Roads to Quoz: An American Mosey

by William Least Heat-Moon

Overview

About a quarter century ago, a previously unknown writer named William Least Heat-Moon wrote a book called Blue Highways. Acclaimed as a classic, it was a travel book like no other. Quirky, discursive, endlessly curious, Heat-Moon had embarked on an American journey off the beaten path. Sticking to the small places via the small roads — those colored blue on maps — he uncovered a nation deep in character, story, and charm.

Now, for the first time since Blue Highways, Heat-Moon is back on the backroads. Roads to Quoz is his lyrical, funny, and touching account of a series of American journeys into small-town America.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780316067515
Publisher:	Little, Brown and Company
Publication date:	11/11/2009
Pages:	581
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.70(d)

About the Author

William Least Heat-Moon is the author of the bestselling classics Blue Highways, River-Horse, and PrairyErth. He lives near Columbia, Missouri.

Editorial Reviews

An amiable, literate tour of America's byways, in the company of the poet laureate of the back road. Heat-Moon (River-Horse, 1999, etc.), as if channeling Kerouac, whom he writes about here at some length, announces early on a rationale for his wanderings and writings over the last quarter-century or so: "to break those long silent miles, I must stop and hunt stories and only later set down my gatherings in order to release them one day to wander on their own." In this instance, grown suddenly fond of the letter Q, he ponders the word quoz ("rhymes with Oz"), a quizzical, questioning quest in search of who knows what, so long as it's wonderful. So he heads at first west by way of the wondrous Ouachita Mountains of Arkansas, which are really ancient worn-down hills separated by a broad valley full of colorful characters, some with teeth, some with stills. Heat-Moon, naturally enough, turns to suitable pondering, reflecting that many years before he had found himself "wondering how many people I'd meet if I lived to be four score and ten," and reckoning that the total might be 100,000, almost all of them pleasant "or at least neutral" encounters. Here, as the author steers into the dark hearts of Maine, Pennsylvania, Idaho, New Mexico, Louisiana, Florida and other corners of this wide land, he turns up plenty of nice folk who serve him fried chicken, scrod or tacos and tell him tales of their lives. Heat-Moon's travels have a Steinbeckian air, but with a decidedly countercultural twist, as when he pronounces, "To live more otherly is to live more lastingly. It's a fundamental law of biology."Residents of states not mentioned will surely wish that Heat-Moon's quozzical travels had taken himthere as well-a pleasure for his fans, who are deservingly many.

Kirkus Reviews

"Narrator Sherman Howard perfectly delivers the author's saunter through the states. Howard's untroubled, unhurried exposition allows the listener to bask in the splendid descriptions (sometimes overdone) descriptions of 'all things Quoz-things strange, incongrous, or peculiar"It's like sitting on Grandpa's knee or hearing the ghost of Charles Kuralt exulting in all the wonderful tiny things that make up the fabric of America."—AudioFile, -

From the Publisher