Three Kinds of Motion: Kerouac, Pollock, and the Making of American Highways (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781936747900)

"Like a great conversationalist, Hanick paints a generous canvas, and I rode the length of this powerful book much like I first experienced the American interstate: songs on the stereo, windows down, and the bittersweet sense that youth is fleeting. Three Kinds of Motion holds open a wild and beautiful journey, not to be missed."--Thalia Field

In 1943, Peggy Guggenheim commissioned a mural from Jackson Pollock to hang in the entryway of her Manhattan townhouse. It was the largest Pollock canvas she would ever own, and four years later she gave it to a small Midwestern institution with no place to put it. When the original scroll of On the Road goes on tour across the country, it lands at the same Iowa museum housing Peggy's Pollock, revitalizing Riley Hanick's adolescent fascination with the author. Alongside these two narrative threads, Hanick revisits Dwight D. Eisenhower's quest to build America's first interstate highway system. When catastrophic rains flood the Iowa highways with their famous allure and history of conquest, they also threaten the museum and its precious mural. In Three Kinds of Motion, his razor-sharp, funny, and intensely vulnerable book-length essay, Hanick moves deftly between his three subjects. He delivers a story with breathtaking ingenuity.

Riley Hanick is an essayist, journalist, and translator. His work has received support from the Jentel and McKnight foundations and he has served as a writer-in-residence for the University of Iowa Museum of Art. He teaches at Murray State University.

Author: Riley Hanick
ISBN-10: 1936747901
ISBN-13: 9781936747900
Publisher: Sarabande Books
Language: English
Published: 04/14/2015
Pages: 288
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.70lbs
Size: 7.60h x 5.20w x 0.80d

Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 02/01/2015
Publishers Weekly 03/02/2015
Booklist 04/01/2015 pg. 13
Shelf Awareness 04/24/2015