If Hunter Thompson and Joan Didion had produced a literary offspring, a young man whose older brother was Bill Bryson, his writing might sound something like Kent Russell's. That's the spirit that infuses In the Land of Good Living: A Journey to the Heart of Florida, Russell's entertaining, often deeply reflective portrait of his uneasy relationship with his native state, a place he calls "Hothouse America, a microcosm or synecdoche of the larger nation."
In late August 2016, the Miami-born journalist (I Am Sorry to Think I Have Raised a Timid Son), along with his friends Glenn, a Canadian documentary film producer, and Noah, an Iraq War Marine veteran and fellow Floridian, embarked on a daunting journey, attempting to re-create the 1,000-mile walking campaign of former governor and senator Lawton Chiles in 1970. The goal, as Russell enthusiastically envisioned it, was to produce the "grandest, funniest, most far-ranging, depth-plumbing, tear-jerking, je-ne-sais-quoi-capturing work of art ever to emerge from the rank morasses and mirage metropolises of our beloved home!"
If they don't quite pull off that feat, the resulting account of their shambling odyssey on foot through America's "most dangerous pedestrian state" will more than suffice. Energetic and insightful, In the Land of Good Living bounces between the madcap account of the trio's frequent misadventures as they trudge across the state--from the "grim hotels and fried fish shacks" of Perdido Key in the Panhandle to flashy Miami, with its "combination of arriviste decadence and abject poverty"--and biting reflections on subjects that include looming environmental catastrophe and some of the "carpetbaggers, chicanerers, and salesfellows who grafted the American Dream onto strange roots in sandy soil."
At various moments, Russell and his compatriots attend a hurricane party, evade a pack of hounds, survive a near miss with an apparently homicidal pickup truck driver, and hang out with assorted denizens of Florida life, including archetypal "Florida Men," among them an alligator hunter and the ex-addict who plays Jesus in an "unofficial capacity" at Orlando's Holy Land Experience. Russell skillfully juxtaposes these sometimes bizarre, frequently hilarious, encounters (some of them recounted in the form of shooting scripts for the projected documentary) with glimpses of the history of the "swamp of self-creation that, for better or worse, leads the nation the way a jutting thermometer leads the infirm" and visions of its perilous future.
Love it or loathe it, the third most populous state occupies an outsized presence in American life and consciousness. Anyone who wants to better understand why that is, and what it portends for the country, would do well to start with In the Land of Good Living. --Harvey Freedenberg, freelance reviewer
Shelf Talker: Journalist Kent Russell provides an unvarnished look at the attractive mess that is his home state.