COLUMNS
Talk Show 17 with Jennifer Haigh, Margot Livesey, Mark Jude Poirier, Stacey Richter, Daniel Wallace
/ Jaime Clarke
09.10.08
––Were there any disappointments along the way?
Haigh: J planned to arrive at my house the night before the wedding. He was often late, so I didn’t worry when he didn’t show up for dinner. Finally, around nine o’clock, J called from a rest area a hundred miles away. The camper had one and a half flat tires, and he was waiting for a service truck. “Can’t you use the spare?” I asked him. “I already have,” he said. He’d blown his first tire before leaving the state of Connecticut . I fell asleep on the couch waiting for him. A few hours later I woke to a crashing noise. J, pulling into our driveway at three in the morning, had taken the turn too wide. The noise was the camper’s front fender pulling our mailbox from the ground. We set out for Florida the following morning. After J’s grand entrance my father was in a foul mood. so we decided that J could meet the relatives some other time.
Livesey: How boring the countryside was and how similar the restaurants were. As a vegetarian I found myself eating breakfast for almost every meal. Also there were almost no places along the way where I wanted to stop and explore.
Poirier: Several. The first night, we arrived too late to find the beach where we normally camped, so we got drunk and ended up sleeping on broken glass and a community of fire ants.
Richter: Yeah. I wanted a grand adventure and this was not a grand adventure. The whole thing was surprisingly punishing—physically, emotionally, and mentally. I am no athlete of dissipation.
Wallace: There were lots of disappointments, but most of them were minor. I had never been fond of camping out, and the trip didn’t make me any fonder. The idea of sleeping outside, on purpose, still makes no sense to me. The KOA campgrounds we ended up in were full of mobile home campers and sunburned kids. Mary and I fought once, I can’t remember over what now, and when we stopped during the course of it so I could go into a gas station rest room she drove away and left me there. She was gone for half an hour before coming back to get me. It seemed longer.
Haigh: J planned to arrive at my house the night before the wedding. He was often late, so I didn’t worry when he didn’t show up for dinner. Finally, around nine o’clock, J called from a rest area a hundred miles away. The camper had one and a half flat tires, and he was waiting for a service truck. “Can’t you use the spare?” I asked him. “I already have,” he said. He’d blown his first tire before leaving the state of Connecticut . I fell asleep on the couch waiting for him. A few hours later I woke to a crashing noise. J, pulling into our driveway at three in the morning, had taken the turn too wide. The noise was the camper’s front fender pulling our mailbox from the ground. We set out for Florida the following morning. After J’s grand entrance my father was in a foul mood. so we decided that J could meet the relatives some other time.
Livesey: How boring the countryside was and how similar the restaurants were. As a vegetarian I found myself eating breakfast for almost every meal. Also there were almost no places along the way where I wanted to stop and explore.
Poirier: Several. The first night, we arrived too late to find the beach where we normally camped, so we got drunk and ended up sleeping on broken glass and a community of fire ants.
Richter: Yeah. I wanted a grand adventure and this was not a grand adventure. The whole thing was surprisingly punishing—physically, emotionally, and mentally. I am no athlete of dissipation.
Wallace: There were lots of disappointments, but most of them were minor. I had never been fond of camping out, and the trip didn’t make me any fonder. The idea of sleeping outside, on purpose, still makes no sense to me. The KOA campgrounds we ended up in were full of mobile home campers and sunburned kids. Mary and I fought once, I can’t remember over what now, and when we stopped during the course of it so I could go into a gas station rest room she drove away and left me there. She was gone for half an hour before coming back to get me. It seemed longer.