Customer Reviews

Roads : Driving America's Great Highways

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

This slim volume should appeal to a variety of folks -- from couch potatoes, to occasional vacationers who pile the kids into the SUV once a summer, and especially to those 'pavement adventurers' among us who travel the interstates often. No matter what part of the country you live in, Larry McMurtry is apt to have driven through it and written at least a few sentences about it. I was fortunate enough to pick up this book just as I was returning from a 10-day drive through seven states, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading about stretches of road that I had just covered myself. At the same time that he shares his geographical experiences, McMurtry also teaches you about the literature of that area -- books either ABOUT the place, or BY the authors who live(d) in it. What a nice surprise! This approach makes "Roads" a nice gift for travelers or simply for avid readers as well. If you know McMurtry only for westerns, you'll discover many more dimensions to him in this pseudo-autobiography from behind the wheel. Good, relaxing, summertime reading!

As someone who has driven through most of this country, I have tried to understand why I love the road and why I get restless to get in the car and drive for hours. It's not the destination; it's the travel.

It was incredible to find this book because for the first time, I have found somebody who gets it, who understands it. While reading this, I relived my own adventures which not only made me happy -- but very anxious to go on another trip. Mr. McMurtry was able to find the words I've tried to find when I try to explain to others why I love long road trips.

It's a wonderful narration of the impressions we all get as we travel through areas, but it also makes you think about what you may not know about your own area, such as its history or storytellers. I do not see Mr. McMurty as lonely, but very much a participant in life that nudges others into thought, introspection, and remembrance. Our worlds are what we make them, and his is as expansive as the plains.

Some folks say the Interstate Highway System finally made it possible to travel from one coast of America to the other without seeing anything.

But "Roads," Larry McMurtry's new collection of essays, part Jack Kerouac, part William Least Heat Moon, part travelogue, part memoir, offers a glimpse of places as remote as the human heart.

This collection of essays is not as much about roads as restlessness. His routine is simple: McMurtry flies someplace, rents a car and drives home to lonesome Archer City, Texas. On his dawn-to-dusk superhighway sojourns, never slowing down for three-calendar diners, tourist traps or even to visit friends, he won't even turn on the radio. The journey itself is his destination. It's about going, not stopping.

At a level as uncomplicated as a farm-to-market road, the highways of McMurtry's collection are merely threads binding together his diverse musings on Los Angeles, manifest destiny, Hemingway's furniture, the need for rattlesnakes, the callowness (and shallowness) of contemporary Hollywood, cowboys, young killers in the Heartland, old books, fatherhood, the yellow housepaint in Key Largo, great rivers, the Holy Tortilla, and short remembrances of several dead characters from his stories. His prose has the quality of conversation on a long, long drive: a meandering, intimate, unfettered discourse inspired by the passing landscape.

But in a larger sense, "Roads" is a metaphor for the circular journey of McMurtry's life. It leads him to, from and through places where he considered roads not taken, or where his personal or literary paths crossed others, or simply where the quality of light through his windshield illuminated a memory.

"Roads" can be read as a natural sequel to "Walter Benjamin": The boy who never read Hemingway or Faulkner until he went to college now takes to the open road as a man to ponder their legacies -- and his own.

Be warned that this is not a traditional travel narrative. Larry McMurtry muses on writers that live(d) in the areas that he passes, things that he loves, or has loved, about those areas, and reminisces about his own life while flying down America's interstates. I found the book to be enjoyable, but intensely personal. If you are not interested in the author, you may want to consider a more traditional "road trip" book. That said, I must reiterate that I enjoyed this book, especially the discussions of area authors. I now have a whole list of books that I want to read. I found this book to be a comfortable break from tradition.

This is a pretty mediocre little travel book, and I agree with some previous reviewers in that this kind of self-indulgence could only be published by an established writer who has had greater success previously. Here Larry McMurtry has created an odd mix of memoirs and literary observations by way of a series of half-hearted road trips that he wasn't really enthusiastic about taking. His commentary on sights and characters during his travels is occasionally interesting, in a cynical and curmudgeonly fashion. A good example is his savage comparison of delayed commuters at the airport with refugees in Kosovo. But such coverage of scenery and people, which is what makes great travel books, is rare here. Instead, McMurtry mostly muses on his own foibles, talks about his own books, and reviews the works of other writers who happened to be from the places through which he drove, quickly.

