The Review of Contemporary Fiction

American Nomad by Steve Erickson
Trey Strecker

Steve Erickson. American Nomad. Henry Holt, 1997. 256 pp. $25.00.

Steve Erickson’s imaginative documentary of the 1996 Presidential election began when Rolling Stone hired him to report on the campaign as if it were a novel. The magazine’s editors quickly tired of the novelist’s narrative style and fired him after the New Hampshire primary, so he lit out on his own nomadic journey, “one last rampage through the national asylum,” into the heart, mind, and soul of America. In Erickson’s view the election was “a war for the soul of America.” More than a mere chronicler, Erickson serves as our war correspondent in the apocalyptic trenches of millennial America. Although Leap Year, Erickson’s account of the 1988 election, pictures an America caught in the grip of inertia, America 1996 faces a more insidious, less benign threat from within—us. He contrasts the “moral generosity” of Lincoln’s second inaugural speech with the exclusionary rhetoric of today’s politicians and concludes that “America wearies of democracy.” Beset by rage, hypocrisy, and selfish interests, millennial America is in an entropic slide. As Americans feel increasingly oppressed by individual freedom, political options move further out toward extremes of conformity hostile to any “moral nuance.” Erickson’s narrative historicizes America’s contradictory desires and works to restore this moral middle ground. American Nomad deserves to be compared with the best political and cultural journalism of Norman Mailer and Hunter S. Thompson (Erickson even accosts Bob Dole in a men’s room, recalling the legendary Thompson-McGovern meeting in Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, ‘72), yet Erickson’s style is less self-indulgent, less overwhelmed by the observing author’s persona. Remarkably insightful, sharply funny, complex, and provocative, American Nomad rates a space on the short shelf of books about politics and life at the end of the twentieth century. [Trey Strecker]


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The Review of Contemporary Fiction American Nomad by Steve Erickson Trey Strecker Steve Erickson. American Nomad. Henry Holt, 1997. 256 pp. $25.00. Steve Erickson’s imaginative documentary of the 1996 Presidential election began when Rolling Stone hired him to report on the campaign as if it were a novel. The magazine’s editors quickly tired of the novelist’s narrative style and fired him after the New Hampshire primary, so he lit out on his own nomadic journey, “one last rampage through the national asylum,” into the heart, mind, and soul of America. In Erickson’s view the election was “a war for the soul of America.” More than a mere chronicler, Erickson serves as our war correspondent in the apocalyptic trenches of millennial America. Although Leap Year, Erickson’s account of the 1988 election, pictures an America caught in the grip of inertia, America 1996 faces a more insidious, less benign threat from within—us. He contrasts the “moral generosity” of Lincoln’s second inaugural speech with the exclusionary rhetoric of today’s politicians and concludes that “America wearies of democracy.” Beset by rage, hypocrisy, and selfish interests, millennial America is in an entropic slide. As Americans feel increasingly oppressed by individual freedom, political options move further out toward extremes of conformity hostile to any “moral nuance.” Erickson’s narrative historicizes America’s contradictory desires and works to restore this moral middle ground. American Nomad deserves to be compared with the best political and cultural journalism of Norman Mailer and Hunter S. Thompson (Erickson even accosts Bob Dole in a men’s room, recalling the legendary Thompson-McGovern meeting in Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, ‘72), yet Erickson’s style is less self-indulgent, less overwhelmed by the observing author’s persona. Remarkably insightful, sharply funny, complex, and provocative, American Nomad rates a space on the short shelf of books about politics and life at the end of the twentieth century. [Trey Strecker]

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