BEYOND PARIS

A debut travel memoir recounts a young man’s experiences hitchhiking through Europe in 1970.

In the spring of 1970, Casper landed in Paris. The 21-year-old had a year’s worth of experience at a Chicago graphic design firm, but—inspired in part by the novels of Hemingway and W. Somerset Maugham—he decided to move to Paris and get a job at a prestigious ad agency. “I’d create great ads,” he fantasized. “I’d probably be around beautiful French models so often that I would get to know most of them and date some. If you wanted to find me, you’d check Paris’s best restaurants, cafes or nightclubs.” Needless to say, things didn’t go exactly as planned. After only a week, his job prospects already foiled, he came across an unusual business opportunity: importing sheepskin coats from Afghanistan. All Casper had to do was take the Orient Express to Kabul, buy a bunch of coats for $10 a pop, and sell them in London for $200 each. He and a friend booked tickets on the train, but they only made it as far as Istanbul before the plan fell apart. Yet the author’s escapades were not at an end. As a “Road Knight,” his improvising and hitchhiking continued through some 20 countries over the span of several months, meeting fascinating women, exploring treacherous terrain, and landing in a Dutch jail. Casper is a practiced storyteller, and he relates his experiences in conversational prose. At one point, he was on the island of Formentera, near Ibiza, Spain: “I started to become somewhat unnerved by the situation. I reminded myself that I was on a strange island in the middle of nowhere, following a group of strangers in the dark to an unknown destination, all to take part in some kind of ancient ritual that was sure to be at the very least a bit bizarre.” Interspersed throughout the book are poems by the author on related subjects, like “Paris at Night” and “The Road.” The story moves quickly thanks to Casper’s general impulsiveness, and there are some enjoyable anecdotes here. But within the context of travel writing, the memoir is not terribly sociological or emotionally revelatory. The strongest sense readers will feel by the book’s end is a desire to have a similar adventure themselves.

An often fun account of a spontaneous trip through Europe.