🔭 The Driving Essay

An Interview with the author’s 2007 Ford Focus.

Read Nicholas’s column, “The Driving Essay,” on Foofaraw now!

First off, how many of these stories are true?

Most, probably. I’ve got corresponding dents, stains, and scorch marks. On the other fender, my “check engine” light’s been illuminated since mid-2009. You could track down the demented artists, horny anarchists, and that incontinent hitchhiker for corroboration, but you’d still have to overtake subjective experience and selective memory in the passing lane. On the other fender—there’s an advantage to having fenders rather than hands—this ain’t exactly Stephen King’s “Maximum Overdrive.” Sing along if you know the words, “Your mileage may vary.”

The great American road trip. Now there’s a comfortable trope! Why not assembly line that?

That David Copperfield, bumper-to-bumper shtick is pure cruise control. And do you really want to read about the glacially slow fossilization of the algae and plankton that went into the production of my plastic glove box handle? To hell with the glacially slow fossilization of the algae and plankton that went into the production of my plastic glove box handle! You can take the glacially slow fossilization of the algae and plankton that went into the production of my plastic glove box handle and shove it up your asphalt! You ever read “The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí”? Now there’s an autobiography I’d tailgate.

I thought the whole point of that book is to make you quit reading.

Audiot!

I don't know enough about cars to get that.

Banause!

Gesundheit. Each chapter of your book begins with an air freshener scent that foreshadows calamity. How'd you arrive at that device?

I wanted to demonstrate the impotence of capitalism as a problem-solving method for endemic corruption. It only masks and distracts as our collective social upholstery autocannibalizes. It’s morbid, ironic skill application, like in that Stephen King story, “Survivor Type.”

I’m with you on the power of smell. Maybe you overheard that story I tell whenever we rumble road kill to distract from the lingering putridity? The one about dementia and my host mom in Japan. How she took care of her aging mother and would cook her favorite food whenever she got upset and confused. The smell calmed her down. Sweet, kinda sad, and wholly unlike unholy skunk.

You’re drifting. And why don’t you ever share the story about when you drove me on a flat for three miles because it’d just snowed and you didn’t want to put on a donut in the cold? My poor rim!

But I always changed your oil! I even used the numbers on that stretchy sticker that looks like a holiday window cling. That’s twice as often as in the manual!

Oil changes are the undercarriage, not the roof rack. You need to rotate tires. You don’t try—you just do. Fifty-one percent of turns are right turns, you know that?

Was that a Seinfeld quote?

The one where Kramer and Newman try the Michigan bottle deposit scam. I gotta tell you, seeing the walk-in trunk of that USPS truck sparked something in me, ohhh boy. 

Not my jam, but you do you. I get the pop culture thing, though. I find more emotional resonance with Homer than, well, Homer. It’s about shared experiences and nouveau mythological touchstones. Plus, you know, there are no new ideas.

Even that David Mitchel book “Cloud Atlas” felt like a carpool karaoke live stream in an airport beater. And the not-McDonald’s robot slavery transcript felt like a high-interest auto loan on a model with zero resale value. Storytelling is a zeitgeist thing. Look at you, writing from year-old notes while stories with the exact same ideas keep popping up on foofaraw!

Remember Erin Brandt Filliter’s “Eroticauto (AKA: a Carlequin Romance, AKA: 50 Shades of Grease)” back in August? That was a banger.

And what about that horror CNF piece you've been shopping all year? The one with that discount BetterHelp psychiatrist's five-things-you-can-see bullshit. Salena Casha did it better with “What She Would Give” in June. And your riff on carcinisation like that one of Joel Glover’s Cavendish stories, “The Announcement," back in October of 2024. Hey, did you catch that? We're plugging other writers like at the end of a foofaraw author interview. Maybe you should ask Kevin to interview you about this one …

[Editor’s note: I think I have too many questions about Nick’s sanity to even know where to begin with an interview…]

That's too meta, even for me.

Again with the brake calling the accelerator pedestrian! How can you even justify this odyssey? You haven't driven a car in almost a decade.

Fair. Any parting shots?

Fuck you, Lightning McQueen. Also, those self-driving cars in Philip K. Dick’s “The Game Players of Titan” are almost here, and given their track record so far, we should rethink that whole “vehicular manslaughter” thing.