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Title: Roads : Driving America's Great Highways by Larry McMurtry ISBN: 0-684-86885-7 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pub. Date: 05 June, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.38 (37 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Not all highways are blue
Comment: 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.
Rating: 4
Summary: Different can be good
Comment: 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.
Rating: 4
Summary: Interesting.
Comment: In "Roads", Mr. Larry McMurtry travels the Interstate Highways System of the USA. Along the way, he comments on certain places and tells of his adventures. He also links history to the places he visits or passes by. I found it interesting, then again I'm what they call a "Road Geek" ;) . You don't have to enjoy roads and highways to enjoy Mr. McMurtry's book, however.
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Title: Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen : Reflections on Sixty and Beyond by Larry McMurtry ISBN: 0684870193 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pub. Date: 07 August, 2001 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: Blue Highways:A Journey Into America by William Least Heat-Moon, William Least Heat Moon ISBN: 0316353299 Publisher: Back Bay Books Pub. Date: 19 October, 1999 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: In a Narrow Grave : Essays on Texas by Larry McMurtry ISBN: 0684868695 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pub. Date: 17 July, 2001 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: Paradise by Larry McMurtry ISBN: 0743215664 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pub. Date: 06 June, 2002 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: The Wandering Hill : A Novel by Larry McMurtry ISBN: 0743233034 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pub. Date: 13 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $26.00 |
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