Books, Arts & Manners: Life on the Mississippi

Old Glory: An American Voyage By Jonathan Raban Simon & Schuster, 408 pp., $16.95

After completing his brilliant literary excursion through Arabia, Jonathan Raban returned home to London only to find that soon his thoughts were drifting across the Atlantic. There was a portion of the American landscape, fondly remembered from boyhood, that had never been seen in the flesh. “It is called the Mississippi,” he writes, “but it is more an imaginary river than a real one. I had first read Huckleberry Finn when I was seven.”

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Mitchell S. Ross

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Old Glory: An American Voyage By Jonathan Raban Simon & Schuster, 408 pp., $16.95

After completing his brilliant literary excursion through Arabia, Jonathan Raban returned home to London only to find that soon his thoughts were drifting across the Atlantic. There was a portion of the American landscape, fondly remembered from boyhood, that had never been seen in the flesh. “It is called the Mississippi,” he writes, “but it is more an imaginary river than a real one. I had first read Huckleberry Finn when I was seven.”