Road Trips: Becoming an American in the Vapor Trail of the Sixties by Tamim Ansary

Road Trips: Becoming an American in the Vapor Trail of the Sixties Reviews

• 
  dianne b.

  This entertaining memoire overlaps in time with my own journey through the 60s and 70s in the oh-so-groovy part of the USA. It was an epoch during which all previous assumptions were thrown out, much to delight of some, and the dismay of others. As a child then, to me it was - for a time - relatively terrifying.
  
  Raised by an American mom in Afghanistan until submerged fully in the US at 15, the author may have been particularly open to the provisional nature of cultural systems.
  “None had an absolute legitimacy ordained by nature. The verities and values that held a society together were decisions that people had knowingly or unknowingly made in common, and whatever people had decided, people could undecide.”
  
  Both the author, and a fictional young man in the last novel i read (The Carp Castle) spend a great deal of time romancing their thoughts. Entranced, or entrapped, by the circles in their heads while searching for meaning, or consciousness, or something, they became absurd, like dogs chasing their tails, certain the answer is just there. Both concluded - one through years of studying metaphysics and the other through too much LSD - that the point of it all was just that - a point. One determined that the only reality was the tiniest focal point of this instant; the other that he was only a point of consciousness in an imagined world, a world surrounded by an endless dark void.
  
  Mere mortals, the rest of us, who just experience and reflect, IMHO, probably sleep more easily. I was reminded of Modest Mouse (or, if you prefer, the Floaters) imploring us to Float On, Float On.
  
• 
  Ransom Stephens

  Tamim always tells an engaging story and Road Trips is no exception. Probing questions from the nature of reality to the quandaries and self-assuredness of youth, we get a tour of America in the 1960s. Portland, my friend, has changed.
• 
  Anara Guard

  I quite enjoyed this clear-eyed memoir of a period when many of us were less than clear-eyed! Tamim Ansary manages to be unsentimental, forgiving of his younger self, humorous, and still accurately portray the passions that fueled his youth. Through three different road trips--hitch-hiking and driving--he shares his realizations and adventures, how it felt to realize he was, after all, privileged; how it was to exist during a time when we thought civilization was crumbling. "I came to realize that the two indispensable ingredients of happiness are a destination to try for and at least one next move you can make." And: "Funny how the feeling of profound conversations lingers long after the content of them is gone." And: "We knew we were the future, if only we could become better people. But becoming better people--ah! That turned out to be so hard!"
• 
  Laurel

  Tamim Ansary’s newest memoir is at once hilarious, insightful, and deeply moving. It’s also compulsively readable. Road Trips captures the ethos of the Sixties, what was searched for and what was found. Other books have chronicled that era, but this memoir digs deeper. Ansary questions the nature of memory itself, and his conclusions are profound. No matter when you grew up, after reading this memoir you may never look at your past in the same way.
• 
  Elise Miller

  If you want to make sense of the world following the recent election, read Tamim Ansary’s new memoir, Road Trips, Becoming an American in the Vapor Trail of the 60s. As an Afghan American, Tamim is uniquely positioned to see both America and his youth with impressive objectivity. I especially enjoyed his ever-ironic view of his youthful adventures and how he connected them to mature insights. As he travelled through both time and space, Tamim’s lucid descriptions and revealing imagery drew me along, illuminating connections between his personal, philosophical and political experiences.
  Tamim’s memoir telegraphs a perspective that evolved for me and many of my community over a thirty year period (I’m a bit older than the author), from civil rights days through the rise of the new right to the fall of Communism. During those years, we found ourselves alternately working for “the end of civilization as we knew it” as the author calls it, or especially while raising young children, simply expecting it to happen. Our children would live in a world with no more wars, poverty, environmental degradation, restrictions, borders and rules, except those necessary to keep us safe – nirvana. Most especially, a world with mutual respect for all, without gender, religious or racial bigotry. A very warm and glowing vision, and even more recognizable by its distinct texture: fuzzy.
  My favorite line in this book was, “We knew we were the future, if only we could become better people. But becoming better people—ah! That turned out to be so hard!” I’ve never read a line that so epitomizes the late 60s and early 70s!
  How can we be so disillusioned by this election, when we were present for it every step of the way, and I’m not just talking about the past two years? Will redoubling our efforts as individuals and in communities be effective? Tamim seems to be saying things keep changing, but in spite of us, not because of us. Yet as the adage implores, we not called upon to complete the task, only to begin.
  Read this book for insights, laughs, pure pleasure – and as a way to take your own journey back in time, and then to move forward.