Roads to Quoz: An American Mosey

by William Least Heat-Moon

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.

Genres: Travel, Nonfiction, Memoir, Biography, Philosophy, Adventure, Audiobook

592 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2008

About the author

From 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.

Reviews

[Janice · Rating 4 out of 5]

My husband and I love road trips, whether just a day trip around our beautiful Ozark mountains, or a longer jaunt. William Least Heat-Moon captures the experience of visiting small towns, learning of local history, and meeting unique local citizenry, many willing to gab a bit about their hometown, or tell their own stories; at times he also paints a picture of the surrounding terrain and scenery. I loved the conversations between he and his wife that were recorded here. The audio version was well done and easy to listen to.

[Ellen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This work of over 500 pages would benefit greatly by trimming down to half its length. I'm sure the author himself could never do that because he is obviously in love with his wit and verbiage. Really disappointing because I love a good travel read...and because some of this is really good. The author often catches one up in the narrative only to become annoyingly erudite. What a show off; not only of his own cleverness, but his wife's as well.
The only way to get through this is to skip around; check out parts of the country you're interested in or have been to. Don't even try to plow through all that nonsense about Quoz, and Q words, I did and I'm sorry I wasted my time. Come on, who edited this long winded mess?

[Stewart Tame · Rating 4 out of 5]

The subtitle, "An American Mosey," sums it up nicely. This is not a book one plows through in a single sitting. This is a slow read. It meanders. It wanders. It drifts. This is not a bad thing. William Least Heat-Moon is the bear that went over the mountain. He's fascinated by forgotten corners and out-of-the-way places. Divided into several sections, this book explores various small towns and scenic places throughout much of the continental United States. Heat-Moon's prose is a treat to read, a nice blend of bemused, curious, eccentric, raconteurial, and liberally sprinkled with language that may send some folk scurrying for the dictionary, if only to see if a word is traditional or author-generated: "Quoz", for instance. He is generous with the definitions, as well as contextual clues, so I didn't feel a dictionary was necessary to my enjoyment of the book, but your mileage may vary. More than anything, this book made me start itching to travel, to see some of these places for myself. It made me want to investigate Route 40, see the North Maine Woods, see that magnificent railroad bridge in Pennsylvania, sample a pickle pie, ride a rail bike, take a trip down the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway, and more. Heat-Moon is not a typical tourist though. His goal is not the destination, but the journey itself, and he doesn't just see the sights, but delves into local history, and just generally takes a very deep look at everything he encounters. This book will likely take a significant chunk of time to read properly, but it's not really something you want to read simply to have read it either. As in many things in life, the journey itself is as much a reward as the destination, perhaps even more so.

[Mosco · Rating 1 out of 5]

sono arrivata faticosamente ad un terzo e non riesco ad andare avanti. Mi abbiocco alla seconda pagina, mi annoio, quando lo riprendo in mano devo rileggere il già letto perché me lo sono scordato. Ho amato molto "Strade blu", letto e riletto con altrettanto piacere a distanza di parecchi anni. "Prateria" meno scorrevole ma non brutto, già in "Nikawa", secondo me, Least Heat-Moon aveva perso lo smalto. Qui l'ispirazione non c'e' proprio più, sparita la leggerezza dalle sue pagine, si trascina faticosamente alla ricerca dell'incontro interessante o della storia curiosa da raccontare. E forse e' questo il problema: viaggia per scriverne non per viaggiare e ciao spontaneità. E scrive per contratto, a mio avviso, non più per piacere.
I viaggi: tanti e brevi, pochi giorni invece che mesi e mesi, e forse anche per questo non entra nello spirito del vagabondaggio. Non trovo la storia, nel testo, non c'e' continuità. Anche la moglie con la quale va in giro (viaggiare mi sembra una parola grossa) e della quale e' estremamente orgoglioso, bella, bionda e riccia e avvocato di successo, nonostante i suoi sporadici commenti pungenti, non lo aiuta ad uscire dal loro cerchio magico e a guardarsi attorno con partecipazione. E' innamorato cotto e guarda lei invece che il mondo che li circonda.
Least Heat-Moon, secondo me, ha scritto un solo libro, "Strade blu". I seguenti hanno cercato, con alterne fortune, di esserne all'altezza. (Certo che 24 euro per questa barba sono decisamente troppi) ...
EDIT: Mi arrendo. Di questo passo, a due pagine a sera perché rapido sopraggiunge l'abbiocco, lo finirei fra sei mesi. E ho di meglio sul comodino che sta prendendo la polvere. Caro William, senza rimpianti, addio.

