Blue Highways by William Least Heat-Moon ~ March Book Club Online

[JoanP]

The Book Club Online is  the oldest  book club on the Internet, begun in 1996, open to everyone.  We offer cordial discussions of one book a month,  24/7 and  enjoy the company of readers from all over the world.  Everyone is welcome.

March Book Club Online

Blue Highways - a Journey into America
by William Least Heat-Moon

This should be FUN!  Whether you decide to read and discuss William Least Heat-Moon's classic 1978 travel account  or share your own memories of the "blue highways" of America, you will probably leave winter doldrums behind -  in your driveway. Heat-Moon coined the term to refer to small, forgotten, out-of-the-way roads connecting rural America (which were drawn in blue on the old style Rand McNally road atlas). The book chronicles the author's 13,000-mile journey and the people he meets along the way, as he steers clear of cities and interstates, avoiding fast food and exploring local American culture. His book was on the NY Times’ best seller list for 42 weeks in 1982-83, and its title became a cultural code word for a journey of introspection and discovery.     Some questions we'll explore:      *  What's left of the country stores and cafes on the old blue highways?    *  Do you have photographs?

Discussion Schedule:    Part One ~       March 3-7  (Eaustward)      Part Two ~       March 8-11  (East by Southeast)      Part Three ~    March 12-13-14 (South by Southeast)    Part Four ~      March 15-16-17(South by Southwest)    Part Five ~       March 18-19-20(West by Southwest)    Part SIX ~        March 23-24-25-26(West by Northwest)    Part SEVEN ~   March 27-28-31(North by Northwest)    Part EIGHT ~   April 1-3 (North by Northeast)    Part Nine ~      April 4- 9 (East by Northeast)    Part TEN ~       April 10-14(Westward) ~  MD, VA, WVA,                                                                      OH, IN, Ill, MO Relevant Links:   Least Heat Moon's route map (interactive)   Interview with Least Heat-Moon "Be a Traveller, not a  Tourist"   Recent Interview with William Heat-Moon on Book TV   QUOTES noted from Blue Highways

Some Topics for Discussion

April 10-14 (Westward) ~ Md, VA, WVA,  OH, IN, Ill, MO

1.  Least Heat-Moon wastes no time visiting the sights or even talking to people on the road, as he travels westward towards home. How did you understand that?

2.  Do you remember the old full service gas stations?  Does Heat-Moon's memory of  Vern's Service Station of his youth indicate a nostalgic wish to return to the old ways of doing things?

3.  Spotsylvania, VA, where the Battle of the Bloody Angle was fought in which 13,000 men were lost in savage combat in one square mile  - why did Heat-Moon refer to this area as "the bluest of the back roads?"  Does he believe this road will probably be traveled again?  Has man learned the futility of war?

4.  How did Heat-Moon sum up what he had accomplished in his season on the blue highways?
Does the expression, "moments of glimpsed clarity" pretty well describe his journey?

5.  Has the question of his choice of a circular route been answered in the words of Black Elk?

6.  Buckhannon, WVA, "beautiful country, despite hills clobbered with broken appliances and automobile fragments".  Shades of Smith Island's repository of junk?  What had he learned from Miz Alice about this very thing?

7.  Sutton, WVA - "everything here nearing an end."  Can you see where the Secretary of
State wrote Heat-Moon a letter of complaint after the book was published, banning him from ever returning to the state of West Virginia?

8.  "I can't say I learned what I wanted to know, because I hadn't known what I wanted to know.  But I did learn what I didn't know I wanted to know."  Your thoughts on this?

Contact:   JoanP  

[CallieOK]

I wrote down some comments that LMH made after he left Smith Island and headed toward Annapolis.  These probably aren't direct quotes:

After the storm on Tilghman Island:  "Black Elk heard Great Voices in thunderstorms.  I head Heyokas, who do things foolishly backwards.
"On his blue road, Black Elk heard voices from the clouds.  I heard men who knew about stumbling because they had stumbled.
"Like any man of ordinary cut, I heard human voices that showed the power...to see again and revise the "Looking glass Syndrome".  (Insight?)

