Car Thoughts

In 2000, Lynne Pearce published a striking and original essay, 'Driving north, driving south: reflections on the spatial/temporal co-ordinates of home'. This was an extended account of her driving experience, travelling regularly from Lancaster to Scotland, and from Lancaster to Cornwall, an early attempt at a phenomenology of being on the road. Twelve years later she returned to the theme, initially with a couple of new essays and eventually in the larger project that resulted in this book. As she records in her preface, in the intervening years the new field of 'mobilities research' has emerged and thrived, much of the work being done by her colleagues at the University of Lancaster. But where others have explored the 'car system', or the history of motoring, or car cultures, Pearce has continued to examine the question of what she refers to as 'automotive consciousness' - or 'what we're thinking when we're driving'. Her approach is phenomenological, but of an impure type: that is, it is grounded in a phenomenology that recognises the crucial role of memory and of cultural context. Her intention is to render explicit the cognitive and affective aspects of driving (and, to a lesser extent, of being a passenger in a car).

The main body of the book consists of readings of a variety of literary texts, written across the twentieth century ('the motoring century'), and organised into four thematic chapters: Searching, Fleeing, Cruising and Flying. These are preceded by a substantial theoretical introductory chapter, situating the study in a complex philosophical and interdisciplinary framework and offering preliminary thoughts on writing about driving. A little disconcertingly, this chapter begins by asserting the parallels between driving and thinking. Pearce opens with this statement:

It is my aim, in the first chapter of this book, to demonstrate how driving is paradigmatic as well as formative of the way we think. By this I am suggesting that the way in which the mind travels through time and space on its everyday cognitive journeys … is figuratively similar to the way in which cars and their drivers engage with the temporal and spatial environments through which they pass

(p1).

It is a somewhat misleading opening, since it soon becomes clear that the main focus of the book is the driving experience itself - not driving as something like thinking, or driving as a model for thinking. It is 'the rapid succession of thoughts that present themselves to a driver's consciousness - directed now towards the past, now towards the future, and prompted, in both cases, by a perceptual encounter with the present' (p1). This is a daunting project - how can one grasp these swiftly passing ideas, some perhaps barely conscious, and how can they possibly be captured in words? Lynne Pearce does an impressive job of showing some of the ways in which the mind works in the very particular circumstances of an enclosed space and a constantly moving state - which is to say a constantly changing parade of impressions outside the car. For the most part this is done through a dazzling, if eclectic, choice of texts. But the literary exploration of her theme, which takes up a good three-quarters of the book, is prefaced by a kind of re-run of her essay of 2000, in which she sets out again in her own car - this time in March 2015, and once again driving south and driving north. The following short extract gives a flavour of how well she takes hold of the experience in words.

The unfamiliar business of the road notwithstanding, I am still unable to suppress my excitement as I make the final sweep west. The sun is getting low in the sky and sunglasses are essential. It seems a long time since this morning's eclipse and, because of the distance I have travelled subsequently, what I witnessed already feels like a part of history; I could be remembering it from another fifteen years hence rather than as something that happened today…

From here it is only a couple...