ROAD SCHOLAR: Coast to Coast Late in...

ROAD SCHOLAR: Coast to Coast Late in the Century by Andrei Codrescu, photographs David Graham (Hyperion: $12.95; 194 pp.). In conjunction with a documentary film, the Romanian-born National Public Radio commentator roamed the U.S. in a ’68 Cadillac, hoping “to discover America, which seems to get discovered over and over and never definitively.” He visited various places, looking up old friends and talking to strangers. His sardonic perspective reflects the influence of the Eastern European Surrealists and Dadaists, but Codrescu is not ashamed to admit that he loves his adopted country, concluding, “What keeps us together is precisely the awed awareness of our differences--and the wondrous fact that we can exist in each other’s company and even--occasionally, and, alas, too rarely--love one another.”