"Ego - that excessive looking inward, had its way in the Indian Wars (his marriage) and now the old life with the Cherokee was lost. But what was not lost was the chance "to make over"...to remake is (a man's) potential, his hope.
 (Acceptance?)

"By seeing the futility in trying to live the old life and the danger in trying to obliterate it, man can gain the capacity to make anew.  His very form depends on variation from old patterns - not repetition".  

To which I say....."AMEN!!!!"

[JoanP]

Callie,  you take good notes!  I think you nailed it with these passages!  He recognizes for the first time in the book that his marriage is over...one of the reasons he had started the journey?  Escape? But there is now hope to reshape his future, to realize his potential by recognizing the reasons that marriage didn't work. Ego, excessive looking inward, preoccupation with himself.

Out of curiosity, I did a little research (a lot)-  felt the need to know if he followed through with insights gained before he headed westward home-

First this:

http://www.nndb.com/people/668/000055503/

Father: Ralph G. Trogdon (lawyer)
Mother: Maurine Davis
Wife: Lezlie (div. 1978)
Wife: Linda Keown (teacher)

Then this undated interview with Heat-Moon and Hank Nuwer-

LEAST HEAT MOON: ... I met Miss Alice on Smith Island, Maryland, which is an island in the middle of Chesapeake Bay. The trip was virtually over by then. I was beginning to realize ever so faintly that what I was looking for in this angle of vision were the connections that hold a human being to a context greater than himself—connections that hold the present to the past and suggest that the present and past will be part of the future. In many ways she incisively put together connections for me in whatever we talked about. She felt that to miss the connections was simply to be blind, and all you had to do was open your eyes and see how the past prevailed in so many ways.

NUWER: You’re remarried now. When did you meet your wife, Linda?

LEAST HEAT MOON: I met her some time after I came back [from the trip] and married a couple of years ago.

Blue Highways publication date - 1982.  

[Frybabe]

I liken LHM's seeming rush to get home to how I feel when I get close to the end of a book. At some point I get in a hurry to know what happens at the end, resulting in a day (or night) of straight out reading until it is done.

[JoanP]

Fry, I know what you mean!  When LHM left Smith Island and wrote:

"I met Miss Alice on Smith Island, Maryland, which is an island in the middle of Chesapeake Bay. The trip was virtually over by then."

- I knew that he had what he wanted from the trip!  The rest was...confirmation!  Let's spend a day or two with the final section, Ten - and hope that everyone comes together for a last campfire and maybe a smoked chub sandwich?

ps  I checked...the Island Belle   still takes you out to Smith Island...though Miss Alice won't be there to show you around...

[CallieOK]

Joan:  I think I mentioned a long time ago that I was reading a 1999 edition of "Blue Highways" that had added Author's Comments .  I don't think anyone else said they had read the edition with this section.

In it,  LMH tells what he did after he got home and what happened in his life up to 1983, when "Blue Highways" finally appeared in print.

You asked me not to comment until we had finished reading the book.
I made extensive notes about it, too.  Please let me know if/when you would like for me to share them.

[JoanP]

Let's do it, Callie!  We're heading home now.  Can't think of a better time.  I was worried for a minute...thought you were going to say you took that book back to the library.  Relieved to remember you are a great notetaker!

[ANNIE]

Callie, I had the same book but I have returned it along with "Still Alice" which my f2f group seemed to like.
You know, I am wondering if Ms Alice  sort of wrapped up his trip around the states with her wonderful remark of: "When one lives on an island, one lives their own life and let the  other folks on the island who do the same thing."   A rough paraphrase on my part!    
Something that I was reading a while back dealt with remembering we can't throw away the past and just try to live better because the past is why we are the person we are today.

