St phane Chalier is a young Belgian who, pushed by a struggle with his father over his life and intellectual ambitions, leaves his family behind to wander the United States. The pretence for his departure is that he is going to write his thesis about "H lderlin in America," but instead he begins a nomadic lifestyle involving brief bouts of manual labor. St phane is unable to escape the appellation of "petit romantique " his father, a renowned academic,...