Interstate: Hitchhiking Through the State of a Nation

by Julian Sayarer

Recruited to work on a documentary project, Julian Sayarer goes to New York convinced he has hit big time at last. Finding the project cancelled, he wanders the city streets and, with nowhere else to go, decides to set out hitchhiking for San Francisco. Revisiting this timeless American journey finds an unseen nation in rough shape. Along the road are homeless people and anarchists who have dropped out of society altogether, and blue-collar Americans who seem to have lost all meaning in forgotten towns and food deserts. Helped along by roadside communities and encounters that somehow keep a sense of optimism alive, Interstate grapples with the fault lines in US society. It tells a tale of Steinbeck and Kerouac, set against the indifference of the vast US landscape and the frustrated energy of American culture and politics at the start of a new century.

Genres: Travel, Nonfiction

314 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2016

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Julian Sarayer arrives in New York with the opportunity to make a documentary, and maybe, just maybe hit the big time. At the first meeting they find out that it has been cancelled. He has nothing to do and nowhere to go. Lodging temporarily with a friend, Natalie, he slowly conceives a plan to hitchhike from New York to San Francisco. Sarayer is a seasoned traveller; he set the world record for cycling round the world in 169 days in 2009, a story written about in his book, Life Cycles, so begins his Kerouac inspired trip across the North American continent

Travelling in a variety of vehicles, trucks, cars, pickups, Greyhound buses, the odd police car and even hobo style on a train, Sarayer finds a nation that seems to be a little bit lost. He meets the homeless who have dropped out of society after financial problems, anarchists who have made the decision to have very little interaction with normal society and the honest working, blue collar Americans whose struggle is relentless against the system. There are those are ignore him, leaving him walking along the side of the road and others who show the true generosity of spirit and do all in their power to help him.

The book starts with an emotive dedication at the start of the book: ‘To the immigrant’, a people in America who are both despised and relied on in equal measure. He tells a story that is despondent at times, when you read about the stark differences in society, thankfully there are people who are prepared to pick him up and take him to the next town along the road. What also comes across from the book is just how immense this country is, he spends days with an truck driver from India as they travel back and forth with deliveries; when they part for the next stage of his journey, it is as friends. The last time he crossed America, it was on a bike doing 110 miles a day under his own steam, this time he could get to know the people and the places and it is a much better book because of it.

[ThatPhonyProphet · Rating 1 out of 5]

Painful.

[Elite Group · Rating 3 out of 5]

Anyone for a hitch-hike across America?

The author has travelled to New York from London for a film deal that falls through. Now having two months to fill, he is given a bivvy bag (something between a tent and sleeping bag) by a fellow crew member, and decides to hitch-hike across the USA to San Francisco.

After spending a little time in New York getting involved with a Mayoral election, he takes to the road and starts his adventures on the New Jersey side of the George Washington bridge.

He encounters a huge variety of people, from naturally suspicious, and officious, cops to the sheer crazies. He also encounters some kind, helpful and friendly folk. He seems to find it easy to join in with the various groups and their way of life. All the while taking in their values and opinions, which he duly records for us.

In Ohio, he’s picked up by a young female driver (a VERY rare event), who takes him back and introduces him to her “extended family”, basically a commune, where he is accepted as one of them very soon after. From there, he has the biggest break of all when he is given a ride by a trucker, Pala, from the Punjab.

All is not all sweetness and light, however. At times, he is reduced to taking a Greyhound bus. An experience he views as an act of sheer desperation.

The book is more than a travelogue of hitch-hiking across the U.S. The author offers us an insight into the minds of ordinary Americans in snatch conversations where two strangers are thrown together in an intimate space and talking is the leveller.

It was an interesting book to read, but not a book that I couldn’t put down and at times I found myself plodding through parts. In that respect, a three-star rating.

Mr Bumblebee

Breakaway Reviewers received a copy of the book to review.

[Andy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Julian Sayarer is a brilliant wordsmith, although sometimes I felt that I would like less description and more about the people involved in his journey. When he did talk about the people he did it well.

The story of the US is a saddening one. A tale of mistrust of others, of third class citizens failed by a system where you are judged on your wealth instead of more important things. The time spent with the Sikh was a pleasant reprieve.

This is the third book of Julian's that I have read, and all have been excellent.

[Mark · Rating 2 out of 5]

Awful, overwritten, self-indulgent virtue-signalling tosh. Had to force myself to read through it; took two goes. Occasional nice turn of phrase which gets it the second star.

[J R · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's a fun read and impressively prescient in terms of the accuracy of the insights on the state of America when viewed in light of the election results that followed its writing. For a foreigner traveling through, he perceives pretty accurately some of the more complicated dynamics and uglier truths of our current social-contract breaking incarnation of "America" - then again maybe these are more widely known than we suspect. The book lists among waves of emotions such as shock, elation, confusion, frustration, anger, sympathy, and disgust. The imagery of a Sikh truck driver (which most Americans would know nothing about) riding with a Brit and their views deconstructing their American experience as they zoom along the interstate arteries of the US heartland is must-read for this year. There's a lot of hope in this book, but also a lot of apprehensions. I saw it as a political treatise in the guise of a travel novel in which "the system" is a looming if unmentioned character. New York to San Francisco retraces an All-American pilgrimage and finds a sad and empty shell of the image America has of itself. An old prize-fighter or poet, no longer strong or inspired and struggling just to make ends meet. Anyway, darkly optimistic, aggravating, insightful, accurate. Good.

