Volkswagen Blues

Plot

Volkswagen Blues is a road novel, in the tradition of Jack Kerouac, about a middle-aged, formerly successful writer who has adopted the pen-name Jack Waterman (a metonymy can play on Waterman pens) and, as the novel begins, is experiencing a bout of writer's block. Discovering an old postcard, the protagonist embarks on a quest in search of his long-lost, rambling brother, Théo. Early in the narrative, Jack picks up a hitchhiker, a young Métisse woman, nicknamed "La Grande Sauterelle" due her long, grasshopper-like legs, as a travel companion, as well as a cat named Chop Suey.

Together in Jack's Volkswagen Minibus, which through personification becomes a character in the story, they travel from Gaspé to San Francisco, passing through Toronto, Detroit, Chicago, St. Louis and the American West on their way, exploring the history of European contact with the native people of the Americas. While on the road, they discuss language, literature, American expansion, the Oregon Trail, etc., and their trip becomes an allegory for the history of the French exploration of North America. At the same time, La Grande Sauterelle, who is struggling with her own identity, presents another version of American history, as recounted by the natives, where "discovery" is viewed as "invasion." Throughout the episodic novel a number of interesting and entertaining characters appear, including journalists, museum directors, railroad hoboes and writers such as Saul Bellow and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, as well as the spirit of Ernest Hemingway, John Muir and the Beat Generation.

All in all, Jack's journey through an America that scholar Paul Socken describes as a "lost paradise" is one of disillusionment and self-discovery that allows him to break through the impasse he had met in his writing.