Hence the road trips become merely a vague backdrop for exercises in reminiscing, and McMurtry unloads some poorly defined justifications for taking the journeys, relying on stock gibberish about finding oneself on the road, exploring the soul of America, and the like. Worst of all, during each trip McMurtry often starts complaining partway through that he has lost whatever inspiration caused him to start out, and in a quite annoying anti-travel fashion, he spends more time describing why he decided to avoid certain highways and even large regions. One horrendous example is his dismissal of the entire state of Idaho because of its small population of Aryans, while he has little good to say about any large city he traverses, nor many of the small towns. The only thing saving this book from total oblivion is the many times McMurtry praises other travel writers, which will encourage you to explore books far more enjoyable than this one. [~doomsdayer520~]

I love the works of Larry McMurtry. I love travel books. I love books about the long and winding road. This smallish book fits all three criteria. Be advised, the author warns the reader right at the get-go that he is not going to write about the people he meets on the way, this is not going to be some sightseeing tour. He is going to get in his car and drive, and his book will be about driving as fast as possible down major highways. Of course this would be beyond boring .(The following is NOT in the book, but I imagine a highway-driving book would read something like: "going 80 MPH on dry road, adjusted air vents, changed radio station 5 times, yawned non-stop till lunch, saw 3 white tractortrailers, 4 gray tractortrailers....") Mr. McMurtry does not inflict a diary of his driving habits upon us, but he does throw in quite a bit of interesting American history regarding the states he rips through, especially regarding past battles with American Indians. Though he does not get out and mingle with the public at rest stops or museums or anywhere else, he does make note of all those museums he blasts past, and makes observations on the weather, the amount of sky proportional to land/water, the amount of litter state-by-state, and of course the never-ending ebb and flow of highway traffic. He also writes about authors and books he admires, and provides anecdotes about his own life and part-time job of book collecting. This is an interesting book, confined mainly to the west and south of the country, the east being too cold and gray for Mr. McMurtry. It is well written (well, duh!) but short, and not very in-depth. "Blue Highways" by William Least Heat Moon is a better example of the travel-through-American genre which Mr. M points out at the start.

As a dedicated roadgeek who has driven most of the interstates and read most of the great "road" books from Jack London through Kerouac and Least Heat Moon; and also, as an equally devoted fan of McMurtry, I so much looked forward to curling up with this book. But it was a letdown. I get the impression that McMurtry didn't really want to write a book -- he just wanted to drive the interstates and get paid for it. It reads more like a trip report, and a dull one at that. His descriptions are spare and his opinions all too often gratuitous and glib. He uses the interstate system as an infrastructure upon which to hang memories, opinions and admitted self-therapy. Nothing wrong with that, but he didn't give enough to the reader to enjoy. Further, I feel the book was not particularly well-written or well-edited (coming perilously close to a description that some of Kerouac's work was "typing, not writing"). I get the impression that McMurtry's publishers, in recognition of his track record, just decided to let him have a freebie on this one. And, being so eternally in McMurtry's debt for the enjoyment that Lonesome Dove gave me, I too will give him a freebie. But, since this is supposed to be an honest book review, I, regrettably, have to rate it two stars.

The book is a nice bedside read. While McMurtry rambles around the interstates he does give us some thoughtful prose about himself and other writers when he passes through their towns. As a frequent long distance driver I concur in his appreciation for the interstate versus the blue highway.

But, I do think that $25 was a bit much for this book inasmuch as its 208 pages pass very quickly and there really isn't all that much in them.

You get to meet the real person, Larry McMurtry, who comes off as a sour and self-absorbed bore. Perhaps the title of this book should have been "All the Places I Hate to Drive Through in America". I expected a more pleasant ride.

McMurty has proven once again that the west is what has inspired his writing... As I have learned growing up in New York (which of course I love) but moving to El Paso, Tx 20 years ago....when you are out west, the farther you see, the further you think.... A must read for anyone who feels cramped... Steve Yellen