Kirkus Reviews QR Code
TRAVEL NOTES by Stanley Crawford

TRAVEL NOTES

By

Pub Date: March 4th, 1968
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Depending on one's taste for Daliesque landscapes and blithely unlinked and/or reassembled human figures, this biarre effort, which has a few things to point out about modern existence, may provide either a frustrating hodge-podge of myth and symbol, or a highly skilled suspension of diverting themes and images. This is the story of a journey-in fact the bulk of the novel is concerned with movement (""Of solitudes, a moving solitude is the finest."") usually in some sort of capricious machine, to new landscapes. There are wild variations of the machine motif -- machines are constantly being broken down, tiny innards neatly laid out; airborne vehicles never leave the ground. Alas no connections, all along the line. From time to time appears the Painted Woman in many roles and guises. Indeed in the clutter of mad events there is no connection, but a drift and, one suspects, a healthy one, with outrageous invention and a wild wit. Nerve-shattering but exhilarating. Sur-realities for the fearless.