[CallieOK]

What happened next:

When LMH returned home "about the first day of summer", he went looking for a job that would allow him to turn the notes he took on the trip into a book. 
Three and a half years later, he had had two jobs (one as a "drudge" in the county courthouse and then just a weekend job on the loading dock of the local newspaper) -  and had written three unsatisfactory drafts of "Blue Highways".

Two months after he returned, he and the Cherokee "amicably parted" and he met someone else.  "Although we too later went different ways, again amicably, she stood by me during those lean years and helped carry me and the book to the end.  Yet one day, even she said...."It's too hard on me - please don't talk anymore about 'a certain forthcoming book'.  It's not forthcoming." 

However, the book was eventually accepted and was published by January, 1983.   "By that time, I had rewritten it eight times and cut it from an 800 page manuscript to 500 pages." 
That spring he felt secure enough to quit his job on the loading dock.

Then he thanks the readers for "accompanying" him on his journeys and says "...I can at last answer two questions that may have arisen as you read "Blue Highways."
"What did the people I met along the way, the ones I show in the book, think of it?
...I can tell you their responses were virtually one.  Although they were hardly enchanted with my depiction of them,...they liked being a "character".  To me, from the beginning, they were full of character in all its meaning and I regret that it's only now I realize I should have told them they were the best professors I ever knew, for they opened the way, the high way.

"Your second question, you thought I forgot?   I didn't.  I never found the banana slug."

/s/  William Least Heat-Moon
Columbia, Missouri
May 1999

[nlhome]

Interesting to know a bit more about his thinking and how his next years went. I enjoyed the reread of this book.

One of the questions asked about the full service gas stations and what his memories of "Vern's" meant. There is a lot of nostalgia connected with gas stations, I think. The old full service ones were stops along the way, places to get gas and a bit of news. There's a book in Wisconsin called "Fill'er Up The Glory Days of Wisconsin Gas Stations." It's a bit of the past that we won't get back, and perhaps that was what brought it to mind for him. (I have a certain amount of nostalgia because my Dad had such a station, and that was my first job - pumping gas and washing windshields and chatting with the customers.)

Part of our journey back from Georgia to Wisconsin was on a stretch of Highway 4 in Illinois which is part of the old Route 66.

[salan]

Finished the book.  The end was kind of a let down.  I'm not sure if he accomplished what he set out to do. 
Sally

[JoanP]

 "

I am wondering if Ms Alice  sort of wrapped up his trip." Annie

Annie, I agree with you!  Sally, if you consider chapter NINE the ending, the last chapter then becomes anti-climactic - and the let-down is understandable.  Maybe you can describe what you had hoped for?  I don't think he was about to describe his reunion with the Cherokee on his return...but he could have at least included the fact that he hadn't found the yellow slug when cleaning out his van!
It it wasn't for Callie's notes, I don't think we'd ever have learned that!

Callie - in another interview, I read that after those 8 rejections, he realized that he hadn't included his Osage roots - and rewrote the book from that point of view.  After three submissions of that version, a publisher finally accepted it - and it sold out immediately!  NY Times Best Seller list!

nlhome - every time I return to my home state - New Jersey- I am reminded of the old-time full service stations.  Did you know it is against the law in NJ to pump your own gas?  Maybe someone here knows why?

[JoanP]

I wonder about your reaction when you read his summation of his time on the blue highway:

"I can't say I learned what I wanted to know, because I hadn't known what I wanted to know.  But I did learn what I didn't know I wanted to know."

Almost a riddle, isn't it?

[BarbStAubrey]

Ok he does not say as much but I think the answers he was looking for is why - why am I here - what is my purpose - what makes me happy and how do I find happiness etc. etc. - the kind of questions that goes with a crisis of change that happens at various times in our lives. Some folks ignore the wind battering on their emotions and brain while others seek without knowing what it is they are seeking other than some direction. Some find it in books others therapy some hole up in a retreat of sorts and some travel - William Least... traveled the back roads of America while meeting people that allowed him to see up close various alternative lifestyles as well as, what made them tick.

