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Writing BLUE HIGHWAYS: The Story of How a Book Happened
Winner, Distinguished Literary Achievement, Missouri Humanities Council, 2015
The story behind the writing of the best-selling Blue Highways is as fascinating as the epic trip itself. More than thirty years after his 14,000-mile, 38-state journey, William Least Heat-Moon reflects on the four years he spent capturing the lessons of the road trip on paper—the stops and starts in his composition process, the numerous drafts and painstaking revisions, the depressing string of rejections by publishers, the strains on his personal relationships, and many other aspects of the toil that went into writing his first book. Along the way, he traces the hard lessons learned and offers guidance to aspiring and experienced writers alike. Far from being a technical manual, Writing Blue Highways : The Story of How a Book Happened is an adventure story of its own, a journey of “exploration into the myriad routes of heart and mind that led to the making of a book from the first sorry and now vanished paragraph to the last words that came not from a graphite pencil but from a letterpress in Tennessee.” Readers will not find a collection of abstract formulations and rules for writing; rather, this book gracefully incorporates examples from Heat-Moon’s own experience. As he explains, “This story might be termed an inadvertent autobiography written not by the traveler who took Ghost Dancing in 1978 over the byroads of America but by a man only listening to him. That blue-roadman hasn’t been seen in more than a third of a century, and over the last many weeks as I sketched in these pages, I’ve regretted his inevitable departure.” Filtered as the struggles of the “blue-roadman” are through the awareness of someone more than thirty years older with a half dozen subsequent books to his credit, the story of how his first book “happened” is all the more resonant for readers who may not themselves be writers but who are interested in the tricky balance of intuitive creation and self-discipline required for any artistic endeavor.
The story behind the writing of the best-selling Blue Highways is as fascinating as the epic trip itself. More than thirty years after his 14,000-mile, 38-state journey, William Least Heat-Moon reflects on the four years he spent capturing the lessons of the road trip on paper—the stops and starts in his composition process, the numerous drafts and painstaking revisions, the depressing string of rejections by publishers, the strains on his personal relationships, and many other aspects of the toil that went into writing his first book. Along the way, he traces the hard lessons learned and offers guidance to aspiring and experienced writers alike. Far from being a technical manual, Writing Blue Highways : The Story of How a Book Happened is an adventure story of its own, a journey of “exploration into the myriad routes of heart and mind that led to the making of a book from the first sorry and now vanished paragraph to the last words that came not from a graphite pencil but from a letterpress in Tennessee.” Readers will not find a collection of abstract formulations and rules for writing; rather, this book gracefully incorporates examples from Heat-Moon’s own experience. As he explains, “This story might be termed an inadvertent autobiography written not by the traveler who took Ghost Dancing in 1978 over the byroads of America but by a man only listening to him. That blue-roadman hasn’t been seen in more than a third of a century, and over the last many weeks as I sketched in these pages, I’ve regretted his inevitable departure.” Filtered as the struggles of the “blue-roadman” are through the awareness of someone more than thirty years older with a half dozen subsequent books to his credit, the story of how his first book “happened” is all the more resonant for readers who may not themselves be writers but who are interested in the tricky balance of intuitive creation and self-discipline required for any artistic endeavor.
182 pages, Hardcover
First published March 25, 2014
21 people are currently reading
297 people want to read
About the author
William Least Heat-Moon
26 books434 followersFrom wikipedia:
William Least Heat-Moon, byname of William Trogdon is an American travel writer of English, Irish and Osage Nation ancestry. He is the author of a bestselling trilogy of topographical U.S. travel writing.
His pen name came from his father saying, "I call myself Heat Moon, your elder brother is Little Heat Moon. You, coming last, therefore, are Least." Born in Kansas City, Missouri, Heat-Moon attended the University of Missouri where he earned bachelor's, master's, and Ph.D. degrees in English, as well as a bachelor's degree in photojournalism. He also served as a professor of English at the university.