[Emmy Jackson · Rating 1 out of 5]

I’m having a hard time putting my finger on why I didn’t enjoy this book. I loved Blue Highways, Least-Heat Moon’s solitary journey through the forgotten backroads of America. Though Roads to Quoz is very similar in content, and the flowery prose is both creative and entertaining, the book itself failed to draw me in. Perhaps it’s a lack of a feeling of authenticity? The sense of navel-gazing is much stronger this time around, and the travels in this story were undertaken ostensibly to feed this very book, whereas Blue Highways had the feeling of being a personal odyssey that would’ve taken place whether there was a book deal in it or not. I don’t know if this is actually the case or not, but there’s something below the surface that makes Roads to Quoz feel more cynically mercenary at its heart.

[Jon Stout · Rating 4 out of 5]

After having read Blue Highways and River-Horse, I am always interested in what William Least Heat-Moon has to say. He is notable for traveling around the country with a very curious and inquiring mind, and reacting to small encounters and adventures which turn up. I can be bored easily, but Least Heat-Moon always has engaging and humane reactions to whatever he comes across, and he is always a pleasure to read.

In River-Horse, he took a quirky trip by water across the United States, up the Hudson River, across the Erie Canal to the great lakes, overland to the Ohio River, to the Mississippi, up the Missouri (mimicking Lewis and Clark), across the continental divide, and down the Snake River and the Columbia River to the Pacific. Fascinating all the way.

In this book one of his adventures is a similar voyage down the east coast by way of the Inter-Coastal Waterway. He starts off from Chesapeake Bay and travels south within the Outer Bank of North Carolina and other southern states. Along the way, he encounters Gullah speakers, and looks for specimens of the red wolf, of whom there are only a few hundred left. He has a keen eye for distinguishing between urban sprawl and revealing but humble remnants of our collective history.

Another of his amazing trips is along six hundred miles of the Ouachita River in Oklahoma and Arkansas. He manages to encounter personalities and evidence of an earlier age, such as Jonesville, built on what was once the Great Mound, a pyramid-like construction comparable to those of Egypt or Mexico. The colonial pioneers gradually built on top of the structure, slowly eroding away its majesty and discarding the ceramic fragments which were evidence of its past. The sadness of the lost past, and the ambivalence of the present residents are gritty and real.

Least Heat-Moon’s general attitude is exemplified by an incident in which he tried to entertain a nine-year-old for a few days. Least Heat-Moon had visions of traveling with the boy and showing him the amazing things he encountered on the road, but the boy was obsessed with an electronic game machine he carried around with him. Least Heat-Moon tried building an Erector Set airplane with him, but the boy connected a few pieces and returned to his game. Even when Least Heat-Moon tried working on the project with him, the boy escaped to the bathroom where he continued his game.

This story is illustrative to me because the boy was lost to his immediate environment through his immersion in his electronic gizmo. William Least Heat-Moon, on the other hand, was all about the here and the now, encountering people and places with his full attention.

[Jay French · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was expecting another “Blue Highways” from William Least Heat-Moon, a story encompassing one trip around the US. What I got with “Roads to Quoz” was the installment plan version – around a dozen separate stories involving travel around the US to some extent. These were truly moseys around, unhurriedly travelling from place to place looking for stories. It felt a bit like a Charles Kuralt book where he's gone rogue and hasn't reported back what he was doing for a couple of years. I was surprised and a bit disappointed the stories weren’t more connected.

That’s not to say the stories weren’t overall pretty good. Most I found of some interest. I especially liked the first story, which found our travelers moseying along the entire length of the Ouachita River (mostly) in Arkansas, stopping at all the small towns and getting to know some of the locals. This story seemed to have the most humanity and felt the most like “Blue Highways” to me. It also introduced the author’s wife, called Q throughout. I did find myself wondering what Q would say throughout the book, and often got an answer.

