Autophobia: Love And Hate In The Automotive Age
The Age
Saturday December 20, 2008
Autophobia: Love and Hate in the Automotive Age
Brian Ladd University of Chicago Press, $47.95"AUTOPHOBIA" is a psychiatric disorder meaning "fear of oneself". Brian Ladd has co-opted the term for its homophony, and because our love affair with cars is such that to be afraid of them "is tantamount to fear of being human in the automobile age". Ladd explores the automobile's rise through the eyes of those who have hated or opposed it. In effect, it's a story of resistance: initially from those who regarded early motorists as rich and obnoxious show-offs like Toad in The Wind in the Willows and who saw the car's potential as a lethal weapon, through to those who felt it was changing the face of the countryside and cities for the worse and environmentalists who argue that the car has become the symbol of our unsustainable lifestyle. Ladd has a talent for turning the hard slog of scholarship into highly readable and thought-provoking cultural history.
© 2008 The Age