Los Autonautas

JC and Fafner

A VW camper was much more Cortazar's style. Long after the Seat spot featured in yesterday's post is just a flash in the digital memory pan, readers will be discovering Cortazar's "timeless voyage from Paris to Marseille." As chronicled in Autonauts of the Cosmoroute, in May, 1982, Cortazar and his companion, Carol Dunlop, set out from Paris with the plan to spend the next 31 days on the Autoroute du Soleil--a trip that would normally take 5 or 6 hours. Their rules were simple: they would visit two rest stops per day, sleeping overnight at the second. They would live on what they packed into their VW camper-van dragon, Fafner, and provisions from friends who met them at several points along the way, and what they could obtain at the occasional rest-stop shop or restaurant. As it was, above all, a scientific expedition, they kept notes on what they saw, ate, drank, and thought about.

They were on the highway itself just minutes a day, since the rest stops were spaced every 20 kms or so (the French love their Aires). Some are quite lush, others mere concrete parking areas parallel to the highway. Either way, they would decamp and set up the "florid horrors" (chaise lounges), table, books, typewriters, bottles, and get to work.  Cortazar describes the reaction to the idea among friends as acquaintances as falling into "two 'antagonistic camps, "those who simply thought them mad and those who preferred to include them in the category of idiots."

A very fine madness. (Also, technically illegal, as French law allows travelers no more than two consecutive days on the autoroute. They had to hide their toll tickets and pay the maximum.)