As you head toward Quoz, you start to realize what makes this a long-ish book. The author digresses, and focuses on the digressions. This eats up pages for little payback, beyond maintaining the feel that we are moseying along with the author without a care in the world. I also felt the author loved to use long word and long-winded descriptions to excess. I suspect he had a bonus for his syllable per word average from the ink company. Heat-Moon never met a $100 word he couldn’t use at least a few times. While quaint, the flowery language felt at times like it was borrowed from a Henry James novel. And I find flowery language with rarely used words tend to slow a reader down. Thankfully, I had the audio version which kept me going over the parts that were a bit overwhelming, or should I say over-fragrant. In the end, I was glad I read this one for the small town parts, but I think you need to be in the mood to listen to someone kill a lot of your time telling stories.

[Beth · Rating 2 out of 5]

Years ago, the book "Blue Highways" influenced me as I had the opportunity to travel around the US, but this Roads to Quoz did not recapture the spirit of that book (in my opinion).

In this book, William Least Heat Moon is traveling with his wife (I think they're married) and I'm happy for him that he's in love, but their ongoing cutesy banter irritated me. Travel writing may be more compelling when the writer is on his/her own.

Some of his descriptions of the places he visited and people he described interested me, but I found myself skipping over parts that seemed tedious or irritating and eventually abandoned it. (Recreational reading shouldn't get on my nerves.)

Perhaps it could have been a good book had an editor cut about half of it.

[Jake Porter · Rating 1 out of 5]

Heat-Moon combines an infectious curiosity and a journalist's nose for poignant stories with a writing style repulsive enough to make you physically ill. The book's actual narrative is fantastic, but it's hopelessly buried in page after page of obnoxious asides and overly witty banter that reek of academe and seem to positively delight in derailing the story. Someone hire this man an editor, or at least take away his thesaurus.

I had to quit when he used "anon" instead of soon. Just tell the damn story, William.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

as usual, least-heat moon manages to dig into the lesser known crannies of american historio-oddities and locales by simply wandering and meeting people. moon's natural curiosity impels these moseys and his way of looking at the world always manages to keep the reader interested, often via the simple reminder that america is a fucking big place that's chock full of strange, fascinating things and people. (also supplemented with well-read obscure/local histories and anecdotes.)

quality-wise, quoz is a full step down from blue highways and anyone as yet unfamiliar with moon should absolutely begin with blue highways. while quoz does retain and even further much of the same sentiment, philosophy and observation, moon was at his best before he became a quipping septuagenarian. while it's amusing that at times he sounds a bit like a well-meaning uncle relating a dusty story, it gets to be a little much eventually. then again, i can't fault moon much for it, he's becoming exactly what he loves - a quirky american quoz.

[Chuckell]

With maybe 50 pages to go, I am giving up on this book. Listen, there may be some people who don't already know, bone deep, that Americans as a people have taken a criminally disdainful approach to preserving our nation's natural beauties and bounties. But the thing is, no one who doesn't already feel that way is ever going to pick up a book titled Roads to Quoz anyway--they're all too busy snow-mobiling and off-roading. So my feeling is that I don't need to be reminded, at least once every other page for 600 pages, that America is a place where historical landmarks and natural wonders have been all but universally bulldozed under to make way for strip malls and McMansions. I can complain about that myself, I don't need anyone to do it for me.

PrairieErth is one of my favorite books ever, so this one is a gross letdown. It's like taking a long car trip with your crotchety grandfather.

[Larry Bassett · Rating 3 out of 5]

Probably lots of extra reading is being done during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. I listened to this book in the audible format. I hate it when an author’s best book is his first book. That may well not be a fair summary but it is my summary at the moment.

This author is sensitive and insightful and he has known for traveling around on the back roads and making observations about places you might never go. He does that again and this book but his stories seem to be a bit longer. I like it more when he is shorter.

In this book he travels to the middle south and southwest of the country, to the plains, to Maine and to the inland waterway on the east coast. Every location had its interesting stories and out of the way people and places. He has skill and experience in this kind of writing and he is able to switch into gear seemingly without effort.

The author is a progressive thinker and he draws all the right conclusions about the best way for the world and its people to move forward with an appreciation of the past. He is observant of what is right in front of him but he also tries to look past the smokescreen That the world throws up.

