Posted by Rob on Jul 23, 2010 in E-LIT

This web project recounts a rude and astonishing road trip taken with German writers Tina Uebel, Dierk Hagedorn & Folko Huelsebusch during the course of their wild and legendary 1998 official literary visit that produced the cunning, bilingual book Rude Trip.

Tina and Dierk had located a Hamburg, Illinois lurking in the smallest print on the state map and insisted that we make a pilgrimage there. In a rental car in hot summer we set out . . . and the rest is hystery.

I’m a great fan of scolling on the web, and especially the oft-forgot horizontal scroll. The endless horizon line on the page recalls the endless, flat horizon of Illinois which so boggled my European guests. This website was subsequently converted into a marginal cartoon that runs the entire length of the book Rude Trip. Twice in fact, once in German, once in English.