Jonathan Raban left Britain and moved to Seattle in 1990, when he was 47. He sold his Volkswagen on his way to Heathrow airport. He bought a Dodge with Washington state plates the next day, and in this second-hand car he would, over the years, travel through and write about his new country. ‘The Pacific Northwest continues to be a magnet — the strongest regional magnet in the country, I would guess — for hopefuls and newlifers of every imaginable cast,’ Raban wrote in the summer of 1993, in a piece that’s now republished in Driving Home:
It feels like the last surviving corner of the United States to be widely promoted … as the one green spot in the moral sand-waste of the world. People like to think of themselves as undergoing not mere relocation but full- blown resurrection here in the smoke- and cholesterol-free city of Seattle, where eternal life is thought to be a viable alternative to two packs a day.
In Driving Home, you can follow Raban’s progress: in 1990, he was an immigrant living with his new American wife in a rented apartment with furniture bought at garage sales.
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