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.