Dimensions
148 x 210 x 29mm
Colby Buzzell has always been a loner. An autodidact who never went to college, Colby was lauded by Kurt Vonnegut and dubbed "the voice of a generation" by Robert Kurson for his daring and critically acclaimed book MY WAR: KILLING TIME IN IRAQ. Half a decade later, overwhelmed by the death of his mother and the birth of his son, Buzzell finds himself more adrift than ever.
So what does he do? He packs up his things, gets and the car, and drives. No map, no iphone, no destination.
In the tradition of Jack London's THE PEOPLE OF THE ABYSS and TRAVELS WITH CHARLIE, LOST IN AMERICA is a stunning chronicle of Buzzell's five month journey through the bowels of America - a country steeped in economic turmoil and political malaise. Saturated with drugs and booze, Colby brings the reader into big box stores, grimy gas stations, abandoned warehouses, strip clubs, musty hotels for the down and out. Capturing the distinct voices and vivid stories of people from Cheyenne, Wyoming; Omaha, Nebraska; Salt Lake City; DeMoines, Iowa; Detroit, Michigan; and the Tenderloin District of San Francisco, Colby cuts through superficial notions of "the state of the union" to reveal America's bones in all their beauty and darkness.
Like the war veterans of the "Lost Generation" such as Ernest Hemmingway, Colby Buzzell struggles to embrace his responsibilities as a man and a father, while feeling the pull of the open road. LOST IN AMERICA reveals the ravages of war on one particular man, but it also reveals a universal struggle to make sense of a world into which every human being is thrust, without a map.