영어로 읽는 고전 _ 싱클레어 루이스의 프리 에어
싱클레어 루이스의 “프리 에어”는 1919년에 쓰인 소설이다. 클레어 볼트우드는 자동차가 막 보급되던 시절, 뉴욕시에서 태평양 연안 북서부까지 자동차 여행을 떠나고, 그곳에서 자신의 특권적 세계관에 도전하는 노동계급 청년을 만난다. 이 선구적인 로드 트립 소설은 자동차 여행이 지닌 민주적 자유를 예찬하는 한편, 속물적인 엘리트들과 소탈한 인물들을 대비시킨다. 루이스의 평등주의적 시선은 탁 트인 길 위에서 펼쳐지는 계급 간의 긴장과 개인의 변화를 탐구하며, 훗날 미국 로드 소설 전통을 예고한다.
Classics Read in English _ Free Air by Sinclair Lewis
Written in 1919, Sinclair Lewis's Free Air sends Claire Boltwood on a pioneering automobile journey from New York City to the Pacific Northwest, in the early days of motoring. Along the way she meets a working-class young man who unsettles her privileged view of the world. This trailblazing road-trip novel celebrates the democratic freedom of travel by automobile, setting snobbish elitists against unpretentious, down-to-earth folk. Lewis's egalitarian vision examines the tensions of class and the transformation of the self on the open road, foreshadowing the tradition of the American road novel that would follow.
Among the contents
When the windshield was closed it became so filmed with rain that Claire fancied she was piloting a drowned car in dim spaces under the sea. When it was open, drops jabbed into her eyes and chilled her cheeks. She was excited and thoroughly miserable. She realized that these Minnesota country roads had no respect for her polite experience on Long Island parkways. She felt like a woman, not like a driver.
But the Gomez-Dep roadster had seventy horsepower, and sang songs. Since she had left Minneapolis nothing had passed her. Back yonder a truck had tried to crowd her, and she had dropped into a ditch, climbed a bank, returned to the road, and after that the truck was not. Now she was regarding a view more splendid than mountains above a garden by the sea—a stretch of good road. To her passenger, her father, Claire chanted:
"Heavenly! There's some gravel. We can make time. We'll hustle on to the next town and get dry."
