Dissolute Kinship: A 9/11 Road Trip

Biographies & Memoirs

synopsis

Synopsis

When David Antrobus set out on a personal, reflective solo road trip from the Pacific Coast of Canada to New York City, he picked a random date: Tuesday, September 11, 2001. This coincidence, despite the horrors of that day, proved oddly serendipitous in the sense of the author's struggle for understanding of his own relatively small trauma, which he was then only beginning to face. Evocations of the quiet melancholy of the landscape alongside poignant descriptions of grain elevators, motels, convenience stores and gas stations as he heads eastward across the Canadian Prairies are complemented by the dawning reality of New York City's wounded presence looming ever nearer. Upon arrival, the author is at first haunted by the visceral horrors that remain just days after the attacks on the World Trade Centre, yet finds unexpected comfort in the people of the city as they relate their own personal trauma stories.

bio

Author Biography

David is a former youth worker who has written about music, youth and technology and now writes primarily dark, speculative fiction. His website is The Migrant Type. (http://www.the-migrant-type.com)

website

Author Insight

The Poetry of America

This segment reveals, for me, the rough poetry of the American road: its visceral physicality, its immensity, its vistas and weather, even the muscular beauty of its place names. I like how it revels in the storm, almost drowning in wordplay, before it brings us back abruptly and soberly to the reason I'm even there: the ominous and wounded mega-city lying just ahead. That final word (atrocities), with its echo of "cities" rings like an alarm, and literally signals a new chapter.

Book Excerpt

Dissolute Kinship: A 9/11 Road Trip

Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York. I think I only began to outrun the rains in the latter two states, after night had fallen. Earlier in the bad daylight, noisy, babbling deluges fell across the Midwest. Squint-eyed with concentration, I passed the cities of Grand Rapids, Lansing, Ann Arbor, Toledo, Cleveland, Akron, Wilkes-Barre, lashed by misty water demons driving liquid hissing whips around windshield distortions, eighteen wheelers sucking past in gushing molten sprays. I saw the world through the ravaged eyes of a 21^st Century van Gogh, everything steely and liquid, merging and swirling and perilous. Delirious with fatigue, I crossed the state line into New Jersey at the aptly named Delaware Water Gap just when the rains seemed to have finally abated.

I was nearing New York City, just over a week after the atrocities.

Buy

Amazon

Share
Follow Unfollow
Comment
x
Comment on this Bubble

Your comment and a link to this bubble will also appear in your Facebook feed.

Click Follow to receive emails when this author adds content on Bublish

First Name *

Email *

Choose Password *

Confirm Password *

Accept Terms

By submitting this form, you accept the Bublish Terms of Service

David Antrobus

Dissolute Kinship: A 9/11 Road Trip

Synopsis

Author Biography

Author Insight

The Poetry of America

Book Excerpt

Dissolute Kinship: A 9/11 Road Trip

Comment on this Bubble