Plato's Garage |
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A Note to the Reader |
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A Note to the Reader
An Online-Only Special from Rob Campbell, Author of Plato's Garage
My initial working title for Plato’s Garage was The Secret Life of Cars, but I decided it sounded more like a motorized tribute to Stevie Wonder than a contemplation of the emotional and metaphysical congress between man and machine... which reminds me of one of the first times I was conscious of riding in an automobile.
It was 1969, and my mother had been asked by my nursery school teacher to come and pick me up because I had coerced a classmate of mine to touch the steaming wax paper envelope over which the teacher’s assistant had just run a hot iron in order to melt the crayon shavings contained within. This led to much crying and scolding, and apparently I was insubordinate as well as sadistic. My mother gave it to me when she came to pick me up.
As we drove home in our 1967 olive green Chevrolet Estate station wagon, she yelled at me for acting like such a baby (I was expected to be very cognizant and adult at three years old for some reason). Actually, she went on and on about it in a sporadically fitful state, complete with tears and fists pummeling the steering wheel, until her words became an unintelligible tonal wallpaper. I became aware of two completely unfamiliar presences that leapt into focus as my mother’s voice faded into the background: Stevie Wonder, and the family car.
Stevie was singing "Ma Cherie Amour" on the radio, and it was the first time I had ever differentiated one song from the miasma of environmental sound that squished its way through my toddler’s nervous system. This somehow had something to do with the fact that I also became aware of the station wagon as a neutral third party in the interaction between my mother and myself. The smooth forward motion and the dense, satiny nylon belt across my lap made me feel I was being taken care of by a benevolent force, which was an entirely new sensation for me at the time.
I soon extrapolated this feeling from cars to all inanimate objects, and I was convinced that I was surrounded by things that harbored their own kinds of special life forces. After a while, I took this to a manic childhood extreme and started apologizing to everything I threw in the trash, from banana peels to candy wrappers to used tissues. "I’m sorry I have to do this," I would say to my used snot-rag, "but I know you’ll be happy here."
"Yes, I’ll be happy here," it would answer in a cute, tiny peep, and I’d throw it on top of the rest of the living, breathing garbage.
This turned out to be a phase, but I’ve always been fascinated by the way we imbue the objects around us with character and energy. As I started to write Plato’s Garage, I wanted to explore the ways in which we partner with cars in our own identification and self-transformations. I did a lot of research in books about cars and "car people," and finally turned to Gaston Bachelard, an early- to mid-twentieth century French philosopher who wrote a lot about the animistic world and the ways we interact with it.
But the book research I did for the essays in Plato’s Garage only contributed to their tonal backgrounds, like my mother’s voice in the green station wagon. They are a collection of straightforward, real-life narratives about myself and a host of other odd characters I met and interviewed in my search for stories about the mysterious ways in which people relate to the cars in their lives.
The critic who wrote the book up for the Kirkus Review called it "intriguing, but a strange trip indeed for those not enslaved to the automobile," and it’s true that it portrays an intimacy with the automobile that people in public transportation-oriented areas might not share. On a deeper level, though, it’s a story about the relationship between man and machine, and the complicated symbiosis that ties the two together.
It’s also the story of a gay man’s journey down the freeway of life, but I think it’s possible that it transcends its situational "gayness" and offers stories and observations that ring true to people of all leanings and tendencies. One reader recently told me he was laughing out loud through much of it, which is strange, because I don’t really consider myself a comic writer. But I like the idea, and if it makes you laugh, too—great!
—Rob Campbell
January 11, 2000
Copyright © 2000
Rob Campbell.
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