(P/B) AUTONAUTS OF THE COSMOROUTE - JULIO CORTAZAR

"How many times, under the effect of surprise, does one lose the true surprise enclosed therein? That's perhaps what happened to us today outside reception at the Beaune rest area motel, where someone we'll no doubt never see has cultivated perfectly shaped and dazzlingly colored roses. How to describe a color that spreads over the petals as if it were the most natural thing in the world, and which is at the same time, texture, consistency, light and shadow, warmth that does not kepp a sort of certainty of coolness from dominating the whole? Futile to explain that the most startling were of a color we'd have to situate between red and pink, carefully rationing the delicate droplets of orange that enhance its luminosity; for even if a reader by rapturous chance managed to conceive a mental vision of this hue, they would still lack the singularly heavy and transparent velvet that seemed to convey the defiance calmly growing there, a hundred or so meters from the freeway, its noise, rhythms and combustion gases. We could do nothing but stand there, quench the thirst for that color, that texture, suprised at finding that such emotion can still be born of a flower, and feeling a little silly at having no other possible reaction that saying oh, how lovely. And walking off to the motel room, key in hand." In May 1982, Julio Cortazar set out with his wife Carol Dunlop aboard their VW camper van to explore the uncharted territory of the Paris to Marseilles freeway. They loaded up with supplies - food, water, wine, cameras, typewriters - and prepared for an arduous voyage of thirty-three days. The rules of the expedition had been set down: they must not leave the motorway, and they must explore each of the rest areas along the way, at a rate of two per day. The result is a brilliantly funny, irreverent travelogue. (From the publisher)