Don't Tell My Wife

Don't tell my wife, but I have a boyfriend.

I put James A. Reeves's Road to Somewhere: An American Memoir on my Amazon wish list a while back, alongside works including Bradley Garrett's Explore Everything: Place-Hacking the City, Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes and T.C. Boyle's Wild Child: And Other Stories. I don't recall where I heard about Reeves's book, but I suspect I read a review in the Boston Globe or perhaps Entertainment Weekly. A combination photography book and introspective look at time spent road-tripping across the good ol' US of A seemed right up my alley.

Published in August 2011, Road to Somewhere is just the latest book I've read that I wish I'd written. Others on this list include Joel Sternfeld's On This Site (see November 3, 2014, J. Crew: Inspiring Readers While Clothing the Moderately Well-Heeled), Bill See's 33 Days: Touring in a Van, Sleeping on Floors, Chasing a Dream and Greg Olear's Fathermucker.

I'm not done with Road to Somewhere, but it's a relatively quick read so I'll be looking for something new before too long. I just added Reeves's second book, The Manufactured History of Indianapolis, to my wish list.

I wouldn't cheat on Beth simply because I love Reeves's book, although I won't deny my attraction to his photos -- he knows of and exploits my weakness for old motels, junked cars by the side of the road, desert vistas and dive bars. And I love his writing -- crisp and evocative, and full of self-doubt and deep concern for the state of American affairs. He questions many times what it means to be a man (he's the first in four generations not to enlist in the military) and senses that he's wasting his time behind his computer (he teaches and does design work in addition to writing).

And, sure, Reeves is a decent looking guy in his mid 30s, who, in the few photos I've seen of him, has just the right amount of scruff, and loosens his skinny black tie in a rakish fashion. He's presented his work around the globe -- New York, Helsinki, New Orleans, Grenoble.

But what really sealed my man crush on James A. Reeves is his web site, and all that he does with that beautiful online abode.

The Notebook section of his entirely black-and-white site presents a "collection of sketches, essays, and broadsides from the past decade." Some he plans to use in future books, others stand on their own as fantastical exercises. Some pieces he uses in his teaching, and yet others present "evidence of struggling to understand our strange world."

Here's a short one that comes from Road to Somewhere:

Somewhere along the Utah and Nevada border, a fat man wearing no shirt and hospital pants grills some steaks on the back of his dinged-up Airstream Classic trailer. A few old missile casings and rusted fuselages sit in his backyard which is an endless desert thundering out towards the Sierra Nevada range.

I pull over and take another picture of the sinking sun. He calls out howdy and I shout hey, our voices bouncing off the hills. The air is dead silent except for the sizzle of the grill fifty yards into the weeds. A screen door bangs and he disappears and returns with more steaks. I scan the horizon, thinking I can almost see New York and then down to New Orleans and across to LA. This country is too damned big. A small panic rushes up. Who installed these power-lines way the hell out here? Or are they telephone cables? I don’t understand how anything works.

406 miles to go. My rental car sprays dust and the fat man waves as I push south towards Vegas.

There are more than 150 of these, all dolled-up with photos or drawings. I struggle to write a blog post once or twice a week, either here or at The Backside of America. I can do better.

Then, of course, there is the Photographs section. Reeves presents dozens of black-and-white photos, each with a funny, clever, insightful or depressing sentence or two. There are small sections of pictures devoted to Reeves's vinyl and book collections. I hope he adds to these.

The photos of motels, street scenes, gas stations, and oil refineries lit up at night are gorgeous. Again, I hope he adds to this section.

What sets Reeves's web site apart from other author sites I've perused over the years is the Broadcasts section, a "collection of reverberated songs, AM radio chatter, and looping vinyl crackle from the Big American Studio."

Reeves designs these playlists for specific experiences, i.e., "long drives, cheap motels, and late nights," or "killing time in airports, motel lobbies, and train stations." I love the concept, because I'm a playlist guy (and before that, a mix tape and mix CD guy). I make playlists on my iPod with names like "Music for Hayseeds," "Goin' Places" and "One From the Ladies."

Seven years ago I started writing a novel during National Novel Writing Month (aka NaNoWriMo). I go back to it once in a while, with the idea in mind that someday I'll finish it, along with a companion concept album (the book actually grew out of the concept album, which is about UFO's, which won't surprise anybody.)

Alright, alright, that's enough. Go check out Reeves's web site, or buy his book.