William Least Heat-Moon, byname of William Trogdon is an American travel writer of English, Irish and Osage Nation ancestry. He is the author of a bestselling trilogy of topographical U.S. travel writing.
His pen name came from his father saying, "I call myself Heat Moon, your elder brother is Little Heat Moon. You, coming last, therefore, are Least." Born in Kansas City, Missouri, Heat-Moon attended the University of Missouri where he earned bachelor's, master's, and Ph.D. degrees in English, as well as a bachelor's degree in photojournalism. He also served as a professor of English at the university.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
December 1, 2014
I like it when writers talk about their process of writing, and this is a fantastic look at how a beloved book was created.
I first read "Blue Highways" when I was in college, and I absolutely loved it. It's the story of William Least Heat-Moon's long journey around the United States, which he took back in 1978 after he had lost his teaching job and separated from his wife. He lived out of a truck that he nicknamed Ghost Dancing, and one morning he decided he had to drive somewhere because he just couldn't stay still. Here is the book's preamble:
"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 it's that 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."
Heat-Moon started his back-road journey in Columbia, Missouri. If you look at a map of America, Columbia sits close to the center of the country, which was a fitting start for his circular journey. First he traveled east to the Carolinas, and then down through the south, then he headed west all the way to New Mexico, then north to Oregon and Washington, and then east again all the way up to Maine, and finally he turned south and west and headed back to Missouri. That's a really long drive, you guys.
On his trip, Heat-Moon avoided big cities and instead stopped in small towns to chat with folks. He took notes during his journey, and he also took photographs of the people he met along the way. The result was a rich, beautifully written account of not just the country, but one man's search for something greater than himself.
Which brings me to this latest book, "Writing BLUE HIGHWAYS." It's a slim volume, only 164 pages, but it's so well-written that I used several dozen Post-It notes to flag good passages. The trip around the country took three months, but it took Heat-Moon more than four years to finish writing his original book. He described the difficulties in writing the manuscript, the seemingly endless revisions, and the pile of rejection letters he got from editors. His girlfriend at the time would get so frustrated with Heat-Moon and his "forthcoming book" that at one point she threatened to burn part of it. Fortunately, the manuscript survived.
One detail that I particularly liked was that Heat-Moon had been feeling depressed about all of his rejection notices, until he learned that Robert Pirsig had received 122 rejections for his book, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance," which eventually became a huge bestseller. Heat-Moon then decided he wouldn't give up on his book until he had collected 123 rejections.
Some favorite quotes:
Overall this is a fine addition to the writers-on-writing shelf, and I think this book would be helpful — and possibly even comforting — to anyone who has struggled to finish a manuscript. And if you like travelogues (though Heat-Moon doesn't like that term, but this is my review and I think it applies) go read the original "Blue Highways." It's wonderful.
I first read "Blue Highways" when I was in college, and I absolutely loved it. It's the story of William Least Heat-Moon's long journey around the United States, which he took back in 1978 after he had lost his teaching job and separated from his wife. He lived out of a truck that he nicknamed Ghost Dancing, and one morning he decided he had to drive somewhere because he just couldn't stay still. Here is the book's preamble:
"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 it's that 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."
Heat-Moon started his back-road journey in Columbia, Missouri. If you look at a map of America, Columbia sits close to the center of the country, which was a fitting start for his circular journey. First he traveled east to the Carolinas, and then down through the south, then he headed west all the way to New Mexico, then north to Oregon and Washington, and then east again all the way up to Maine, and finally he turned south and west and headed back to Missouri. That's a really long drive, you guys.
On his trip, Heat-Moon avoided big cities and instead stopped in small towns to chat with folks. He took notes during his journey, and he also took photographs of the people he met along the way. The result was a rich, beautifully written account of not just the country, but one man's search for something greater than himself.
Which brings me to this latest book, "Writing BLUE HIGHWAYS." It's a slim volume, only 164 pages, but it's so well-written that I used several dozen Post-It notes to flag good passages. The trip around the country took three months, but it took Heat-Moon more than four years to finish writing his original book. He described the difficulties in writing the manuscript, the seemingly endless revisions, and the pile of rejection letters he got from editors. His girlfriend at the time would get so frustrated with Heat-Moon and his "forthcoming book" that at one point she threatened to burn part of it. Fortunately, the manuscript survived.
