Truck (English)

A year-long odyssey under the hood of a 1950 Dodge pickup among the brake shoes and valves becomes more than a mechanic's memoir; it is a meditation on machines, metaphysics, and the moral universe. Nearly two decades after the first publication, the essential dilemma of Truck still rings true: as Jerome dismantles the aged straight six, he also disassembles our reliance on "two-hundred-dollar appliances that sport flaws in thirty-five cent parts" and decries the "deliberate encapsulation, impenetrability, of the overtechnologized things with which we furnish our lives". Despite gouged knuckles, a frigid New Hampshire winter, frustrating and inexplicable assemblies, and a close call when the truck rolls off its jacks, he perseveres. In the end, he admits, "I did not find God out there in the barn among the cans of nuts and bolts". What he does find, however, is that he must make peace with technology. minimize