Plato's Garage

The latest entry in the crowded memoir race is autobiography as auto-biography. In a series of essays about car people and car culture, gay journalist and automotive aficionado Campbell cleverly interprets his own life story as a series of relationships between man and machine. He begins with an anatomy of the cruising rituals, gay and straight, in his hometown of Bakersfield, Calif., which he juxtaposes with those in his chosen home, arguably the world car capital, Los Angeles. There, he confronts a culture of people who are inseparable from their pink Corvettes and vintage Caddies, and for whom a car is a ""flamboyant calling card."" Whether describing car styles or hairstyles, Campbell has an eye for detail and an ability to find meaning in unlikely places. Every ride he takes becomes a rite of passage, be it a blindfolded race through Paris or a mute trip in a computer-navigated Toyota in Kyoto. The characters he meets along his journey are willfully quirky and wittily portrayed, particularly a transsexual who performs operations on cars that are as radical as what has been done to her body. Like so many who live their lives in a state of perpetual motion, Campbell heads toward a nervous breakdown, although he at first ignores the signs. He manages the necessary repairs with the help of a little philosophizing that makes for less engaging reading (the garage in the book's title is a transposition of Plato's metaphorical cave). Still, when his writing stays on the ground, it offers a smooth ride. (Feb.)