One detail that I particularly liked was that Heat-Moon had been feeling depressed about all of his rejection notices, until he learned that Robert Pirsig had received 122 rejections for his book, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance," which eventually became a huge bestseller. Heat-Moon then decided he wouldn't give up on his book until he had collected 123 rejections.
Some favorite quotes:
"After all, I lived in the most unfixed nation the earth has ever seen, a country conceived and populated by wanderers, wayfarers, migrants, immigrants, voyagers, vagabonds, most of them believing in the far side of the rainbow, in the possibilities of elsewhere, optimists for whom a road is an enticement beyond resistance and almost any there is preferable to a here. Movement is in our bloodstream in actuality and in metaphor. Is there an American who has never muttered, 'What if I just quit? Just said fuggum and took off?' We, so our ancestors prove, run away from home better than anybody else on the planet, and we've built a nation that draws in runaways as a black hole does stellar dust."
"Any nonfiction book about people could be titled 'Stolen Lives': A writer or painter takes a life much as a photographer takes a portrait, but words and brush strokes, no matter how carefully executed, lack the nearly total objectivity of a photograph, and inevasibly they add levels of interpretation beyond those of a pure image."
"As pieces and paragraphs finally began to adhere into themes, preeminent among them was narcissism, a widespread and deadly contagion that began rising in the late sixties and early seventies and was moving fast toward social domination. When you consider the perils to human continuance within a humane civilization, at the heart of each one lurks narcissism. We solve nothing until we solve ourselves."
[On the numerous rejections he received and the state of publishing] "I should say here that too many acquisition editors operate on assumptions often based on virtually no reliable evidence other than what has sold well over the past couple of years. They struggle to escape their own tastes no matter how parochial or even uninformed. Decisions to publish a work lack any established algorithm, and are instead much too driven by supposition and presumption. Even more limited are the bosses editors report to: Directors of publishing are scarcely known for insight other than for a view of the bottom figure on a conjectural ledger. My offering, while not without precedent, was enough of a variant in its topics from what then existed to entail some risk."
"There's no such thing as a perfectly written book; it's just that some fall short less than others. A strand of diamonds may have perfection, but a string of words, probably not. Here comes the only hard pronouncement about writing in this book: To revise fewer than a half-dozen or even a dozen times means either you're an unmatched genius or you're kidding yourself. (The opening paragraph of Blue Highways, the preamble, a mere ninety-one words, I rewrote two dozen times before I could say what I meant.) The secret of rewriting is to become as passionate about it as you were the moment the inceptive idea first came to you, even if you have to teach yourself to love revision. Remember, rewriting is redemption."
Overall this is a fine addition to the writers-on-writing shelf, and I think this book would be helpful — and possibly even comforting — to anyone who has struggled to finish a manuscript. And if you like travelogues (though Heat-Moon doesn't like that term, but this is my review and I think it applies) go read the original "Blue Highways." It's wonderful.
June 16, 2014
A Brief Review ~
Writing Blue Highways: The Story of how a Book Happened
William Least Heat-Moon
Like many people, what seems like a great many years ago, I was a fan of Paul Harvey’s radio show—The Rest of the Story.
Harvey’s show, which aired after his newscasts, was not a behind the scenes look at some subject, nor was it a how-to. It was the story of what else was going on. That what else, of course, changed everything. For me, it was a lot more interesting than the news. For example, at that age my idea of Benjamin Franklin was the stereotype, the chubby and jolly man from the musical 1776, actor Howard Da Silva from the musical movie. Listening to Paul Harvey one night, however, I learned that the real Franklin was an athlete. He used to swim across the Thames River. It’s not a deep fact, and it’s not a bit of information that would change how anyone understands world or national history. But it did one thing I admire greatly. It made the world less simple, more complex, more finely detailed. It made the way I imagined the universe more real.
