A L S O_.T O D A Y Blue Glow Hyping the "X-Files" flick with Duchovny, Anderson and Sting RECENTLY IN ENTERTAINMENT Mr. Jealousy Reviewed by Charles Taylor Noah Baumbach's new urban comedy smartly satirizes self-involvement -- without being too self-involved (06/12/98) Six Days, Seven Nights Reviewed by Stephanie Zacharek As cheap and predictable as a discount package tour, but still a terrific getaway (06/11/98) Back in the U.S.S.R. By Julia Barton After a brush with American fame, perestroika poster boy Boris Grebenshikov has returned to his Russian roots (06/10/98) Sharps & Flats Reviews of new music by Dwight Yoakam, the Smashing Pumpkins, Tuatara, Nicholas Payton and the Jesus and Mary Chain (06/10/98) Home Movies By Charles Taylor Kitsch is bustin' out all over with Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis (06/09/98) BROWSE THE SARAH VOWELL ARCHIVES

[ A M E R I C A N _.S Q U I R M__B Y__S A R A H_.V O W E L L ] UNEASY RIDER | PAGE 1, 2 - - - - - - - - - - I know that in these multi-culti days, I'm supposed to see the words "Santa Maria" and immediately think of genocide. Of course I am. Unlike when I first heard the name of Columbus' ship, kids today are washed in the blood of the dead. And it's important to know the way this country came into being. But you can know that and yet still draw inspiration from the ideal of the voyagers. Because without that ideal, the ideal of going, of finding, of making new lives, we have nothing to shoot for, nothing to fall back on. It is, as a character in Don DeLillo's road novel "Americana" calls it, "the America we thought we lived in when we were children. Small children. Very small children indeed." The beauty of Truman's childlike character is that he looks at maps in the same rapt manner the rest of us look at television, resolving to leave home. At least Truman has a home, such as it is. The rest of us don't have the luxury of being trapped in his totalitarian state. Most of us can go wherever we want whenever. Those of us who do, give up the luxury of having a home, of feeling at home. Move too much, go too often, and you won't belong anywhere. As writer Mary Cantwell says in her new travel memoir, "Speaking With Strangers," "I rolled about the world like a billiard ball looking for a pocket." If there is one social type in this country who is exempt from the go-go-go impulse, it is the mother, especially a single mother like the divorced Cantwell. This stereotype has consequences. In "The Truman Show," Truman's wife, a wannabe mother-to-be, makes the most clichéd arguments against Truman's wanderlust. She calls him a teenager, says it will empty their savings, postpone the development of their domestic bliss. But Truman's right to see the world goes unquestioned because he's a man. A female magazine editor like Cantwell must justify her jaunts as business travel. Still, it takes a certain amount of bravery for a mother, even an American one, to admit in print, "Sometimes I would look at my girls, my beauties, and think, 'If it weren't for you two, I could leave.'" Eventually, she realizes she's settled down, she's built her little homestead, and it happened all the way back on "the day I married New York." I imagine that even the American who makes a home, who settles down, never ever forgets the precise location of all the exits out of town. "I know the road's still there, it's waiting," murmurs David Thomas on Pere Ubu's new album, "Pennsylvania." Thomas, who has recorded music in his native Cleveland for nearly a quarter of a century, might be punk rock's own Truman Burbank. He gets around and all -- he even lives in England now -- but he always ends up back home. He mumbles non sequiturs through the song "Woolie Bullie" like a hitchhiker you wish you'd never picked up: "There's a diner out on Route 128 in western Pennsylvania; I spent my life there one afternoon." The effect is marvelously, miraculously creepy. He talks so low at times you crane your neck into his mouth; just because someone's an oddball hitchhiker doesn't mean he isn't talking truth. I won't spoil "The Truman Show" for those who haven't seen it. But let's do this: Let's ask a question the movie doesn't. What happens if Truman gets away? Hits the road? Would he rent a convertible and see the sights? Buy souvenirs? Lunch at Stuckey's? Or, like the rest of us, would he go a little crazy from the possibilities, from all those highways, from all that space? Then would he be free from his own platitudes and stock responses? Mumbling about his TV life, he might sound like the hitchhiking David Thomas when he mutters, "Culture is a weapon that's used against us." And then, he might look out the window at the new world speeding by and proclaim, "Geography is a language that can't screw up. Land and what we add to it can't lie." SALON | June 15, 1998 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - American Squirm by Sarah Vowell appears every other Monday in Salon Entertainment.