Plato's Garage
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
In a collection of essays that are often personal, occasionally journalistic, and, now and again, meditative, Rob Campbell takes a look at the world from a different perspective - through the reflective lens of the automobile in our car-obsessed culture. From the Los Angeles he knows, where people are frequently defined by the cars they drive, to Bakersfield in which he grew up, where the group you went cruising with defined your station in life; from the people who define fantasy cars to the people who sell cars not unlike them to the high-end consumer market.
With sharp wit and candid observations, Campbell has a gift for the telling detail, the particular moment which illustrates a universal truth. Just as Plato used the Simile of the Cave in his Republic, Campbell takes it that one extra step - and he posits Plato's Garage, where society parks their metaphoric cars, and the he takes them for a spin on the Universal Highway. And he guarantees a ride that is smooth, elegant, and the envy of your friends and neighbors.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The latest entry in the crowded memoir race is autobiography as auto-biography. In a series of essays about car people and car culture, gay journalist and automotive aficionado Campbell cleverly interprets his own life story as a series of relationships between man and machine. He begins with an anatomy of the cruising rituals, gay and straight, in his hometown of Bakersfield, Calif., which he juxtaposes with those in his chosen home, arguably the world car capital, Los Angeles. There, he confronts a culture of people who are inseparable from their pink Corvettes and vintage Caddies, and for whom a car is a "flamboyant calling card." Whether describing car styles or hairstyles, Campbell has an eye for detail and an ability to find meaning in unlikely places. Every ride he takes becomes a rite of passage, be it a blindfolded race through Paris or a mute trip in a computer-navigated Toyota in Kyoto. The characters he meets along his journey are willfully quirky and wittily portrayed, particularly a transsexual who performs operations on cars that are as radical as what has been done to her body. Like so many who live their lives in a state of perpetual motion, Campbell heads toward a nervous breakdown, although he at first ignores the signs. He manages the necessary repairs with the help of a little philosophizing that makes for less engaging reading (the garage in the book's title is a transposition of Plato's metaphorical cave). Still, when his writing stays on the ground, it offers a smooth ride.
