In his 1956 poem, “America,” Beat poet Allen Ginsberg had asked a pertinent question about cars in America: Why do cars sell at $2500 apiece, whereas a product of artisanal penmanship like a “strophe” doesn’t sell at all? Yet cars are mass produced, whereas poems are singular works of individual imaginations.
What is a car’s appeal?
A rudimentary response would be that it is a vehicle that transports us across long distances in a short time and in the comfort of privacy.
But a car is more than that; it’s a second home for many. Moreover, to be able to drive a car is deemed a valuable activity, not just in the United States, but now, in light of the legalization of driving for women in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, elsewhere as well.
In Saudi Arabia, driving has been for a while upheld as a right, akin to the right to vote or to shelter and dignity. Thus by getting behind the wheels, Saudi women expect to experience liberty and modernity in a way that they haven’t before.
A car therefore has utility, market value, imparts status and now symbolical value.
Yet, a car, as writer Jesse Balls reminds us in the novel, “Census,” is less than a “mule,” if we allow ourselves to momentarily think of this piece of machinery as just that–a tool, on which we ride.
The following sentence from “Census” is brought to our attention in the “First Sentences” segment of the New York Times:
And, of course, a person riding and singing–isn’t it obvious that this is a superior situation to a man on a mule with a radio?
The sentence has been parsed to yield a meaning:
The narrator has explained why he has never had a car with a radio. A car, he contends, should be like a mule, only less beautiful–just a mute thing that moves you on, steadily and faithfully, toward the place you are going, while [you] sing to pass time.
Present Continuity 