His final paragraph:

And in that grimness to come, then darkness will be preferred to light, and people will think it better to vanquish than to seek harmony, and they will turn their eyes away from Creation, and the generous-of-heart will be thought fools, the intolerant rational, the destructive brave, and the self-serving clever. And all that attaches to the indefinable soul of Creation will be scorned and reckoned nonsense. —The Asclepius of Hermes Trismegistus Third Century A.D.

[Jenny · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hmm, what category does travel writing belong in? Fiction or non-? I think I'll keep it in fiction, cuz it was fun to read! Though I didn't love it as much as I loved "Blue Highways," which was one of my all-time favorite books I've read.

Anyway, "Roads to Quoz." Still enjoyable to read. It's long, so it's good for a long plane trip, or vacation, or whenever you have time for a slow, rambling read. It's not a page-turner; it's a relaxed ride, like "Life on the Mississippi." But he's so great with words, and finding the humorous in the everyday. In his own words...

--"If you leave a journey exactly who you were before you departed, the trip has been much wasted, even if it's just to the Quickee-Mart." (p 10)

--"Wandering can help restore one's humanity and reestablish the harmony once existing between us and the cosmos. I add that even if such harmony is only imagined, a longing for it can humanize." (p 32)

--"Why not call a state penitentiary a gated community?" (p 49)

--"...an entree typically possessed a single culinary characteristic--heat. Across a nation of speed-eaters, cooking has often come to mean heating." (p 65)

--"There can never be enough scientists or humanists to gather the simple quotidian facts of every existing thing, even though accurately understanding the world demands no less." (p 116)

--"What I saw in her life was an alert to superfluity, a demonstration of the ancient and universal wisdom of controlling material desires by enhancing the life of one's heart and mind, the grand goal of every major religion and spiritual path ever put before humanity." (p 323)

--"To me, the difference between the young Canary and the thousands who once affected hippiedom was that he was authentic, almost an archetype, and he worked to weave together care values of the later '60s and early '70s into a useful life able to make a difference in other lives." (p 340)

--"In Millinocket, in the shadow of Mount Katahdin, in a downpour, I began asking questions in offices, cafes, the library, and later, even the town tavern, one of those places commonly known for misrepresentation, misinterpretation, misinformation, misguidance, misconception, misdirection, misestimation, misunderstanding, and misbegotten notions leading to misadventures, mishaps, mistakes, misfortunes, and (worst of all should Q overhear any of it) misgivings." (p 400)

[Ajk · Rating 5 out of 5]

Between moving 3 times in the same city, taking two trips out of country, and actually having a job, this one took a while to read. The fact that it weighs in at 608 pages didn't hurt, either. But what a 608 pages it was.


Roads to Quoz is about William Least-Heat Moon's travels around the U.S. It's really six different books in one, as he goes to the Pine Belt South, Southeast, Southwest, Northeast, Great Plains, and Mid-Atlantic. All the trips are different and are quite stand alone, and they are all a lot of fun together, as well. As much as I appreciate his missives about places I've been, like Columbus, OH or Baltimore, MD, I enjoy the exotic parts a bit more. And to be honest, I didn't enjoy the Baltimore bit at all. He enjoyed Baltimore way too much and didn't understand how bored and white-bread that city is. But maybe that's just me.

My favorite part, I suppose, was his writing on the Great Plains. He does a good job of showing just how alien and hostile to Yankee life it is. Which is also, of course, why its fantastic. And the stories he has from his time out there are some of the greatest stories I've heard.

So it's a fun book. It'd a good beach read / travel book and there are enough bits in it for everyone, from screeds against development to snippets of married life to stories about him growing up and trying to find a job as a young somethingorother. And to be honest, pretty inspiring, all in all. While reading it, I was more-than-a-little convinced to go back to the states and just...backpack. Hit the road. Something like that. I even hinted at such earlier in this space.

And now that its looking that I may stick around, after all, its nice to have wistful books about America. Or maybe not America as it is, but definitely America as I'd like it to be. Small-town. Mostly flat. Full of interesting people and stories. Toqueville's America is a good America, I have to say. One worth coming back to, at the least.

And in addition, here's a great interview with LHM. And, if you go down the left sidebar, its an interview with just about every other fantastic author as well.

