Check nearby libraries
Buy this book
![Loading indicator](/images/ajax-loader-bar.gif)
From the University of California Press edition: Here is the ultimate American road book, one with a perspective unlike that of any other. In January 1947 Simone de Beauvoir landed at La Guardia airport and began a four-month journey that took her from one coast of the United States to the other, and back again. Embraced by the Condé Nast set in a swirl of cocktail parties in New York, where she was hailed as the "prettiest existentialist" by Janet Flanner in The New Yorker, de Beauvoir traveled west by car, train, and Greyhound, immersing herself in the nation's culture, customs, people, and landscape. The detailed diary she kept of her trip became America Day by Day, published in France in 1948 and offered here in a completely new translation. It is one of the most intimate, warm, and compulsively readable texts from the great writer's pen.
Fascinating passages are devoted to Hollywood, the Grand Canyon, New Orleans, Las Vegas, and San Antonio. We see de Beauvoir gambling in a Reno casino, smoking her first marijuana cigarette in the Plaza Hotel, donning raingear to view Niagara Falls, lecturing at Vassar College, and learning firsthand about the Chicago underworld of morphine addicts and petty thieves with her lover Nelson Algren as her guide. This fresh, faithful translation superbly captures the essence of Simone de Beauvoir's distinctive voice. It demonstrates once again why she is one of the most profound, original, and influential writers and thinkers of the twentieth century.
On New York: "I walk between the steep cliffs at the bottom of a canyon where no sun penetrates: it's permeated by a salt smell. Human history is not inscribed on these carefully calibrated buildings: They are closer to prehistoric caves than to the houses of Paris or Rome."
On Los Angeles: "I watch the Mexican dances and eat chili con carne, which takes the roof off my mouth, I drink the tequila and I'm utterly dazed with pleasure."
Check nearby libraries
Buy this book
![Loading indicator](/images/ajax-loader-bar.gif)
Previews available in: Spanish English
Subjects
Travel, Diaries, Description and travel, Social life and customs, French Women authors, Biography, Descriptions et voyages, Mœurs et coutumes, Écrivaines françaises, Journaux intimes, Biographies, Manners and customs, Social conditions, Beauvoir, simone de, 1908-1986Places
United StatesTimes
January - April 1947Showing 2 featured editions. View all 14 editions?
Edition | Availability |
---|---|
1 |
aaaa
Libraries near you:
WorldCat
|
2 |
eeee
Libraries near you:
WorldCat
|
Book Details
Classifications
The Physical Object
ID Numbers
Community Reviews (0)
Feedback?December 13, 2022 | Edited by tmanarl | Merge works (MRID: 33725) |
October 20, 2022 | Edited by ImportBot | import existing book |
December 9, 2009 | Created by WorkBot | add works page |