Mapping a Road Trip Through Literature

Click on the audio player above to hear this interview.

Planning a road trip this summer? Why not take the path already taken by your favorite novelists?

Over at Atlas Obscura, freelance writer Richard Kreitner and mapmaker Steven Melendez put together one of the most extraordinarily detailed maps of literary road trips you might ever see. It's a map of the United States that “catalogs the country as it has been described in the American road-tripping literature.”

It charts the criss-crossing journeys of everything from "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" to "Wild." If you can think of it, it's there: "Travels with Charley," "The Electric Kool-Aid Acide Test," "On the Road" to name a few. Richard explains his own fascination with the literary road trip.

Click on the map below to see the full interactive version.