I am reminded of this recently as I am reading Writing Blue Highways: The Story of How a Book Happened by William Least Heat-Moon (University of Missouri Press, 2014). Like nearly everyone else, I read Blue Highways in 1982. I was a graduate student and I loved to travel. The book filled me with envy and wonder. Now, thirty-two years later, a new book has arrived. In effect, what Heat-Moon has done is give us, yes, The Rest of the Story.
Writing Blue Highways is not a series of outtakes or scenes that did not make it into the original book. And it’s not a creative writing handbook, though there are certainly good bits of writing advice throughout the volume. Writing Blue Highways is the story , the remembering, of what it took to get the book written after the journey was finished. We learn everything from his love for Blackfeet pencils “An instrument of the hand, so I believe, enforces keener disciplines than does a keyboard, perhaps the greatest one being encouragement in each line to consider the craft and utility of concision,” to how the legalese he worked with every day in a courthouse made clear writing difficult, to how all his photographs and notes were nearly destroyed. We learn the size of his writing desk, the type of typewriter he eventually used, and the inner struggle every writer faces to keep going.
Writing Blue Highways does not make the original Blue Highways a better book. No book can do that. Writing Blue Highways does, however, make the original Blue Highways a deeper memory for those of us who read and loved it. Writing Blue Highways, for example, contains the story of Heat-Moon’s relation with Jack LaZebnik, a World War II airman, pilot of a B-29, turned college English professor. Although LaZebnik was sixteen years older than Heat-Moon, the two were friends and LaZebnik became the editor and first responder as Blue Highways came into draft form. His experience and taste became a part of the style and structure of Heat-Moon’s voice.
There is a lot more to Writing Blue Highways. Heat-Moon’s relationship with a woman he calls Lucy is especially compelling—she is the one who hears Heat-Moon’s frustrations and angers and fears as the manuscript does, or does not, come to life. There is the inevitable story of how Heat-Moon sent early chapters to agents and editors, only to have the book quickly rejected. And importantly, we learn how William Trogdon became William Least Heat-Moon and how that changed the whole approach to the book.
“A couple days later I was listening to The Mikado and wishing I had a partner as William Gilbert did Arthur Sullivan. Drawing upon half a man was insufficient. And that’s when I saw it. That’s when I understood who, for thirteen thousand miles, had been lurking in Ghost Dancing. The man trying to write Blue Highways wasn’t simply William Trogdon of European descent; he was also Least Heat Moon of Osage ancestry. William’s Arthur had been there all along. The ghost dancing down the miles was Least Heat Moon. At last, I thought, I heard hints of distance melodic refrains….The next morning, six weeks after the full-manuscript rejection and three years and three months after writing the first sentence for the first time, I sat down not to revise but to fulfill the manuscript, and I began at the beginning.”
Writing Blue Highways is a fine and wonderful book. Although I’ve never met Heat Moon in person, I was a graduate student in the English department at the University of Missouri when he was writing Blue Highways, and so it’s likely we were sometimes in the same room, or together in a basement jazz club called Fish and Friends on Sunday nights in Columbia, Missouri. Why is this important? Because it does not matter how close you are or how well you think you may know something—a whole universe of what else is going on goes by without a soul to notice, until someone tells that story too. When we know the rest of the story, the world is larger, more interesting, more real.
W. Scott Olsen
Writing Blue Highways: The Story of how a Book Happened
William Least Heat-Moon
Like many people, what seems like a great many years ago, I was a fan of Paul Harvey’s radio show—The Rest of the Story.
Harvey’s show, which aired after his newscasts, was not a behind the scenes look at some subject, nor was it a how-to. It was the story of what else was going on. That what else, of course, changed everything. For me, it was a lot more interesting than the news. For example, at that age my idea of Benjamin Franklin was the stereotype, the chubby and jolly man from the musical 1776, actor Howard Da Silva from the musical movie. Listening to Paul Harvey one night, however, I learned that the real Franklin was an athlete. He used to swim across the Thames River. It’s not a deep fact, and it’s not a bit of information that would change how anyone understands world or national history. But it did one thing I admire greatly. It made the world less simple, more complex, more finely detailed. It made the way I imagined the universe more real.
