Why Do We Travel?
by Sally Shattuck
In her graphic novel about a road trip from LA to Chicago on old Route 66, Khor documents the detritus she observes along the way.
Khors celebrates quirky attractions while also unflinchingly recording unflattering places and people she encounters. Her illustrations include dilapidated buildings, abandoned hotels and filing stations. She celebrates concrete dinosaurs and muffler men, but the title of the book is The American Dream – a Question?
What is the American Dream and why do we associate Route 66 with it?I think it is because it represents freedom and the era when Americans all believed prosperity was just around the corner.Now when we leave the interstate, where everything looks the same, and drive the back roads of America we turn our eyes from the eyesores or the ridiculous, or we ignore them all together –they are simply part of the landscape. Perhaps we are embarrassed as they represent defeat and the death of dreams or they are kitschy and as Americans we only like success and class. As we grow more “sophisticated” we reject such displays – even as we still embrace modern kitsch like “the Kardashians.”
As I read the book my thoughts turned to visitors we had when I was young. They came from such exotic places as California, Washington D.C. and Heidelburg Germany. One young friend of my cousins visited one summer from Heidelberg (a place that seemed pretty cool to me). Like most of our visitors my dad gave tours of the County and ended up at the family ranch run by my uncle. There they would see cattle, ride horses and eat sand hill plum jelly. That young women later told her family that her favorite place in America was the Kansas ranch.
I asked my dad why she so enjoyed Kansas and he said “because it so different” – she knew about big cities and monuments of famous men, but she didn’t know about endless Kansas sunsets, horses used for actual work, miles of sunflowers and stars so close you could reach up and grab them. I think she loved Kansas because it exceeded her expectations.
The book asks us why travel? For some it is to learn, for others to have new experiences and meet new people, for some to learn something about ourselves?
Maybe all those things, but for me I think it is see if the place measures up.
Is it really as cool or interesting or awful as I expected? Or to figure out if the place is like the movie that I have created in my own mind.
