The Lincoln Highway

 Last year (or something like that, as my indistinct sense of time these days would have it), I read a novel by Amor Towles called A Gentleman in Moscow. I was so impressed with Towles' talents and so nourished by his tale that when a new novel by this author showed up on my Kindle Store home screen, I straightaway clicked on buy, not realizing at the time that this was a prepublication offer. A couple of weeks ago the novel appeared at last in my Kindle library, much to my surprise and delight, for I had forgotten all about it.

The Lincoln Highway is the great American novel all over again, a la Towles this time around, and it is a thoroughly American novel indeed, full of echoes--of Faulkner, of Fitzgerald, of Steinbeck, of Salinger, of Mark Twain and of Huck's journey down the river--for this is a journey novel crossing the great expanse of geography, of time, of history and mythology, beginning deceptively with the notion of a classic western journey (in this case from Nebraska to San Francisco), and yet taking the the four main voyagers relentlessly eastward, away from their destination, and ending in upstate New York. 

I had the sense in reading this novel of savoring every bite, looking forward to every new fork-full of the feast, and yet regretting that it was disappearing from the plate so quickly. It is a novel that you live in as long as it is before you, and one that you miss when the last page is turned. 

Well, I had some passages that I wanted to copy and paste, but I find that my mind has wrongly remembered the page numbers. Therefore, I will say just this: Read it!