[Tara Cooper · Rating 3 out of 5]

Written in first person by a British guy who hitchhiked across the country when a NY project got cancelled and he had to be in SF for another one a few weeks later. A British friend had told me about this in 2018 while we were discussing who might run against Trump (after reading this book, he gleaned that the rest of the country may not be on the same page as CA ). The author has a rough time getting rides, and meets a cross section of characters including an Indian truck driver and a guy who agrees to drive him for gas money. There are parts of the book where he writes in a very flowery academic way that makes me think this was a real shock to his system to travel this way! I enjoyed it enough, but it took me a while to get through it.

[Sue Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting read about an unplanned hitchhike across America after a job opportunity falls through in New York. He writes interestingly about the many varied characters he meets and their views of life in the U.S today. In the end though I just wanted him to arrive at the west coast asap.

[Deana · Rating 1 out of 5]

I never quit on a book, but I couldn’t make it through this one. I found the author’s look at America pretty insulting. Nothing worse than a foreigner who thinks he gets this country and it’s people and knows how it could be better.

[Matthew Burton · Rating 1 out of 5]

Interesting concept but the writing is painful. Uses 5 words, all scoured from a thesaurus, when 1 would do.

[Judethmc · Rating 1 out of 5]

Miserable judgemental hitchhiker getting angry because noone will give him a lift. If only Pala wrote a book ...

[C-Lyne Emma · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting but too political and too many metaphors. Was giving p5 star writer.

[Tripfiction · Rating 3 out of 5]

Travelogue/memoir set across America

Frustrated at the last minute cancellation of a film project on the East Coast, young British filmmaker Julian Sayarer decided to fill the time he now has on his hands by hitchhiking from New York to San Francisco. An epic journey. But Julian has form in epic journeys – his first book Life Cycles chronicles his 2009 world-record-breaking circumnavigation of the globe by bicycle. He rode 18,049 miles in 169 days. An impressive (and committed) young man – ready for another adventure.

And adventure (and commitment) he gets. Three weeks of hitching right across the United States. From New York, though New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, and California – with many a catastrophe along the way. The book is a brilliant read with the US Presidential Election now only weeks away. All is explained to those who cannot comprehend the Donald Trump phenomenon. Many of the people that Julian meets en route are ex-blue collar American workers whose jobs have been exported to China or Mexico, and whose wages – in their new jobs for those lucky enough to find one – have been depressed. A bus driver who used to be a highly paid steel worker. There is real disillusionment with Washington politics, and the changing face of America. These people do not feel listened to. Neither do they feel comfortable with someone asking for rides – the generosity of the past has moved on to be replaced by fear of a stranger. Julian’s best ride comes from an independent Indian truck driver who has no choice but to bend the law to meet the delivery deadlines set by his agent. The alternative (day after day) is not being able to make the next instalment on the loan he has taken out to buy the truck. These people feel the country has passed them by. A bit like the Brexit vote in the UK. The downtrodden underclass are ignored at its peril by the establishment. In the UK they did – and in the States they just might – bite back.

Julian also questions American values. A sign on the Interstate in Missouri ‘Hit a worker – $10,000 dollar fine and lose your licence’ – no concern for the fate of the worker… Or the fact that grain fed to American cattle for the huge meat market could, of itself, pretty much abolish world hunger if distributed to the world’s poor. America appears to be a place where the cardinal sin is not having any money. People can simply look through you as if you were not there. He himself looks pretty down and out for much of his journey… and is ignored by many.

No doubt that Julian is on a mission to inform and influence. This book is not neutral, but it does give one man’s fascinating insight into the America he sees today. It is a view you might not agree with – but I doubt it is a view you can ignore.

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Push through part one (NYC)....because
once Sayarer in on the open road across America
...the book get so much better!

[Briana Gervat · Rating 3 out of 5]

From New York to San Francisco, Sayarer transverses the political, social, and economic landscapes of America, revealing the underbelly of American society that is now simmering on the surface: its dirt, its grime, its poverty, and its homelessness. Sometimes Sayarer is taken back by how far America has fallen from the America written about by Jack Kerouac, and sometimes he plunges headlong into its abyss, jumping trains and sleeping on streets, all in search of something that no longer exists for the masses: the American Dream.

From East to West the author seems to be in search of an America without hope- and I have my doubts as to how much hope can be found driving on impersonal interstate highways, spending time in truck stops, and stopping only in food deserts where one is lucky to find an apple- it is America, nevertheless, and while the author gets to leave and return to England full of its supposed manners and British sensibilities- which I doubt can be found there either- we Americans are left trying to make sense of a country that now makes little sense to us. But it is not an America without hope. There are still good people in America. Maybe you have to look a little harder, but they can still be found picking people up on the side of the road, feeding the hungry, and holding onto what little hope there may be left.

Had the author tipped his bartender in the beginning of the book and swayed away from overgeneralizations involving all Americans lacking independent thoughts and normal human decency, I might have been more generous and given five stars, but alas one cannot cry the ignorance of a foreigner and then be upset by the ignorance that he is surrounded by.