[Mary · Rating 2 out of 5]

Quoz, according to the author, is "a singular or plural noun, referring to anything strange, incongruous, or peculiar; at its heart is the unknown, the mysterious." In a series of trips around the US, most of them starting and ending in Columbia, Missouri where he was living and teaching at the time, most of them undertaken with his wife, whom he refers to as Q, he says he was in search of whatever quoz he could find. My conclusion after finishing the book is that some trips obviously were "quozier" than others, to create an adjective.
This is an episodic book, told in six sections, one devoted to each of his journeys. I read it episodically, too, over the course of a few deary rainy season months -- reading a journey here, putting it aside to read other things, coming back for the next journey. Some of that was because the format lent itself well to "segmented" reading, but if I am honest, part of it was because I kept losing interest. Unlike Least-Moon's "Blue Highways," which I found captivating, there is little quest - personal or otherwise - in this book, not much desire to discover who he is by discovering what this country it, nor is it like his "PrairyErth" which I loved for the adventure in great depths to which it took us, on and under the Kansas prairie, this book certainly lives up to its subtitle - mosey! It putzes, and in many places feels strained. Some spots I wanted to shout: "Get on with it, already!" Still, it was not without its moments. I particularly enjoyed his Journey to the Northwest (Columbia, Mo to as far northwest as Orofino, Idaho and back) and the trip along the Atlantic coast he heralds in "Down the Old Waterway" (from Delaware to northern Florida). And I generally enjoyed the trip banter with Q as they move along -- when I wasn't irritated by it (she's WAY too clever, though what would one expect from devotee of Dorothy Parker?) Still, I wouldn't dismiss the book or suggest it was a waste of time. There is quoz to be found therein, though I suspect mileage of what and where it is found may differ from reader to reader, though that may simply be the nature of quoz.

[AuthorsOnTourLive! · Rating 5 out of 5]

We met William Least Heat-Moon when we visited the Tattered Cover Bookstore in Denver. You can listen to him talk about "Roads to Quoz: An American Mosey" here: www.authorsontourlive.com/?p=207

Book info:
William Least Heat-Moon’s first book "Blue Highways" was acclaimed as a classic–a travel book like no other. Quirky, discursive, endlessly curious, Heat-Moon had embarked on a 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. Heat-Moon reads from and discusses his new book "Roads to Quoz: An American Mosey," his newest adventure on the back roads-a lyrical, funny, and touching account of a series of American journeys into small-town America.

[Diane · Rating 3 out of 5]

Least Heat-Moon is a difficult author for me. I read (aloud) his Blue Highways in 1987 while we moved across country from Bellingham WA to Chapel Hill NC. I loved it. Then I tried to read PrairyErth and RIver Horse and although I loved the premise of each book, I just couldn't get far into them. The author is quite self absorbed and basically you are getting his thoughts while traveling and sometimes it is interesting and sometimes not.

I enjoyed listening to Roads to Quoz which is a series of books about his travels. His wife "Q" is great. Some of the incidents are really wonderful, sometimes he wanders in his mind and it is boring. I think listening to Quoz on a long car trip(very long - it is about 20 hours) is the perfect approach.

[David Corleto-Bales · Rating 2 out of 5]

"Quirky" to the point of exasperation, William Least Heat-Moon's "American mosey" through west Arkansas is long on verbiage and poetry and short on actual information; I was disappointed at the lack of discussion of geography, history and scenery, (although what was there was good). He can never resist the opportunity to wax poetic about june bugs or moon pies or yams or one of those other silly countrified things that southerners always "go on about." He and his wife "Q" were theoretically following the 1805 Dunbar Expedition sent to the area by President Jefferson, to explore the region of the Ouachita River, (or Washita, depending on where you live.) The expedition accomplished little, and this book lives up to that accomplishment.

[Charlie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Typical Heat-Moon book. A good read if you're into meeting personally quirky people in off-the-beaten-path places.

I think the book is better early on. The more it progresses, the more it seems to repeat itself - not the stories, but the overall theme. And the last section following the ICW down the East Coast seems like just a long float to nowhere. Only when he goes ashore does the author tell us about his usual assortment of interesting meet-ups.

By the way, I am not impressed with the author's attempt to astound me with his vocabulary. Why not let the diction reflect the people he meets? And the "q" thing gets a little over the top.