I am reminded of this recently as I am reading Writing Blue Highways: The Story of How a Book Happened by William Least Heat-Moon (University of Missouri Press, 2014). Like nearly everyone else, I read Blue Highways in 1982. I was a graduate student and I loved to travel. The book filled me with envy and wonder. Now, thirty-two years later, a new book has arrived. In effect, what Heat-Moon has done is give us, yes, The Rest of the Story.
Writing Blue Highways is not a series of outtakes or scenes that did not make it into the original book. And it’s not a creative writing handbook, though there are certainly good bits of writing advice throughout the volume. Writing Blue Highways is the story , the remembering, of what it took to get the book written after the journey was finished. We learn everything from his love for Blackfeet pencils “An instrument of the hand, so I believe, enforces keener disciplines than does a keyboard, perhaps the greatest one being encouragement in each line to consider the craft and utility of concision,” to how the legalese he worked with every day in a courthouse made clear writing difficult, to how all his photographs and notes were nearly destroyed. We learn the size of his writing desk, the type of typewriter he eventually used, and the inner struggle every writer faces to keep going.
Writing Blue Highways does not make the original Blue Highways a better book. No book can do that. Writing Blue Highways does, however, make the original Blue Highways a deeper memory for those of us who read and loved it. Writing Blue Highways, for example, contains the story of Heat-Moon’s relation with Jack LaZebnik, a World War II airman, pilot of a B-29, turned college English professor. Although LaZebnik was sixteen years older than Heat-Moon, the two were friends and LaZebnik became the editor and first responder as Blue Highways came into draft form. His experience and taste became a part of the style and structure of Heat-Moon’s voice.
There is a lot more to Writing Blue Highways. Heat-Moon’s relationship with a woman he calls Lucy is especially compelling—she is the one who hears Heat-Moon’s frustrations and angers and fears as the manuscript does, or does not, come to life. There is the inevitable story of how Heat-Moon sent early chapters to agents and editors, only to have the book quickly rejected. And importantly, we learn how William Trogdon became William Least Heat-Moon and how that changed the whole approach to the book.
“A couple days later I was listening to The Mikado and wishing I had a partner as William Gilbert did Arthur Sullivan. Drawing upon half a man was insufficient. And that’s when I saw it. That’s when I understood who, for thirteen thousand miles, had been lurking in Ghost Dancing. The man trying to write Blue Highways wasn’t simply William Trogdon of European descent; he was also Least Heat Moon of Osage ancestry. William’s Arthur had been there all along. The ghost dancing down the miles was Least Heat Moon. At last, I thought, I heard hints of distance melodic refrains….The next morning, six weeks after the full-manuscript rejection and three years and three months after writing the first sentence for the first time, I sat down not to revise but to fulfill the manuscript, and I began at the beginning.”
Writing Blue Highways is a fine and wonderful book. Although I’ve never met Heat Moon in person, I was a graduate student in the English department at the University of Missouri when he was writing Blue Highways, and so it’s likely we were sometimes in the same room, or together in a basement jazz club called Fish and Friends on Sunday nights in Columbia, Missouri. Why is this important? Because it does not matter how close you are or how well you think you may know something—a whole universe of what else is going on goes by without a soul to notice, until someone tells that story too. When we know the rest of the story, the world is larger, more interesting, more real.