I do not know that there is a single focused answer when this kind of introspection is taken on - my experience is I usually come full circle with a few edges filed off and find again, the confidence to pick up and live fully after I had chosen a focus from my bag. A bag that I thought needed to be filled with new tricks. I end up re-learning we are enough and have all the tricks we need - that is what I think William least figured out but did not feel the results or set the focus for us to see whatever was his success. He just wanted to get home and get started. Not with the emotional charge of a hurricane but rather still tentative and thankfully without the dark cloud that had been hanging over his head for most of his trip. An almost Taoist or Buddhist view that says to stop projecting in the past or future and do what is in front of you. For this author in front of him was to safely drive home where he would review his experiences while setting it out for a book. With no brain storming about organizing and writing his book he drove home paying attention to what was in front of him, the road, his vehicle and the needs of his body.  

I am not convinced he started out for the sole purpose of writing a book however, when he looked in his bag of tricks he realized there lay a talent that could give him purpose not only for the trip but for his life that could replace the identity and purpose he had while a professor - because we all learn what earns us money in not our identity however, some find their identity in their work that happens to earn them money. I see William Least feeling ok with himself as a writer and he needed money so that this became his new parachute as in the book What Color is My Parachute.

[JoanP]

Thank you for your thoughtful response to the author's comment, Barbara.  You said some things that I really think the author would agree with -

"William Least... traveled the back roads of America while meeting people that allowed him to see up close various alternative lifestyles as well as, what made them tick."

Various alternative life styles...from Brother Patrick Duffy living out his solitary life in prayer and reflection in a monastery, to the Chealanders, living in remote Frenchman with no neighbors or food store anywhere near.  Or James Walker in Selma, with all of the racial tension there.   These people had no thought of escaping on to the blue highways.  They had found themselves - their present, right where they were.

"He just wanted to get home and get started. Not with the emotional charge of a hurricane but rather still tentative and thankfully without the dark cloud that had been hanging over his head for most of his trip. An almost Taoist or Buddhist view that says to stop projecting in the past or future and do what is in front of you."

This seems to sum up the lesson Heat-Moon learned on the road.  I think others go on the road, see the sights, but don't get to know the people along the way.  Maybe it isn't possible for everyone to put himself/herself out there as he did...but the inspiration is there - to step outside our comfort zones - to find out who we really are.  

Heat-Moon writes tells us in one of his interviews that he wrote down addresses of those he met along the road - and mailed them copies of his book.  Some were unhappy with what he wrote, but most were thrilled to see themselves - in the context of their lives.  Hopefully they got as much out of the book as the author did.  I know I did.  I learned a lot from you all, as well.  Hope to meet you on a blue highway some day!

[JoanP]

"The journey not the arrival matters." T.S.Eliot

"The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one’s own country as a foreign land.” – G. K. Chesterton

“Certainly, travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living.” – Miriam Beard

"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.” – Marcel Proust

At this point in his life,  Heat-Moon had been a teacher, a teacher of literature, obvious from the number of literary allusions throughout Blue Highways.  
As you pointed out, Barbara, he returned from his journey with this book in mind, which would lead to a career as a writer.  

I've certainly enjoyed our time on the road together in the Ford Econoline, hope you did too. Let's plan another adventure in the very near future!

[salan]

Joan, Thanks for leading us on this journey & being patient with the stragglers (including myself).  I appreciate your leadership & direction.  All-in-all, this was a good journey!
Sally

[CallieOK]

I'm just finishing "Blue Highways Revisited" and remembering the travels with this group.  Thank you for a most enjoyable journey.

[Frybabe]

My library doesn't have "Revisited". I just requested LHM's River Horse. Perhaps he will include a few of the canals that are still navigable here in the Mid-Atlantic area.

[JoanP]

You've all been great travel companions...especially the stragglers who got the Blue Highways message..."Slow down."  "Take the back roads."

This discussion may be over, but the road goes on, the journey continues.  Hope to meet you all again soon!

This discussion will be available in the SeniorLearn Archives.