The Long Landscape - by Peter Delpeut (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A filmmaker's two-wheeled conquest of the American West uncovers the soul of American Manifest Destiny and connects to fellow passionate cyclists from the corners of 20th-century surrealism, modernist painting, high-wheeling, and science fiction.

To cross the United States by bicycle with his beloved, a Dutch filmmaker sets out with her from Disney's Epcot Center toward Las Vegas -- a 4500 mile journey -- on the cusp of summer. His goal is to reimagine the dimensions and breadth of the American landscape without the mediation of a car's windshield. What ensues in his search for that mythological American West, which is seamlessly represented in movies and literature, is discovered to be rarely felt in its actual punishing weather and expanse. On their way through the South, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, the couple encounter a blistering cast of characters no film director could even hope to dream up. As they probe the boredom of the long, drawn-out landscape, they discover a philosophy to unite the challenge, wonderment, discovery, and naivete that brought them along these roads. Woven into the narrative is the history of long-distance cycling in America, high-wheeler adventurers in the 1870s and 1880s, H.G. Wells's Wheels of Chance, the sublime paintings of Mark Rothko, and Alfred Jarry's send-up, Supermale, about the erotics of the machine age. The forty-year-olds who embarked in Florida fell more deeply in love during their adventure, which culminates in the ridiculous simulacrum of landscape in Las Vegas, a kind of nightmare; but instead of discouraging them, they write in a new introduction, this trip was the seed of a passion they have pursued around the world for decades since.

Review Quotes

"Delpeut has written a fantastic story, which in its charming combination of style, color, content and depth, can hardly be compared to the average world of the average cyclist." --The World Cyclist

"Much more than just another travelogue." --De Volkskrant

"You get a feeling for space."--NRC Handelsblad

"Discussions about the work of Peter Delpeut are dominated by ...time. This unstoppable force, which hovers in the background of our daily lives exerting its endless influence on all things, could be considered Delpeut's professional forte." --Matthew Cole Levine, Found Footage Magazine

"Fastidious and probing.... Delpeut is a filmmaker of merit, considered a pioneer of the found footage turn in contemporary cinema and art." --Dara Waldron, Millennium Film Journal

Praise for past works

For The Forgotten Season:

"An exceptionally mature novel."
--Groene Amsterdammer

"Wonderful novel."
--NRC Handelsblad

"A mysteriously beautiful book that trips us and surprises us."
--Literary Netherlands

For In the Black of the Mirror:

"Delpeut is a careful and visual writer and knows how to awaken life with his descriptions of the wanderings through landscape paintings. [...] Not a book that you read in one go, but that in small fragments take in."
--het Parool

"A compelling masterpiece. [...] Literature at its best: obsessive, detailed, curious and full of tantalizing reflections and encounters." --Groene Amsterdammer

"The book is thicker than my fist because Peter Delpeut elaborates. A detail from a [painting] can take many pages, [...] Delpeut writes in a meandering, micro-detailed way, but also with fascinating mindfulness; he forces you to look far from our present hectic existence. [...] Delpeut does not impose anything. He leads the way. And the road is fascinating all the way to the end."
--Esquire, Netherlands

About the Author

Peter Delpeut (b.1956) is a Dutch author and filmmaker. He has written four novels, several essay books on art and film, and two lyrical books about long distance cycling. For his debut novel in 2007 he was nominated for the Gerard Walschap Prize and awarded the Halewijn Prize. He makes films in many genres: found footage, documentary and features. Many of them are critically acclaimed and prizewinning films, including Lyrical Nitrate; Felice, Felice...; andThe Forbidden Quest. Delpeut is represented by Film Secession, an FWA-award winning online film museum. He studied philosophy and film theory, graduating from the Dutch Film Academy in 1984. He served as editor for film magazines Skrien and Versus. From 1988 to 1995 he worked as curator and deputy-director for the Netherlands Filmmuseum (now Eye), famous at the time for its revolutionary color preservations of films from the silent era. In 2005 a retrospective of his film work was presented in Washington D.C., New York and Berkeley. He currently lives in Amsterdam.