A Land I Saw in My Dreams: One Hedonistic College Grad’s Personal and Political Journey Across the Excoriated Landscape of the American Dream in the Final Years of the Reign of Bush

A travel memoir by Stephen Markley

Steve Markley spent four years of undergraduate education binge-drinking and jump-starting a career as a crass, low-brow journalist that earned him scorn from right-wing websites and closeted homosexual College Republicans. Unlike his millions of peers across the country, upon graduating he failed to strike out for the real world. Instead, he decided it would be more fun to embark on an epic eight-month cross-country road trip. During the course of his travels he visited old friends, met bizarre strangers, saw a thousand sights he had never before dreamed existed, and listened to a thousand stories that changed his life in increments. In Wyoming, he climbed a mountain and urinated from the summit. In Vancouver, he ate dinner with a homeless man at four in the morning. In Texas, he stayed in motel where entire families of four lived in a single room. In New Orleans, he got a look at a city still struggling to save itself. In Atlanta, he was propositioned for a highly sketchy threesome. In Chapel Hill he took a stool softener as a recreational drug. Over 12,230 miles of highways and byways, through twenty-nine states and one Canadian province, Markley looked into the soul of this glorious, disjointed, and frightening land in an era that has come to be defined by a politics of fear and slander. Sitting on the precipice of a bizarre moment in history, he had a drink, toasting to the ancient Chinese curse: “May you live in interesting times."

Table of Contents

Prolouge....Down in the Desert
1................The Road from Ohio
2................Wyoming (I)
3................To Live and Die as a Writer
4................Wyoming (II)
5................Tales from Vancouver
6................Coming Home
7................Thoughts on the Defining Election of Our Time
8................The City of Angles with Thoughts on Reno and Oregon Rest Stops
9................The Ghost of Jack Kerouac
10.............."Vegas, Baby, Vegas"
11..............On the Res
12..............A Drive Through the Desert
13..............Generation 537
14..............The Marriot of Jackson
15..............Back East
16..............Mary's Dress Waves
17..............The Last Leg
Epilogue.....Dreams from Home

Read an Excerpt: Chapter 5: Tales from Vancouver

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