Nowhere Land: Journeys Through a Broken Nation 
Ron Jacobs, Fomite, £11.99

I SUPPOSE living in a country as massive as the United States, with its diverse landscapes and people, it is easy to get itchy feet and a wish to set out to explore the essence of a country that is yours but which you know little about. There are also, of course, famous precedents like Jack Kerouac’s On the Road or John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley to mention just two.

Here Ron Jacobs follows their examples, chronicling his journeys from New England to Oregon, Texas to Minnesota and beyond, observing the US as it struggles to remember and redefine itself on its way towards an uncertain future.

During the 1970s and 1980s, as a footloose wage-slavery refusenik and recreational drug user, Jacobs hitchhiked around the USA, absorbing its ambience. In many ways that was a benign era compared with today. Beginning in 2021, he decided to retrace his own footsteps and take the pulse of the nation once again, but this time seeing it through the eyes of a wiser and older traveller.

He relates anecdotes and snatches of the conversations he has with those he meets en route, making mental detours into reflections and commentary about what capitalism US-style has done and is doing to this multi-ethnic nation, still struggling to find itself.

Jacobs’s pertinent and caustic observations about how the system works and how it erodes our humanity will strike a chord with many, but at the same time he also talks about those resilient characters who are attempting to carve out a more meaningful and humane lifestyle in an inimical environment.

This time round he doesn’t hitchhike – too dangerous – but travels mainly by train and car. Quoting the great US historian Howard Zinn – “You can’t be neutral on a moving train” – he writes: ”I still believe that pretending politics doesn’t matter means the person doing so has accepted the existing structures by default.” 

Jacobs provides us with many descriptive comments about the landscapes through which he travels, interlaced with reports of his conversational engagements with his fellow travellers, together with perceptive critical commentaries, but they fail to add up to what one could call a substantive critique of US society, although he rejects, he says “the idea of making some grand statement.” And his concluding words about his final destination – Florida – certainly do not raise the spirits, suggesting a dystopian future rather than one of hope. 

But despite the gloom, Jacobs remains marginally optimistic and, after reading his travelogue, you certainly feel he’d make an ideal travelling companion with his  inquisitive mind, offering stimulating conversation, and good for a laugh.