What do you think?
Rate this book
Plato's Garage
A collection of essays examines the American obsession with cars and all the status and symbols that come along with them, as well as taking Plato's simile of the Cave one step further, into the Garage.
272 pages, Hardcover
First published January 15, 2000
1 person want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
February 6, 2022
Amazon review
Trash book. [2/5]
I only made it to the second chapter before I had to quit. This book is in my paper trash pile. I am not interested in the imagined exploits of a gay guy cruising parks for sex...especially when he's under-age and stupid.
Trash book!
M. Mowbray
---
Publishers Weekly
The latest entry in the crowded memoir race is autobiography as auto-biography. In a series of essays about car people and car culture, gay journalist and automotive aficionado Campbell cleverly interprets his own life story as a series of relationships between man and machine. He begins with an anatomy of the cruising rituals, gay and straight, in his hometown of Bakersfield, Calif., which he juxtaposes with those in his chosen home, arguably the world car capital, Los Angeles. There, he confronts a culture of people who are inseparable from their pink Corvettes and vintage Caddies, and for whom a car is a "flamboyant calling card." Whether describing car styles or hairstyles, Campbell has an eye for detail and an ability to find meaning in unlikely places. Every ride he takes becomes a rite of passage, be it a blindfolded race through Paris or a mute trip in a computer-navigated Toyota in Kyoto. The characters he meets along his journey are willfully quirky and wittily portrayed, particularly a transsexual who performs operations on cars that are as radical as what has been done to her body. Like so many who live their lives in a state of perpetual motion, Campbell heads toward a nervous breakdown, although he at first ignores the signs. He manages the necessary repairs with the help of a little philosophizing that makes for less engaging reading (the garage in the book's title is a transposition of Plato's metaphorical cave). Still, when his writing stays on the ground, it offers a smooth ride.
---
Kirkus Reviews
Newcomer Campbell serves as guide to quirky travels among the auto-obsessed. As a youth in Bakersfield, California, Campbell discovered the much-touted American symbiosis between man and driving machine. Even before he got behind the wheel of his first Pinto, Campbell was cruising the gay strips as a ``Brash Underaged Kid,'' learning the ropes of car life, shaping a persona, chafing with impatience. Cruising was ``a self-expression in which the automobile was an integral and active element,'' and your wheels a symbol that marked you one way or another: as the recipient of a thrown egg, a bashing with a bat, or a sexual advance. Campbell thinks of his car, then and now, not just as a means to self- actualization but as a love object itself, whether fitted with ``lustrous contours and flirty fins,'' or voluptuous but tough, built for speed, and bigger than you are.'' He finds cars wonderfully grounding as he contends with an HIV-positive diagnosis and a nervous breakdown. They give him a purpose in his journeys at the ragged edge, keeping his curiosity with life piqued, offering adventures outside the security of his cavethe quotidianto sample the dangers of the outside world. His car, like his body, ``didn't have to be perfect to get me where I was going,'' and with enough care it could give him the sturdiness to withstand his ``reckless emotional course.'' As for the car people he meets: Where else would one find the Breadwoman, who wears a big loaf over her head and chants whale music via karmic exchange with her art-car? The automobile gives you a way to see the world, Campbells essays suggest, with standards and ethics that transcend make and year and help to get you through hard times. Intriguing, but for those not enslaved to the car: a strange trip indeed.
Trash book. [2/5]
I only made it to the second chapter before I had to quit. This book is in my paper trash pile. I am not interested in the imagined exploits of a gay guy cruising parks for sex...especially when he's under-age and stupid.
Trash book!
M. Mowbray
---
Publishers Weekly
The latest entry in the crowded memoir race is autobiography as auto-biography. In a series of essays about car people and car culture, gay journalist and automotive aficionado Campbell cleverly interprets his own life story as a series of relationships between man and machine. He begins with an anatomy of the cruising rituals, gay and straight, in his hometown of Bakersfield, Calif., which he juxtaposes with those in his chosen home, arguably the world car capital, Los Angeles. There, he confronts a culture of people who are inseparable from their pink Corvettes and vintage Caddies, and for whom a car is a "flamboyant calling card." Whether describing car styles or hairstyles, Campbell has an eye for detail and an ability to find meaning in unlikely places. Every ride he takes becomes a rite of passage, be it a blindfolded race through Paris or a mute trip in a computer-navigated Toyota in Kyoto. The characters he meets along his journey are willfully quirky and wittily portrayed, particularly a transsexual who performs operations on cars that are as radical as what has been done to her body. Like so many who live their lives in a state of perpetual motion, Campbell heads toward a nervous breakdown, although he at first ignores the signs. He manages the necessary repairs with the help of a little philosophizing that makes for less engaging reading (the garage in the book's title is a transposition of Plato's metaphorical cave). Still, when his writing stays on the ground, it offers a smooth ride.
---
Kirkus Reviews
Newcomer Campbell serves as guide to quirky travels among the auto-obsessed. As a youth in Bakersfield, California, Campbell discovered the much-touted American symbiosis between man and driving machine. Even before he got behind the wheel of his first Pinto, Campbell was cruising the gay strips as a ``Brash Underaged Kid,'' learning the ropes of car life, shaping a persona, chafing with impatience. Cruising was ``a self-expression in which the automobile was an integral and active element,'' and your wheels a symbol that marked you one way or another: as the recipient of a thrown egg, a bashing with a bat, or a sexual advance. Campbell thinks of his car, then and now, not just as a means to self- actualization but as a love object itself, whether fitted with ``lustrous contours and flirty fins,'' or voluptuous but tough, built for speed, and bigger than you are.'' He finds cars wonderfully grounding as he contends with an HIV-positive diagnosis and a nervous breakdown. They give him a purpose in his journeys at the ragged edge, keeping his curiosity with life piqued, offering adventures outside the security of his cavethe quotidianto sample the dangers of the outside world. His car, like his body, ``didn't have to be perfect to get me where I was going,'' and with enough care it could give him the sturdiness to withstand his ``reckless emotional course.'' As for the car people he meets: Where else would one find the Breadwoman, who wears a big loaf over her head and chants whale music via karmic exchange with her art-car? The automobile gives you a way to see the world, Campbells essays suggest, with standards and ethics that transcend make and year and help to get you through hard times. Intriguing, but for those not enslaved to the car: a strange trip indeed.
Displaying 1 of 1 review