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LE CAUCHEMAR CLIMATISE

An American crossing

From New York to Big Sur
on the trail of Henry Miller

« I only thought about encountering something authentically American... »
(Henry Miller)

After reading Henry Miller's air-conditioned nightmare, Julien Allouf decided to embark on a journey tracing the footsteps of the author on a long trip that would take him from New York to Big Sur on the Pacific coast of the United States. Interweaving excerpts from travel journals, photographs, and fragments from Miller's novel, this book recounts a journey into the heart of America. Texts by Nicolas Mathieu, Neige Sinno, and Bernard Plossu punctuate this deep dive into the American nightmare.

Cauchemar Climatisé, une traversée américaine / Julien Allouf, Mediapop Éditions, 2024 travel Cauchemar Julien Allouf

« I had dreamed of the South. I had dreamed of it through the books of Faulkner, Larry Brown, James Agee, Erskine Caldwell, Tennessee Williams, Flannery O'Connor, Robert Penn Warren. A dream drenched in sweat, prey to fury and restraint, to the grotesque and to alcohol. For if Miller’s nightmare is air-conditioned, there is another, the one in my dream, without a thermostat, an America of swamps, between Carolina and Louisiana, tangled in vines and religious zeal, sensual to the point of crime, racist to the death.
I went there and I encountered this South that has the Bible in its belly and has been dying for one hundred and fifty years of a lace-ridden melancholy, of memories of fortunes built on crime and chains, a civilization at the end of the world, as if Athens had caught malaria and had been sinking ever since under the weight of regret, the memory of its defeat. I also saw it by the roadside, with its mobile homes, its prefab houses, its trucker caps, a brand-new Dodge in front, beers on the porch, and in a corner, the Confederate flag. I saw it in neighborhoods that, in the middle of America, look like slums, the Mississippi Delta as another third world, a hell of division and brutality beneath the veneer of grand columned houses and impeccable hospitality.
But above all, I saw a world that, on the brink of the climate abyss, couldn’t care less, still driving huge gas-guzzlers, burning fuel, food, energy, and plastic as if tomorrow didn’t exist, telling itself that when the fire from the sky comes, we’ll just turn on the air conditioning.»
Nicolas Mathieu, 2020

travel Cauchemar Julien Allouf travel Cauchemar Julien Allouf travel Cauchemar Julien Allouf

« Big Sur, from 1966 to 2024! So many years! And yet the name still holds magic after all this time! It must be because this magnificent coastal road has never been widened: impossible!
As a result, it remains, even in the 21st century, a place of voluntary retreat, just as it was in the great years of Old Henry (Miller), when his friends Ephraim Doner—whom I had the chance to meet—and Emil White shared this world of protest through nature still wild, proto-environmentalists, really!
And now, here’s Julien roaming there in turn, photographing, of course, but also breathing in the spray of those enormous Pacific waves that are anything but peaceful, looking at landscapes that stretch all the way to the East, thinking of those before him who were caught in the passion of the place: what better on earth than a small log cabin on this coast where the only master often is an impenetrable fog! Or a house in the little canyon of Palo Colorado, a small road winding into the forest, where, upon reaching the summit, I saw an eagle fly away with a rattlesnake in its beak!!! You couldn’t invent such a landscape, yet here it is, in a country crisscrossed by thousands of miles of highways!
So let the Big Sur adventure continue, generation after generation, thank you, Julien! And thanks to the dear old master of rediscovered wisdom, Henry Miller, who fled what he called “the air-conditioned nightmare!”»
Bernard Plossu, 2024

Cauchemar Climatisé, une traversée américaine / Julien Allouf, Mediapop Éditions, 2024

« Because nowhere is the divorce between Man and nature as complete  »
(Henry Miller)

Cauchemar Climatisé, une traversée américaine / Julien Allouf, Mediapop Éditions, 2024

« I only thought about encountering something authentically American... »
(Henry Miller)

After reading Henry Miller's air-conditioned nightmare, Julien Allouf decided to embark on a journey tracing the footsteps of the author on a long trip that would take him from New York to Big Sur on the Pacific coast of the United States. Interweaving excerpts from travel journals, photographs, and fragments from Miller's novel, this book recounts a journey into the heart of America. Texts by Nicolas Mathieu, Neige Sinno, and Bernard Plossu punctuate this deep dive into the American nightmare.

travel Cauchemar Julien Allouf Julien Allouf photographer Julien Allouf on the trail of the «détectives sauvages»…

« In the beginning, no one really believed us when we said we were leaving. We’re leaving, we’re going. We’re going to Mexico, the two of us, in Marta’s van. We’ll cross the country, cross the border at Ciudad Juárez or Nuevo Laredo, then continue down to Chiapas. You’re crazy. You’re completely crazy.
We wanted to travel. But what does that even mean? What does it mean to travel? We didn’t want to be tourists who see nothing, we didn’t want to seek out famous places, just drift, hit the road, meet people, escape the narrow world. We wanted to sit at a table with strangers, not be afraid despite the fear, not show too much of our youth, our thirst. Only men approached us. But soon enough, they invited us to their homes. And home meant houses with families, with family troubles, with housing problems. We got attached, we wanted to stay, to make friends and enemies, to build new lives. We drank Nescafé from plastic cups, small cold beers from the bottle. We laughed, my God, we were crazy.
But we had to move on. So we moved on. We ate up the miles. Our van had mechanical problems. Of course. It was a big American van Marta had bought from Mexicans near Detroit, Michigan. The chassis was rusted from the snow, from the salt used on the roads to melt the ice. We had to replace parts from time to time. It cost us money. It annoyed us. We spent hours in garages, repair shops, hangars, backyards filled with car wrecks, waiting with guys covered in grease who first offered us coffee, then beers.
We loved the vast skies, the endless skies above the road. We never tired of the plains, the deserts, the landscapes. The only stage big enough for our hunger, our rage, our poetry. We loved the smell of heat on asphalt, the meats sizzling on greasy griddles, the music steeped in another people’s sorrow. We fled our whiteness, which was constantly pointed out to us. We fled, we searched for something. America had a bitter taste, but a taste of what exactly, we wouldn’t have known, we didn’t want to know. We wanted to believe we’d find something in the escape, something else, something more. Already, we had found each other, the two of us, but we still needed to roam. We slept in the back of the van, curtains drawn and pinned tightly with clothespins so no one would guess people were inside, as if the fogged-up windows didn’t make it obvious. We locked the latches. We read each other stories to fall asleep. We looked at maps of Mexico, jotted down routes, ideas. We dreamed out loud. We loved each other. We argued. We smoked while driving. We had dirty hair, braids with feathers, leather sandals, false ideas.
They told us not to drive at night. And we drove. We drove anyway.»
Neige sinno, 2023

Cauchemar Climatisé, une traversée américaine / Julien Allouf, Mediapop Éditions, 2024 Cauchemar Climatisé, une traversée américaine / Julien Allouf, Mediapop Éditions, 2024 Cauchemar Climatisé, une traversée américaine / Julien Allouf, Mediapop Éditions, 2024 Cauchemar Climatisé, une traversée américaine / Julien Allouf, Mediapop Éditions, 2024