W. Scott Olsen
July 23, 2014
I first read Blue Highways (published in 1982), William Least Heat-Moon’s story of his travels on an extended road trip around the United States when it came out as a mass market paperback in 1984. The title came from the journey Heat-Moon took in 1978 following the breakup of his marriage and losing his job as a professor. Blue highways were the little-used highways that connected towns and cities. Heat-Moon decided to travel these to see what and who he could find instead of taking superhighways just to get to somewhere. I fell in love with Heat-Moon’s stories of the places he went and the people he met. I even pulled out a road atlas and traced his route as I read. It was the first travel memoir I had ever read and I loved it. In fact, after finishing Blue Highways, I tracked down, bought and read John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley: In Search of America, about his road adventure around the borders of the US in 1960 with his dog. I also loved this book. Unfortunately, in the last several years, several people have criticized Steinbeck for making up much of what he wrote, even to the point that Travels with Charley is more fiction than nonfiction.
Writing Blue Highways: The Story of How a Book Happened is Heat-Moon’s short accounting of the effort, work, failures and eventual success in writing and publishing Blue Highways. The first three chapters offer a brief accounting of what caused him to take the journey and the journey itself. The book is a very interesting read about the writing process: the distractions, the complications, the submissions to publishers, the rejection letters, and the endless revisions and rewritings.
Heat-Moon writes about how difficult it was to even get started. He wasn’t sure what direction the book would take. He was also working a full-time job and had to write in the evenings and weekends. During this time, he found ways to trick and motivate himself. He explains several of these, but says that each person must ultimately find their own ways to motivate themselves. As he neared completion, and after finding a publisher, he then had to find the people he wrote about and/or photographed to have them sign releases so that he could include them in the book. This turned out to be a lengthy and tedious process. Finally, in December, 1982, the book was done. Heat-Moon includes a photograph at the end of the original logbooks of his journey stacked atop the fourteen different boxes of Blue Highways typescripts.
I enjoyed reading Heat-Moon’s explication of his writing process. It was an interesting read about his process of how a book gets written. I highly recommend this as a quick read. If one has read and enjoyed Blue Highways, this backstory will bring back fond memories of the original.
Writing Blue Highways: The Story of How a Book Happened is Heat-Moon’s short accounting of the effort, work, failures and eventual success in writing and publishing Blue Highways. The first three chapters offer a brief accounting of what caused him to take the journey and the journey itself. The book is a very interesting read about the writing process: the distractions, the complications, the submissions to publishers, the rejection letters, and the endless revisions and rewritings.
Heat-Moon writes about how difficult it was to even get started. He wasn’t sure what direction the book would take. He was also working a full-time job and had to write in the evenings and weekends. During this time, he found ways to trick and motivate himself. He explains several of these, but says that each person must ultimately find their own ways to motivate themselves. As he neared completion, and after finding a publisher, he then had to find the people he wrote about and/or photographed to have them sign releases so that he could include them in the book. This turned out to be a lengthy and tedious process. Finally, in December, 1982, the book was done. Heat-Moon includes a photograph at the end of the original logbooks of his journey stacked atop the fourteen different boxes of Blue Highways typescripts.
I enjoyed reading Heat-Moon’s explication of his writing process. It was an interesting read about his process of how a book gets written. I highly recommend this as a quick read. If one has read and enjoyed Blue Highways, this backstory will bring back fond memories of the original.
May 29, 2021
I'm a fan of Blue Highways so reading about the writing process blessed me, especially because I'm also a writer. This is a memoir about the writing of the famous travel memoir. Along the way some wise tips for writers are given, but the book doesn't focus only on writing advice.
We learn about what happened when William Least Heat-Moon returned from his trip around America. He came back with a log book but nothing actually written on the manuscript. He wrote about how he got people to talk to him and what happened when he contacted them again for permission to publish information about them and their photographs! I found those sections to be most helpful.
He also wrote about his motivation and preparation for the trip, about his new girlfriend after "The Cherokee" dumped him, and what it was like to try to get a publisher to take an interest in his writing project. (It wasn't easy.)
I recommend this book for all writers, but it would probably be best if you read Blue Highways first so you'd know what he was talking about. I love that book and have joined the vandweller movement since I finished reading it.
We learn about what happened when William Least Heat-Moon returned from his trip around America. He came back with a log book but nothing actually written on the manuscript. He wrote about how he got people to talk to him and what happened when he contacted them again for permission to publish information about them and their photographs! I found those sections to be most helpful.
