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Summary: A permanent addition to the personal library
Review: William Least-Heat Moon, in an extraordinary first published book, reveals a journey taken far away from the "interstates" of the human experience. In the near-forgotten places and continental corners he passes through, life manages to persist in ways that it does not in the change-racked "fast lane" so many of us are swept into. Nearly two decades have passed and the book is no less relevant in what it says about modernity: In the chain-store franchise 90s, places increasingly appear like every other place, and local color and richness fades--or is bulldozed--into history.Artistically, BLUE HIGHWAYS is a feast. Least-Heat Moon's poetic descriptions of landscape and mindscape are equalled only by his marvelous ability to capture the varied dialects of America. When reading some of the language aloud, I actually succeeded in sounding like a Texan or coast fisherman . . . much more so than if I had ever made the attempt on my own. Like any good travelogue, BLUE HIGHWAYS endures, not only for the above reasons, but also for the honest look the author takes at himself and where his life is going--universal questions. And though there are no universal answers, I think this journey deserves the large audience that has embraced it and, by so doing, perhaps have asked themselves the same questions.
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Summary: A sloooow drive across the USA
Review: William Least Heat-Moon takes his wonderful prose on a slow trip across the back roads of America, and along the way we get to meet folks in small-town America. Heat-Moon's journey was precipitated by the double whammy of learning he'd lost both his job and his wife at just about the same time, and he figured, as he felt he'd also lost a sense of direction for his life, that perhaps travel, reflection, and writing might cure what ailed him.
Some have said the book, now almost 30 years old, is dated - and of course it is. But what makes it even more interesting nowadays is, reading it, you can kind of track the process of how America got from what it was then to what it is now. It's a bit scary.
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Summary: Blue Highways
Review: In William Least Heat-Moon's Blue Highways, he tells his personal experience of his travels across the country. He feels his life is turned upside down and he needs to escape it. Taking his van, Ghost Dancing, for the ride, he has the adventure of a lifetime. He comes to points in his journey where life is more exciting than others, and places where the wind never blows. Overall, he meets several people on his way across the country and stays in several towns. He learns the variety of ways god is believed in, the history of flying, and the way that's several of the towns he visits was started. If you like to read about other peoples travels, than I suggest this book to you. It will be hard to find at a local library, but it can be found. The author goes into detail on several different points and is very organized. He tells the story just as it seemed to happen and doesn't confuse the reader one bit. This story is very educational and leaves the reader with the want to travel the country, as did the author of this book.
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Summary: Insightful look at the real America
Review: This was a very well written account that displayed the desire to seek out and experience. When tumultuous times occur in a person's life, the enlightened choose a way to positively confront it. Heat-Moon customized his van and made it a great travel & living space to experience the people and places of America. Possessing a Doctorate, he wrote in a nice, simple, down-home style. He also spent a lot of time with nice, simple, down-home people across parts of the country most of us miss. Many of the conversations with the folks he'd encountered made me realize how we, in general, perceive the world and society, and how we like to give our "ten cents" (opinions) from time to time. After completing his journey with Ghost Dancing he worked on the book, while doing some laborious work. This was an insightful look at the real America most of us miss.
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Summary: Ih-nnnteresting
Review: It took me two and half months two finish, but I enjoyed reading Blue Highways (for the most part). William Least Heat-Moon has a strong storyteller's voice (sometimes a little too strong) and his experiences in small town, backroad, no-name America are foreign enough to be interesting. I have a better idea of the history and the diversity of America from his regurgitation of local anecdotes, but I think if I lived in a blue-highways small town, I would be bored reading. In places, the narrative is self-concious and over-dramatic, like he's trying to describe a bowl of spaghetti to someone who has never tasted it -- spaghetti's my favorite food, but I have to be sitting over a bowl to appreciate it's greatness. Plus, I would have liked him to describe more of his feelings and talked less about road conditions. The feelings he did describe were so grounded in anti-urban ideology and strong I AM MAN convictions that I didn't relate to half of the book. Blue Highways alienated me as a city-dweller and as a woman, but I did enjoy the Whitman quotes and the parts about the monk, the hitchhiker evangelist, Selma Alabama, and the towns I've driven through myself (SHELBY, MT!).
