Tony Horwitz, One for the Road: Hitchhiking through the Australian Outback

Martin Kich (Wright State University)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Sofia Ahlberg (Uppsala University), Patrick Chura (University of Akron), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1987

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Non-Fiction
- Guidebooks / Travel writing

Resources

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Tony Horwitz’s

One for the Road: Hitchhiking through the Australian Outback

(1987) is a truly engaging travel narrative. Horwitz, an American immigrant working as a reporter for a Sydney newspaper, had hitchhiked extensively in America. Although on the whole those experiences had been anything but uplifting, the historical impenetrability of the outback and his own sense of impending middle-age combine to lure him into the region. Indeed, his choosing to hitchhike across most of the Australian continent west and northwest of the urban sprawl of the southeast coast is less a bid to recapture his youth than a last concession to its passing.

Thus, from the outset, Horwitz is ambivalent about his undertaking. On the one hand, he recognizes that, at least in retrospect, the experience will

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980 words

Citation: Kich, Martin. "One for the Road: Hitchhiking through the Australian Outback". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 17 September 2003 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=13235, accessed 18 April 2024.]

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