Bookworm
Ron Padgett: Motor Maids across the Continent
Poet Ron Padgett reveals that in the 1960s, he found a dusty novel in a Manhattan bookstore. Originally written for teenage girls during World War I, Padgett has been playfully rewriting it ever since.
By Michael Silverblatt • • 28m ListenThere are works of literature like War and Peace. And then there's another kind of book – light, nonsensical, funny, illogical. Poet Ron Padgett reveals that in the 1960s, while a senior at Columbia, he found a dusty novel in a Manhattan bookstore. Originally written for teenage girls during World War I, Padgett has been playfully rewriting the cross-country adventure story ever since he stumbled across it. More than 50 years in the making, the result -- Motor Maids across the Continent (The Song Cave) -- can be called a doctored novel, a white-out novel or an erasure novel. Padgett calls it the literature of the fantastic.
Read an excerpt from Motor Maids across the Continent.
Photo by John Sarsgard
