Reading The Bricklin: Narrating the Place of Dreaming in an Era of Self-Sufficiency
Abstract
The Bricklin: An Automotive Fantasy traces the rise and fall of efforts to build Malcolm Bricklin’s signature sports car in rural New Brunswick in the early 1970s. I read The Bricklin as an effort by contemporary Atlantic Canadian writers and artists to highlight how the history of place shapes experience without replicating formulaic conceptions of rural life on the East Coast. Rather than subverting festishized versions of an anti-modern Atlantic Canada, The Bricklin both critiques and celebrates the nostalgic exploration of place.
RésuméThe Bricklin: An Automotive Fantasy retrace l’essor et le déclin des efforts déployés pour construire la voiture de sport signée Malcolm Bricklin en région rurale du Nouveau-Brunswick dans le début des années 1970. J’ai considéré The Bricklin comme un effort des écrivains et artistes contemporains du Canada atlantique à souligner à quel point l’histoire d’une région façonne l’expérience sans pour autant se rattacher aux conceptions stéréotypées de la vie rurale de la côte Est. De fait, The Bricklin réussit à la fois à critiquer et célèbrer l’exploration nostalgique d’un endroit plutôt que de renverser des versions fétichisées d’un Canada atlantique anti-moderniste.
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