In 1973, aged twenty-two, Timothy O'Grady left America for
Europe. He had grown up through the time of moonshots and protest
marches, new music and unprecedented economic expansion and of
hopes for a new society, a new democracy and a new kind of man. For
the next thirty years he lived in and wrote about Europe. As he
did, the American counter-culture crashed, Ronald Reagan came and
went, wars were declared and the country was attacked by air. Much
of the world began to look at America in a new way, wondering what
had happened to it and where it was going. Among them was Timothy
O'Grady, and he decided to go back and investigate. Following
in the footsteps of such Europeans as de Tocqueville, Dickens and
Simone de Beauvoir, and such Americans as Henry Miller, Kerouac,
Steinbeck and Woody Guthrie, he went out onto the American road,
travelling over fifteen thousand miles through thirty-five states.
He met academics, the homeless, war veterans, political activists,
New Orleans rappers, billionaires, novelists and a Ku Klux
Klansman. A Yale legal historian told him why there are a million
lawyers in America, a Chicago broker how executive pay is set and
how the lobbying system works in Washington, and a Salvadorean gang
member how life is on the streets of East Los Angeles. In every bar
he stopped in, it seemed, there was a story of American life to be
heard. Using history, memoir, state-of-the-nation analysis and a
novelist's skill at evoking places and people, Divine Magnetic
Lands presents a picture of America as it evolved and how it is at
the beginning of the twenty-first century.
Displays both the startling lyricism and the patient reflection that have made his previous fictions so compelling ... At once a work of profound personal and collective memory Time Out [O'Grady] writes beautifully of landscape... He is equally strong on history, politics and current affairs... There hasn't been a better book about America in years Daily Telegraph While a cultural and literary journey, O'Grady's is also a political one, showing a country in denial thanks to an inert media intent on ingratiating itself with the powerful Guardian O'Grady remains a noteworthy addition to the tradition [Max] Sebald pioneered, a tradition that mixes travel, history, fiction and introspection into the literary equivalent of a new world Independent He is perceptive and knowledgeable and writes clear, easy prose...If you're travelling to the States anytime soon, this is a book to pack Metro