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Summary: This is ABSOLUTELY the WORST book I have EVER read!!!
Review: I was forced to read this book as part of my english gifted and talented class. It was the slowest, longest, worst written book ever! The best part of the book was the end. It ended! Finally, a long book about nothing. I will NEVER read this book again and I DON'T encourage anyone else to read this. PLEASE save yourselves the boredom and stupidity that comes from this book. This guy has nothing better to do than go around in little boondocks in the US and force people to have conversations with him. It's irritating. It's boring. Please do yourselves some good and read cool books like Les Miserables, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, A tale of Two Cities, and other classics.
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Summary: Outstanding
Review: This book is nothing short of outstanding. Every high school in America should make reading this book a requirement.
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Summary: Overrated
Review: (I won't reiterate the contents of the book -- read other reviews for a synopsis.) After reading Bryson, Thoreux, Horowitz, excellent travel writers all, I must admit I don't get the hullaballo about Blue Highways. The prose is thick, the metaphors gooey and strained, and many of the 'conversations' the author had with strangers are patently fake (all travel writers take minor liberties when quoting conversations, but the book is full of extended, half-page soliloquies from people from all over the country who all seem to be local history experts and somehow manage to speak in the same folksy tone no matter where they're from). In addition, though the author traveled through a number of small towns, his tour was essentially a whirlwind drive around the edges of the United States, and I was left with a sense that much was missed. I realize that the book is meant more to be a 'spiritual journey' than a travel movel, but there's little growth shown by the author during his travels, and the book is pervaded by a sense of brooding melancholy which isn't really resolved at the end. Perhaps there wasn't much like this book available in 1982 -- I suspect timing had more to do with the book's success than inherent quality. It's not BAD; it's just not up to the hype. Worth reading if your to-read list is short, but borrow from a friend.
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Summary: Nostalgia for what?
Review: I didn't read the whole book when it first came out (some passages were familiar from, I think, Atlantic Monthly) which was 1982. I picked it up recently and got hooked by the magical prose. This man can write. I turned down pages and marked passages at first but then it became all turned down pages and marked passages. It describes a jouney around the United States, sticking to back roads and small towns. He emphasizes his native American Osage heritage and the has an anti-materialist philosophy full of yearning for older simpler times. Sometimes his antipathy to people who commit the crimes of being middle-aged or well-dressed or living in new houses seems overdone.(I wear a necktie myself sometimes and live in a New York suburb). He likes people to be old and poor and deeprooted in their environment, slightly eccentric, and passionately following some craft or traditional trade.
On the whole his nostalgia for the good old days of 20 years previously has worn quite well. It's odd to realize that the book itself is now 20 years old.
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Summary: Blue Highways . . . a Blue Print
Review: BLUE HIGHWAYS . . . These are the 1st words of the book. And they are granted one whole page. "On the old highway maps of America, the main routes were red and the back roads blue. Now even the colors are changing. But in those brevities just before dawn and a little after dusk - times neither day nor night - the old roads return to the sky some of its color. Then, in truth, they carry a mysterious cast of blue, and that's the time when the pull of the blue highway is strongest, when the open road is a beckoning, a strangeness, a place where a man can lose himself." I bought BH as quickly as I could after having read its review in NYT Book Review back in 1982. I bought a cofee, sat in a plush chair, cracked the binding and opened the book to this page. I read these words. I stopped, but my eyes remained fixed. I read these words again. Again. And, again. I could not turn the page. Suddenly, I was back in the early 60's when I was an engineering student with an Austin Healy. I remembered sitting at the top of a hill somewhere in the country just as the night's darkness was forced aside by the morning's early light. I read the opening paragraph again. Again. And, again. I could not turn the page. That was all I could read. It took years before I could read the book. I attempted to explain this experience to my friends but received little more than a supportive and patronizing smile. I bought copies of BH for a half-dozen friends and asked them to read the book and tell me what happened to them. Only one guy, a bother under the skin, seemed to 'understand.' I have read BH since . . . at least a half-dozen times. It pulls me back still like a . . . well, a Blue Highway. If the words in the 1st paragraph make your eyes grow glassy, silence your world, and stir your heart then buy Blue Highways. If the words didn't, then, uh . . ..
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