He also wrote about his motivation and preparation for the trip, about his new girlfriend after "The Cherokee" dumped him, and what it was like to try to get a publisher to take an interest in his writing project. (It wasn't easy.)
I recommend this book for all writers, but it would probably be best if you read Blue Highways first so you'd know what he was talking about. I love that book and have joined the vandweller movement since I finished reading it.
December 29, 2023
I loved the book "Blue Highways" so when the author William Least Heat-Moon wrote this companion piece on the making of that book, I was interested. It is a book about the writing process from his point of view. Aspiring authors would do well to take note of his struggles and stubbornness, as well as his love of language. From his first sentence to the day of publication, the journey took more than four years. Thirty years later, the newest edition still has a misspelled word that wasn't caught in the thirty previous editions. Least Heat-Moon is both encouraging new talent and cautioning that good writing can be a painful process that is often not rewarded. Anyone today can self-publish a book, but all too few will even try to do it properly.
January 8, 2018
Full disclosure: Least Heat Moon's "Blue Highways" is my all-time favorite book (I have read it four times), so I'm a fan. I enjoyed reading this short book, as it really delves into the trial and tribulations of a first time book writer. Least Heat Moon did not simply return from his journey, sit down, crank out a book, and get it published. The book-writing took years of part-time toil while the author was trying to pay the bills as a receptionist in a probate office and as a loading dock worker. His difficulties in getting the book published were monumental. But in the end it hit the bookshelves, I bought a copy as soon as it was in the book stores (I had taken a cross country trip the year before), and was so moved by the book that it became the template for the cross-country honeymoon trip that my wife and I took in 1984. (The honeymoon trip was my second reading of the book.) In addition to the story of how "Blue Highways" got written and published, this book contains chapters on the craft of writing: why he uses a lead pencil for his first draft; the essential nature of revision and rewriting. In the future, I will use some of these passages on the nature of being a writer with my students. In short, this is a book that could easily be read in a weekend and, for Least Heat Moon fans, it's a must read.
Want to read
July 20, 2016i havent finished or developed any concensus on this yet, i jsut feel the need to remark that his experience regarding 'On the Road" was somehow iDENTICAL to mine, from everyone else' opinion, its implied relevance to his personal life/reading interest, and i swear to god, how far we got in it(even including the part about being reminded of the book and checking back on that progress at a way later date)
July 10, 2016
Blue Highways is one of my very favorite books. I have bought and given away at least a dozen copies of that beautiful and eccentric book. If you love it too, seek out this fine reminiscence of how it was written. If you haven't read it, this is still a good account of the struggles of a writer. I do advise you to read it first, though, so you will truly appreciate this book.
August 14, 2014
I read Blue Highways when it was published 30 years ago. After seeing an interview with the author on BookTV I decided to read his newest book about the 4 years it took him to get the book written and published. It was interesting and well written. Maybe it's time to read Blue Highways again?
May 2, 2017
I actually finished this book a while ago. After all these years, it was interesting to read how Least Heat-Moon went about writing his great book. It was also useful to learn about his writing process and the ways that the book took shape.
February 26, 2019
This book contains a few gems, such as a description of the time needed for writing well and a frank admission that he was essentially 'stealing stories' from people for his book Blue Highways. The rest of the book was thin and pretentious.
January 26, 2017
Interesting to read about how such a wonderful book came about, especially how much WORK it was for the author to write it and rewrite it again and again and again.
January 1, 2025
Imagine attending a play numerous times, and then one day the director invites you backstage for a tour. As enlightening and fulfilling as "Blue Highways" is to read - and I usually do once a year - it is a real thrill to learn about all it took to bring such a classic work to the audience.
August 5, 2020
I read this book in college. I couldn't find it, and one day I found it in kindle. This is a trip I would love to take and journal.
July 30, 2021
Reading Heat-Moon is like having coffee with a friend one does not have the pleasure of his company often enough.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews