience is hidden from view, at least most of the time. Every now and then, though, I speak to someone on my journey whose story reminds me of the stories in “Winesburg, Ohio.” Here are three of those stories.
Hunger
He was a dignified, elderly man. I would guess he was about eighty years old. There had been a terrible storm the night before and he stopped by my camping spot the next morning to see if I was doing all right. He told me he had noticed my tent and was worried about how I was doing after such a windy night.
As often happens on my journey around America, we started talking. In just a few minutes of conversation he shared intimate details of his life. This never seems to happen unless you are talking to a complete stranger. Some of the best conversations I have had have been standing in line at grocery stores and while doing my laundry at laundromats. In just a few minutes, a strange sort of intimacy develops, unlike anything you might normally experience with people with whom you are familiar.
He told me he had seven brothers and sisters and that they had been very poor growing up. He was the oldest child. He told me that he had been hungry his whole childhood. I had to ask him to repeat this last point. People don’t usually say things like this, at least not in my experience.
He said the worst part was worrying about his younger brothers and sisters. They tried to make ends meet farming and raising cattle but they frequently ran out of money. He said it had been an absolute hell listening to the little ones beg for food. I started to get emotional at this point in his story. (Later, I surmised that his father probably had issues with substance abuse.)
Once, while they were herding a few head of cattle for a sale, one of the cows broke a leg. His father gave permission for the injured cow to be killed and butchered. This provided the family with plenty of food for a long while.
The old gentleman continued his story. He told me that he had learned from this experience how to get around one of his father’s rules. His father viewed the cattle as the family’s sole source of cash and absolutely forbade the slaughter of an animal for food. With his brothers and sisters hungry, the old gentleman said he would occasionally take a sledge hammer and surreptitiously break a cow’s leg so his father would authorize the butchering. In this way, he was able to bypass his father’s strict rules and feed his brothers and sisters.
By the end of his story, I had to take a break, clear my throat, and dry my eyes. It is rare for someone to tell me about how happy and wonderful their life has been. Most of the stories I have listened to have been sad, desperate, and heartbreaking.
A Promise
In year three of my bicycle journey, I was hit from behind by a texting driver. I have been enjoying riding bicycles since I was six years old. This was my first time to be hit by a car. I was riding on a nice paved shoulder. The road was straight. The sun was shining. It was three in the afternoon. There was no warning. The sound is what I remember most. A solid “whump” unlike anything I have ever experienced.
My bicycle trailer probably saved my life. The trailer was crushed but the trailer draw arm remained attached to my bicycle. The bicycle was instantly shoved forward out of harms way. I toppled to the pavement. When I stood up I had the worst road rash I have ever seen, but was otherwise fine. The following week, however, I felt a bit of post-traumatic stress every time I thought about the sound of the impact.
The driver stopped and drove me to a small hospital which was about five miles away. At the hospital my road rash was cleaned and bandaged by an adorable nurse. The driver was insured by State Farm. The name of the State Farm agent was Sincere Stone. (It would be impossible to make up a name that great!) The state police came by the hospital. They agreed with my version of the accident. Finally, I was deposited at a nearby Super 8 motel. I just needed some time to heal. I also needed a new bicycle trailer, big time!
I am a firm believer that, if you just stop and think about it, the worst experiences of our lives are usually inextricably linked to the best experiences of our lives. Think for a moment about some of the worst experiences you have ever had. Take, for example, that heart breaking moment when your first love broke up with you. That terrible experience is, of course, part and parcel with the beautiful times that you experienced with that person before the breakup. Yes, the best of times and the worst of times often walk together hand in hand!
The next morning, I walked next door to McDonald’s for breakfast. Some local farmers and a few farm ladies were gathered at the old timer’s table. I was invited to join their table. Since I am also an old timer, I immediately felt at home. I set down my senior coffee and smiled my hello. Everyone could see my bandages and wanted to know what had happened to me. Their concern was very therapeutic. I enjoyed recounting every last detail. I even threw in the part about how attractive the nurse was. I explained that the nurse had reminded me of that wonderful Bo Diddley song, “Pills.” Everyone loved my story! Apparently, there is really nothing quite as satisfying as starting off your day by listening to someone else’s misfortunes!
After breakfast and after another cup of coffee, I crossed the parking lot on my way back to the Super 8. Suddenly, the very nicest of the farm ladies called out, “Tom, you don’t have to stay at the Super 8. You can stay at my house as long as you need to!” See what I mean? Good things were already starting to happen!
For weeks, traveling across the “corn belt” of the Midwest, I had been admiring the farm houses. Now, I was standing inside one! The corn field behind the house came right up to the back yard. The corn was planted so close together you could barely get your hand between the stalks. What a magnificent fence! A solid wall of rich, green corn defined each side of the yard.
My situation reminded me of the movie, “The Bridges of Madison County.” Really, the only difference was that Clint Eastwood didn’t have road rash! Also, my new friend was much cuter than Meryl Streep! Finally, there was no husband in the picture. He had died years ago from an illness caused by his military service. I was spending my convalescence reading his huge collection of Zane Grey westerns.
Life was sweet. I was enjoying delicious home cooked meals. Every afternoon, we made it a point to watch the “Ellen” show together on TV. We went out to eat at the Olive Garden. We visited the Lincoln Museum in Springfield. I played my new friend some of Robert Johnson’s music. She asked about the book I was writing. Thinking of my recent accident, I told her my book was about half way between Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” and John Steinbeck’s “Travels With Charlie.”
We had plenty of time to talk. What an amazing woman! She knew how to drive big rigs, combines, school buses. She was handy with a chain saw. She had built most of the house herself. She knew everything imaginable about growing corn. I was thinking this was exactly the kind of person that made America great in the first place. Sharp, hardworking, and self-sufficient. Here is the story she told me.
Before his death, her father asked her to promise one thing. “Never sell our land. I need you to promise me this before I go.” A promise was made. The land, however, was sold. Her brother met a woman. Her brother wanted to buy an expensive home for this woman. They went to court. My friend explained the promise she had made to her father to the judge. She just needed some time to sell other property in order to buy her brother’s half of the property, in order to keep her promise to her father. Unfortunately, her brother wanted the money right away. The judge ordered the property to be sold.
The injustice of this story made my heart ache. I even felt angry at the judge. Later though, I reconsidered. If you can’t reach an agreement with your relatives over a piece of land, I suppose the usual solution is to just sell the land. It wasn’t the judge’s fault. It is one thing for our desires and obsessions to end up hurting ourselves. It is grotesque, however, when they hurt other blameless, good people, like my new friend. I kept thinking about all the years of hard work, all that knowledge of when and how to plant the grain. I looked out the window at the beautiful corn field that no longer belonged to my friend.
The following year I visited my friend at her winter home in Phoenix. It was so great to see her again! We walked into her huge backyard. What beautiful orange trees she was growing there! She explained how she took care of them. She told me the best way to fertilize them. I couldn’t help but notice that the trees were filled with gigantic oranges. I had fresh orange juice for breakfast. I felt much, much better! Nothing is going to stop this lady! I asked her if I could have another glass of orange juice. Then, I went back outside and sat and looked at those beautiful orange trees.
When God Winks
I need to make one point perfectly clear. So far, these sad stories, grotesque though they certainly are, don’t really accurately correspond to Anderson’s “theory of the grotesque.” The following story, however, does perfectly correspond to Anderson’s theory. Here is Anderson’s theory of the grotesque:
It was the truths that made the people grotesque. The old man had quite an elaborate theory concerning the matter. It was his notion that the moment one of the people took one of the truths to himself, called it his truth, and tried to live his life by it, he became a grotesque and the truth he embraced became a falsehood.
I decided to spend a week taking a break in Roswell, New Mexico. I had a great camping spot and the Starbucks in Roswell was wonderful. It had an area at one end, set off from the rest of the store, with cozy leather chairs. Crossing the White Mountains on my bicycle had been terribly cold and incredibly grueling. I needed a rest.
When I arrived at the Starbucks, all the good seats were taken except for one. Since the seats were so close together, I asked the gentleman sitting next to the chair I had my eye on if I could join him. With a smile he said, “That would be great.” He looked to be about fifty years old and he had the biggest brown eyes I have ever seen. We introduced ourselves, and then Glenn and I started chatting.
It wasn’t long until it became clear that Glenn had some serious ideas he wanted to discuss. He had a book with him, a very well worn book. The title of the book was “When God Winks.” He said, “Please read this first story. It is very short. Could I buy you a coffee?” I said, “Sure,” and then I started reading.
I would probably read anything for a free latte! I must say, however, that the very first story was truly amazing. It recounted the whole sequence of events which led to Oprah Winfrey’s landing her role in the movie “The Color Purple.” It was an astounding story. One incredible coincidence after another. The one I remember best is that it turned out that her husband’s name in the movie was Harpo, which is Oprah spelled backwards! After the movie, Oprah named her production company Harpo Productions.
Glenn returned with my latte and asked what I thought about the story. I truthfully answered, “I was blown away by it!” He said, “Yes, it is really something.” We talked for a while. Glenn’s “truth” was remarkably clear. It went something like this:
There is a God. He wants what is best for us. If we try to run our own lives we inevitably muck things up. (No argument from me on that point!) We need for God to wink (show us a sign) so we will know what to do. Finally, even if it is very uncomfortable, we simply need to follow his instructions.
Glenn told me he had been kicked out of all the local churches for espousing the principles in the book, “When God Winks.” This surprised me. I thought most churches would likely benefit from some nice, clear, step-by-step instructions. That was what was so great about Glenn’s “truth,” it had a great deal of clarity going for it. Not to mention a book backing up the theory that would have blown the socks off even the most devout atheist!
We spent the rest of the afternoon exploring the application of the “truth” to Glenn’s life. This, of course, was much less intimidating than applying the “truth” to my own life. That was something I hoped to avoid. I listened carefully.
When he was seventeen, Glenn’s family went to Florida for a vacation. At the resort where they stayed, he met the most beautiful girl you could ever imagine. He pulled her faded photos out of his backpack and showed them to me. She was incredibly beautiful in a “girl next door” sort of way. In fact, I thought I had never before seen such a captivating smile. After the vacation, he returned to his family home in New Mexico. He wrote her a few letters and tried to forget her. He was unsuccessful. I knew exactly what he had gone through. I have gone through the same thing a number of times myself!
A few years passed. Somehow Glenn learned that this girl was getting married. That is when God winked. The girl lived in Pennsylvania. Glenn lived in New Mexico. For a whole week, every time Glenn parked his car, the car next to his had Pennsylvania license plates. How often do you see Pennsylvania license plates in New Mexico? That’s right, not very often. So far, everything seemed to fit the God wink theory perfectly.
I couldn’t help thinking about the movie, “The Graduate” with Dustin Hoffman. This girl even looked a lot like Kathryn Ross, the girl in that movie. Dustin managed to stop her wedding. This struck me as yet another God wink (this girl looked just like Kathryn Ross). The God winks were proliferating!
Then Glenn made the most terrible mistake of his life. Thinking it would be inappropriate and embarrassing, he decided not to go to Pennsylvania in order to try and stop the wedding. He ignored God’s wink. This was definitely not good! Thirty years later, he still loved that beautiful girl! Since she was obviously the one and only girl selected by God just for him, and since he had ignored God’s helpful wink, it was useless to look for another girlfriend since such a girlfriend would obviously not be the one God intended for him, namely, the girl he had met back in Florida!
I suggested that God, if he existed, would probably forgive Glenn for ignoring his wink. That one of his most precious gifts was free will. Free will necessarily leads to a lot of mistakes. God would want us to learn from our mistakes and bravely carry on. (Like I have the least idea what God wants.)
Glenn would have none of it. When God winks, apparently, according to Glenn, you get just one chance to act on it. Glenn had never had a girlfriend. He told me he wished he could have experienced the happiness of coming home from work to be greeted with joy by his own child.
It appeared hopeless to try and convince Glenn that it wasn’t too late to marry and have a child since such a course of action would violate his “truth.” This was very unsettling. Apparently, trying to live your life according to a single “truth” sometimes leads to very unhappy results. This started me thinking about my own life. Perhaps my “truth” was my single minded focus on the idea that “Each day of bicycle touring makes me a bit more aware than the day before of how beautiful the world is.” Was this “truth” leading me astray? Was I simply another of Anderson’s grotesques?
As I headed down the highway the following day, I thought about how my life had been spared recently, not once, but twice. First, there was the Idiot Wind in Louisiana (Chapter 13). Then, there was the car that hit me as recounted in the preceding story. Were these events possibly God winks? Even before meeting Glenn, I had roughly interpreted these events to mean that my life had been spared so that I could finish writing this book! I resolved to watch closely and see what developed. I have an unruly tendency to joke around. I am serious. I am keeping a sharp eye out for any special signs from above. Glenn’s story was moving and very powerful!
Willa Cather
“My Antonia”
This simple, beautifully written tale of unrequited love on the grasslands of Nebraska has always been a favorite of mine. I can’t help thinking about it every time I pedal across the mysteriously tranquil Sand Hills of Nebraska.
“My Antonia” is structured in a way that produces a powerful feeling of nostalgia. It begins with two old friends, now middle-aged, riding across the dusty plains on a train and reminiscing about growing up in the same small Nebraska town. One is the author, the other is a lawyer by the name of Jim Burden.
Their conversation keeps turning to a “central figure, a Bohemian girl we had known long ago and whom both of us admired. More than any other person we remembered, this girl seemed to mean to us the country, the conditions, the whole adventure of our childhood.”
They agree that they will both write down their memories of Antonia, their long ago friend, compare notes, and then perhaps the author will be able to tell Antonia’s story.
What a beautiful and touching story it is! In her direct and luminous style, Willa Cather tells the story of Antonia. The physical setting is rendered in great detail, the long hot summers, the frigid isolation of the winters, the wonder of spring when it finally arrives. All of this is set in Nebraska. But it is the human story of a family struggling to survive that is most gripping.
I hope you will have time to read “My Antonia” before you ride your bicycle across Nebraska. Her story will likely change the way you experience your long trek across the great plains.
Here are the books which provided information and inspiration for my bicycle journey. Books are listed alphabetically by the author’s last name.
Anderson, Sherwood, “Winesburg, Ohio”
Bauer, Susan Wise, “The Well Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had”
Cather, Willa, “My Antonia”
Egoscue, Pete, “The Egoscue Method of Health Through Motion”
Giono, Jean, “The Man Who Planted Trees”
Giono, Jean, “Song of the World”
Miller, Henry, “The Books in My Life”
Moon, Tom, “1,000 Recordings To Hear Before You Die: A Listener’s Life List”
Mustich, James, “1,000 Books To Read Before You Die: A Life-Changing List”
Thoreau, Henry David, “Walden”
Whitman, Walt, “Song of Myself: The First and Final Editions of the Great American Poem”