Abstract

Howe then turns to Chartres, a traditional location of pilgrimage, to ask what other sites might still be capable of compelling visitors in secular time. He portrays Berlin as a scene of twentieth-century history--and a city that helped him make sense of his American life. Finally, he writes about Columbus, Ohio, as home. Vividly rendering the places he has known, Howe meditates on the weight of home, the temptations of the metropolis, the fact of dislocation, the unraveling of history, the desire to remake ourselves through voyage, and the wonder of the familiar.In ways that too often elude travel writers, it is place that holds our imagination, that inspires much of our art and literature. Howe's references are often literary - Kafka, Roland Barthes, Flaubert - while his elegy to Columbus's High Street reveals a striking depth of feeling for a main drag marked by fast food chains and ethnic restaurants, student hang-outs and underused parks. Across an Inland Sea evokes the various senses of place that can fill and haunt a life--and ultimately give life its form and meaning.