[Ron Davidson · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first WLHM book I have read; I think I'll try more. I have to admit that it took a while for me to get really interested in it, but it's long enough that I had the time. It has a lot of fascinating stories from interesting people, and the author's "philosophizing" (for lack of a better word) adds a lot of insight to the stories and human nature in general. (Although sometimes he gets a little too far out, and you wish he stopped a little sooner.)

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

3 1/2 rounded up to 4. I could have given it a 5 if he hadn't gotten so wordy in places. There were parts I just had to skip over, but the rest of the book mostly made up for it. I realize that wouldn't bother a lot of people, but I tend to start skimming books after a hundred or so pages as it is.

[Maggie]

I read 49 pages of this and then returned it to the library. Then I decided to try again -- again after a book club discussion -- but I'm skipping around. Reading the Northeast section because I lived there and climbed some of the mountains there that are included in this book. Not fond of this author's constant intrusion of self into the stories.

[Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

An enjoyable read. William Least Heat-Moon is such an excellent writer, he can even make a mosey around parts of the country entertaining. I read this in small bits, as there's no connection between the chapters other than the fact that he was there and is giving his opinion.
But his opinion is worth the time, and his word choices are perfect.

[Evan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The subtitle of this book does not lie, this is a real mosey of a read, to be experienced in small dollops over the course of a long, slow time. A chapter a day is just fine. Heavy verbiage, description, thoughtfulness and wit meant to be savored. I understand those who can't hang with its digressive and sometimes obsessive style. There isn't an observation, wise or otherwise tossed-off, that William Least Heat-Moon doesn't put to the page, and the book has been criticized for this. It might be best described as a "maximalist travelogue." This man can riff and show off his writerly powers all he wants; I'm here for it.

The inclusion of Heat-Moon's witty wife, Jo Ann, whom he lovingly refers to as "Q", adds flavor to the mix in this epic tour of the U.S. lower 48. Some might find their soul-mate "completing-each-other's-sentences" rapport a bit twee, but I warmed to it -- like bantering Nick and Nora Charles in The Thin Man, it has that vibe. Autobiographical seeking -- internal travel meets outer -- is a tricky thing to pull off, and your mileage may vary as to whether he does. This is decidedly more staccato and shambolic than WLHM's Blue Highways. If you can't stomach this (one reviewer called it "navel gazing") I completely get it. Heat-Moon literally tells the reader he knows he's being annoying sometimes. Still -- even if this tome does not flow as beautifully as WLHM's masterpiece, Blue Highways (read THAT first, before this one, seriously) -- this is nonetheless great on its own terms. Get past the first hundred pages, decide if you can do this mosey, and you are home free.

Importantly, this documented love-letter to a vanishing America, made me FEEL in a way that few books do, and I absolutely love William Least Heat-Moon for it. It will stand up easily to a second reading, and in fact I read many of the passages twice to make sure I was grasping the meaning. His writing is often dense, but the turns of phrases are too lovely and masterful to glibly skate over. The kind of contemplative travel WLHM espouses in the book necessitates it being written this way. He wants you to see the backwoods landscape as he does, considered, taking into context the historical layers of the places -- not whizzed by in a plane or in a fast car on the interstate. To cob from Donna Tartt, this is a "secret history" of America -- hidden in closed communities, old forgotten news clippings, layers of flora and fauna, and buried memory.

As with Blue Highways, there's a rogue's gallery of Americans presented, some interesting and some less so, who comprise a country vanishing as fast as the places herein. As America becomes more venal and divided, Heat-Moon is trying to remind us of a people and their nation at its best (and sometimes worst), aiming in his telling for a unifying principle or goal -- Quoz, as he defines it -- those rare and cherished moments of epiphany in the journey of life. I adored this book and the man who wrote it, without reservation. It reminded me quite a bit of Mark Twain's Life on the Mississippi, a book I revere.

This is not the perfect read that Blue Highways is, perhaps, but it doesn't have to be; it is amply filled with wisdom and reward. More gold than tailings is a good measure of success for any miner. Heat-Moon wants us to get back to taking our time, not slavishly trapping ourselves in dispiriting instant gratification. Heat-Moon despairs, as do I, of a generation killing time on long trips with cell-phone games instead of accumulating memories of the American grain outside their car windows. This book was an indelibly satisfying and refreshing experience. It is, objectively, a four-star book, but who's counting? There are many moments of sheer magic in this, and I loved it.

c.2025 e/k

PS: Don't read this on an empty stomach; WLHM chows down on some delectable regional grub in this. Best read with wine and food at hand. And maybe a cigar or something stronger.

