Across the Countryside: Getting to Knox the ‘Other’ America*
SCHWARZENBACH: “After leaving behind this city — this monstrum,
this over-city, this city of the future — after leaving New York which,
after all, is only a tiny outpost, a peninsula and estuary, America
extends itself into the open. Vast plains follow after vast plains and this
immense and inexhaustible continent unrolls itself in front of you.”
“Within only a few hours after leaving the city, after escaping its suburbs
and clouds of billowing smoke, the ‘reign of the country-road’ – this true
symbol of the other America — unfolds itself. It is called the ‘Highroad’
and – unlike in ‘old’ Europe — it does not wind itself from village to
village, and from farm to farm, but instead, like an arrow, it cuts through
hills and mountains for the entire stretch from the Canadian border to the
tobacco fields of Virginia and the muggy river-harbors of the South, all the
while bearing the same highway number [...] And all of this is America.”
“New York is not America”
McCARTHY, Suttree: “Suttree watched this industry [of the city]
accomplish itself in the hot afternoon. Downwind light ocher dust
had sifted all along the greening roadside foliage and in the quiet
midafternoon the call of a long sad trainhorn floated over the lonely
countryside... Behind him the city lay smoking, the sad purlieus of the
dead immured with the bones of friends and forebears. Off to the right
side the white concrete of the expressway gleamed in the sun where
the ramp curved out into empty air and hung truncate with iron rods
bristling among the vectors of nowhere.”
*NOTE: Panels Six and Seven are meant to be viewed together, as an example of the similar impressions had by Schwarzenbach and McCarthy.
Across the Countryside: Getting to Knox the ‘Other’ America*
SCHWARZENBACH: “After leaving behind this city — this monstrum,
this over-city, this city of the future — after leaving New York which,
after all, is only a tiny outpost, a peninsula and estuary, America
extends itself into the open. Vast plains follow after vast plains and this
immense and inexhaustible continent unrolls itself in front of you.”
“Within only a few hours after leaving the city, after escaping its suburbs
and clouds of billowing smoke, the ‘reign of the country-road’ – this true
symbol of the other America — unfolds itself. It is called the ‘Highroad’
and – unlike in ‘old’ Europe — it does not wind itself from village to
village, and from farm to farm, but instead, like an arrow, it cuts through
hills and mountains for the entire stretch from the Canadian border to the
tobacco fields of Virginia and the muggy river-harbors of the South, all the
while bearing the same highway number [...] And all of this is America.”
“New York is not America”
McCARTHY, Suttree: “Suttree watched this industry [of the city]
accomplish itself in the hot afternoon. Downwind light ocher dust
had sifted all along the greening roadside foliage and in the quiet
midafternoon the call of a long sad trainhorn floated over the lonely
countryside... Behind him the city lay smoking, the sad purlieus of the
dead immured with the bones of friends and forebears. Off to the right
side the white concrete of the expressway gleamed in the sun where
the ramp curved out into empty air and hung truncate with iron rods
bristling among the vectors of nowhere.”
*NOTE: Panels Six and Seven are meant to be viewed together, as an example of the similar impressions had by Schwarzenbach and McCarthy.
...the journey seems to me less an adventure and a foray into unusual realms than a concentrated likeness of our existence: residents of a city, citizens of country, beholden to a class or a social circle...
— Annemarie Schwarzenbach —