Hitchin’
might be the best non-scholarly work to come out of Cambridge since the
so-called ‘New England Summer’ literary revival of the late 19th
century. I, myself had always wanted to be a modern-day Kerouac — but Alex
Silberman beat me to it (the fact that he actually went out “on the road”
helped).
I bought my copy in cash after drinks
with the author at the Field, outside of Central Square.
‘That
an $1.50 buys ya a cup a coffee.’
It doesn’t hurt that I know a few of
the characters in the book—and his depictions are spot-on. But really, Hitchin’ says something very deep, about
life, about America—about youth, and its afterlife; how youth lives on in
adulthood.
As Alex hitchhikes across the country
west he meets an assortment of weird and wild characters (perhaps none more so
than himself) and like a Rorschach you can see what you want in it; to me some
themes that pop up are the dichotomy between family (biological or otherwise)
and loneliness. Despite the dire straits some are in or habits and lifestyles
these are Sly Stone’s “Everyday People” who stop to pick up our author and
detail their relationship problems, addictions, dreams, beliefs and wisdom.
Silberman quotes a few aphorisms, or “advice” told him by a guy named Brandon,
which could probably be stretched into a whole chapter, or maybe a book in its
own right.
Our protagonist lives among, and yet
apart from all these people, maintaining individual self-consciousness while
partaking in the flux of action and conversation. As Nietzsche writes in The Birth of Tragedy, ‘every artist is
an “imitator,” that is to say, either an Apollonian artist in dreams, or a
Dionysian artist in ecstasies, or finally…at once artist in both dreams and
ecstasies; so we may perhaps picture him sinking down in his Dionysian
intoxication and mystical self-abnegation, alone and apart from the singing
revelers, and we may imagine how, through Apollonian dream-inspiration, his own
state, i.e., his oneness with the inmost ground of the world, is revealed to
him in a symbolical dream image.’*
As we meet ‘the young the old and what
have you with other displaced characters’ and more through ‘different worlds
not colored in such Nuevo modernist, veiled progressive, technocratic finery’
we see another side of the American Dream. If Silberman cannot change the world
he seeks to live outside of it, and yet right in the heart of it at the same
time. Still, without the corporations he reviles who would manufacture the cars
that give him a lift, who would ship the cardboard boxes from which he makes
his signs, and who would operate the fast-food joints he stops in to use the
bathroom?
Alex inhabits a world (call it
Cambridge, call it the second decade of the 21st century) where
people are defined by, and hung up on, their sexuality—therefore, as many do I
think, he accepts gays and transsexuals unquestioningly but is adamant in his
own heterosexuality, defining himself in the process but it is palpable his
lonely lust on the road as he heads west throughout the first part of the book,
‘Momentum from point A to point P, from the Atlantic to the Pacific.’
In many ways though, he is just a
normal guy—the first half of Hitchin’ is
really the story of the people he meets on the way; very strange characters at
times caught up in all sorts of situations. He judges the system, not
individuals—he leaves that to the reader. Still there is often enough the sense
of a struggle in these lives between sin and redemption. They change their
lives, overcome addiction, deal with infidelity, return to or run from
children, spouses, obligations and home:
and it’s to home, ultimately, that Alex
must return. The Pacific Ocean is his destination, his goal—once he reaches it
he seems devoid of purpose, flitting about impulsively looking for connection,
settling for shallow sex. It is at this point in the book that we confront
Silberman himself, without the phantoms of all these other lives whose stories seem
transiently fascinating. And here, the writing itself takes a different turn.
Silberman’s narrative is defined by naiveté side-by-side deep wisdom; his prose
at times simple and matter-of-fact, bordering on social-media-English, yet achieves
true brilliance in unique phrasing and often enough is profound in its very
simplicity.
Hitchin’
does not answer the question, “What’s out there?” so much as it raises new
questions about what’s inside and between us, how we define ourselves and
relate to each other in this modern world where connection is a click away and
yet the people we live with may be farther from us than the other side of the
country.
*trans. Walter Kaufman
Aside from the Nietzsche all
quotes are taken from Hitchin’
Gutenberg used Latin letters, bro...you might want to try it next time you're communicating with the wide world...
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