[Rhonda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Road to Quoz is a literary gem written in exciting, beautiful prose and inspired historical vision.

[Kenn Prebilic · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked parts of this book; it's definitely worth a read. There are some nicely researched stories encountered on travel trips--The Great Mound along the Ouachita River, the truth behind the shooting of William Grayson, and a trip along the inter-coastal waterway of the Atlantic--and those stories kept me going.

On the other hand, it took me a while to get into the book. I thought of putting it down in the first 50 pages as it explained the idea of a 'Quoz' and went on and on about other 'Q' words. I made it through this, but there were several times throughout the book when the writing bogged down again and dragged me down with it. Mostly, this was due to the author's "dear reader" digressions and his 'reader alerts' about maybe wanting to skip ahead over the next chapter or two. These digressions pulled me out of the journeys and felt a bit pretentious. Add to that the many descriptions of restaurants and foods being eaten, and it sometimes felt like a restaurant review book instead of a travelogue. I wanted to get back on the road.

I suppose a reader might expect some writer eccentricities in a book about travels. It comes with the territory--a book like this requires lots of time spent in diners and restaurants meeting with people and fleshing out the details of the stories the writer is researching. Maybe though, the book would be a better read for me if these things were shortened or taken out all together. I'm not a foodie.

Ultimately, I rate this as a solid 3.5 star book, bumped up to 4 stars because I'll remember the research stories and travels while the other stuff fades from memory.

[Svalbard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ogni tanto l’Einaudi è ancora in grado di sorprenderti. Compri ad esempio un libro come questo, a scatola chiusa (nel senso che mi arriva via Amazon ed è cellophanato, tanto con Heat-Moon non si sbaglia mai), poi lo apri e, invece delle due-trecento pagine che ti aspetteresti, dato lo spessore, ne trovi più di cinquecento, oltretutto scritte piccolo, su una pregevole carta leggera e sottile (nonché - segnalazione per i feticisti del libro - con un buon odore). Questo è il contenitore. Quanto al contenuto, esattamente quello che ci aspetta: racconti di viaggio attraverso gli Stati Uniti, aneddoti minimi e storie raccolte lungo la strada, narrate sempre straordinariamente bene; annotazioni letterarie (splendide, tra le altre, le pagine dedicate a Kerouac), incontri casuali o meno con piccoli uomini che fanno grandi cose nei campi più disparati. Il primo capitolo introduttivo ha un brio linguistico e una fantasia semantica che lo farebbe pensare uscito dalla penna di un Queneau o di un Calvino (complimenti a Monica Capuani per l’ottima traduzione). Per informazione: il quoz è un oggetto o un luogo misterioso, non ben determinato né determinabile, ma che è bello cercare; il libro lo spiega compiutamente solo in una delle ultime pagine, citando un lemma del “Nuovo quozinario della lingua italiana”: “Quoz (kwŏz), n. Qualcosa, ovunque, di vivente o altrimenti, che colleghi l’umano all’esistente, porti un individuo nel cosmo e lo integri con l’immemore, facendo in questo modo che ogni vita appartenga alla creazione e impedendo così il divorzio dell’uno dal tutto che lo ha portato all’esistenza”. Linguisticamente c’è un’evidente assonanza con il reame di Oz, fiaba solidamente incuneata nell’inconscio collettivo americano molto più di quanto non lo sia nel nostro. Q, invece, il personaggio che affianca Heat-Moon nei suoi viaggi, è la (nuova) moglie, innamorata fin dall’infanzia di tutto ciò che abbia a che fare, appunto, con la lettera Q. Quanta intelligenza, quanto umorismo e quanta serenità c’è in queste pagine. Quanto tempo pare passato da quando Heat-Moon, rimasto disoccupato e venendo prontamente abbandonato dalla precedente moglie, per sfuggire alla depressione salì sul suo Ghost Dancing, un modesto furgone camperizzato, e si lanciò alla scoperta del suo Paese raccontandolo in maniera impareggiabile. E quanto siamo lontani dalla spocchia saccente con cui l’autore di “Luoghi selvaggi” prova a raccontare i suoi viaggi in cerca della wilderness britannica. (Quante Q ci sono in questa mia recensione? Non l’ho fatto apposta, giuro).

