On the road again

Travel writers these days tend to be adventurers. The books focus on daredevil eating, extreme sports or dangerous locations. William Least Heat Moon is a poet and his Blue Highways is poetic. Following the collapse of his marriage he drove 13,000 miles across the backroads of America. The local roads on maps used to be printed in blue, hence the title. The author gives lyrical descriptions of each area he visits and he manages to meet a number of interesting characters along the way. Description of local color often descends into cheese or camp, sometimes because the author is an middle class to uppermiddle class person patronizing the locals. Least Heat Moon was down on his luck and was able to interact on a more personal level. He wanted to find local communities with their own characters, but he found they were slowly dying. The book was written in the late 70s and early 80s, so it may be that the small communities he finds have further diminished and become homogenized. If you are interested in an America other than the one that has been cut and pasted across the metros, you will like this book.