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm gonna go out on a limb here, and give some praise to Mr. Heat-Moon.
(His very name a seeming heffalump of syllogism). For an American travel-writer, I feel he rivals (my previous fave) Lawrence Durrell. Of course, Mr. Durrell being an English subject is preconditioned toward all those things it might suggest, and more, as an exile in Mediterranea, and maybe my biggest reason for liking him is the sheer number of oddball words he uses, guaranteed to keep you running to the dictionary.
Mr. Heat-Moon has a similar bent. Reading his stuff you will find one reason after the other per page to find some etym used that few people (other than perhaps a Mr. Durrell) have found a use for including in their own essays. (Quick, before it becomes archaic!)
As an American travel writer, I think he's a perfect specimen for the latter-day modern empire. Thoreau was a child of the eastern woodlands. Twain, of the river, and the not-just-yet-past-tamed badlands states. Although his best travel writing is of the Old World. Muir, a child of Scotland, transplanted onto moor and scree up and down the Sierra - attuned to the empire, but that not yet so fully formed. Mr. Heat-Moon, along with his Native ancestry (and it so happens I share an Osage 'cousinship' with him , as well as Irish [using that word in the broad, Native-familiar sense]) speaks of the great nation as it has grown into its fifty-states-dom, of the prairies here-and-now and been- and-gone, seeing quite well and lucidly what is there, as well as that which was lost. And I think this is a good thing, having uniquely American travel writers writing about our incredibly complex country using incredibly complex language and daring you (if you haven't the notion to follow such perspicacity) to at least, in some fashion, close your eyes and imagine it.
I plan to get to most all his books now that I've "eaten" three.

[Joe Stack · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a marvelously written travel tome. It is more than a travelogue because the author digresses into history, philosophy, and ruminations about places, people, and life in general & towards specific conditions of humankind & place the author encounters. A warning to potential readers though, the book’s subtitle, “An American Mosey,” is a fitting description to reading this book. It is a “mosey.” Readers expecting a fast read, those who prefer - to borrow from the author - taking the interstate vice a two lane road will likely find this travelogue like hitting rush hour traffic. Besides covering the regions he’s travelled for this book, the author escorts the reader through a wonderful usage of words. The author builds with many words instead of the fewest. There are sections where the author seems to circumambulate his way to his point. Thus, this is a “mosey” where the “perdurable” (a new word I obtained from the author) reader will be rewarded and the reader who “absquatulates” (another new word for me) will forego, miss out, simply eschew the author’s adventurous use of word accumulation and his enjoyable metaphors, such as, each of our days being the sentences to the lives we write, so each day starts as a ‘ “printer’s pie” by which we hunt for the fonts and sizes to write our sentences.’ There is serious discourse in this travelogue and there is humor. And there is harrowing adventure, such as the drive through the north woods of Maine. To any reader who starts this book and then decides to abandon it, do not leave it until you read Chapter 10 in Part IV, “What Raven Whispered.”

[Jeanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

William Least Heat-Moon mosies on his road to Quoz throughout this large volume. It captured my imagination. He rambles around the country meeting colorful characters and relates the history of the places he visits. I wish I shared his ease in getting people to open up.

In case you were wondering...Quoz - anything, anywhere, living or otherwise, connecting a human to existence and bringing an individual into the cosmos and integrating one with the immemorial, thereby making each life belong to creation, and so preventing the divorce of the one from the all which brought it into being.

In the middle of Quoz, WLHM, tells the story of William Grayston, a gentleman of an earlier time. These chapters could be extracted and published as a separate book. I was intrigued and enthralled by the twists and turns of Grayston's story. Since I have a fascination with forgotten history, these chapters nourished the part of me that longs for these stories. Might there come the day when I will uncover something so mysterious myself?

I found WLHM's extensive vocabulary to be challenging. I was surprised by how many words I did not know. After awhile, I did find it distracting to come upon yet another word I had never seen before. It is great to expand one's vocabulary, but this became a bit much. (Made me wish I had a Kindle.)

I would recommend this book to anyone who likes to take their time and enjoy the journey.