Roads to Quoz: An American Mosey

This book fulfills the promise Bill began with. It is a learned, whimsical, digressive entertainment made only better by the fact that Heat-Moon like W. S. Merwin has achieved a wisdom and compassion few achieve. One can only rejoice that both authors have found contentment, while their voices have become surer with age.

I have read and enjoyed all of the other Least Heat - Moon books, so I was looking forward to this one. It has not let me down. It is different from Blue Highways in that it addresses the authors observations in greater detail. Anyone can write, but the style and choice of the written word has a way of leaving an impressions in the readers minds eye. Mr. Heat - Moon has found a very favorable way of doing exactly this task. He allowes you to enjoy what he is saying and at the same time foster a need to read more. It flows. It has style. It is informative and entertaining. I will look forward to his next book, whatever the topic (he hints at some possible projects - any of which would work with his quest to follow a lead and tell an entertaining story). I'm glad that he didn't spend his whole life in a dull classroom. Circumstances often have a way of bringing out the best in us. I don't always agree with his politics, but I respect them.

In Roads to Quoz Wm Least- Heat Moon tempts me once again to trace his wanderings.Reading his sharings does this to me. I have read every work he has done and eagerly await the next one. Learning history, geography, geology not to mention philosophy has never been so much fun as he presents it. I feel I am there myself within his descriptions and would enjoy actually meeting in person all those wonderful folks he introduces me to.

"Samuel Johnson said it in five words: `Solitude is dangerous to reason,'" writes the author. "I can think of no greater reason for taking to the American road." In 1982, William Least Heat-Moon published Blue Highways, a remarkable book whose title refers to highways colored blue on maps. Now, in Roads to Quoz, he ventures again off the beaten path to encounter quirky but charming out-of-the-way places and people. With an easy banter, Heat-Moon engages those whom he meets along the way--colorful characters eager to tell their stories. Venturing from Florida to New Mexico, Maine, and Idaho, and to other states in between, he writes with the delightful wit and humor reminiscent of Twain, Steinbeck, or Jack Kerouac. He explains that "quoz" (rhymes with Oz) means anything out of the ordinary: "anything strange, incongruous, or peculiar; at its heart is the unknown, the mysterious." Not all of America, perhaps not even the best, can be found along the Interstate highways or in the big cities. As the poet Robert Frost put it, "I took the road less traveled by--and that has made all the difference." William Least Heat-Moon, the pen name of William Trogdon, is of English, Irish, and Osage ancestry. He lives near Columbia, Missouri, on an old tobacco farm he's returning to forest. His first book, Blue Highways, is a narrative of a 13,000-mile trip around America on back roads. His second work, PrairyErth, is a tour on foot into a small corner of the great tallgrass-prairie in eastern Kansas. River-Horse is an account of his four-month, sea-to-sea voyage across on the United States on its rivers, lakes, and canals. His three books on travels have never been out of print. Heat-Moon is also the author of Columbus in the Americas, a compendium of the explorer's adventures in the New World.

I wasn't sure there was a word for what happens to me when I read Heat-Moon's works. I find treaures in them that seem to be written just for me to find. How can that be? "PrairyErth" was such a treasure-box; I have read it every year since it was written, each time finding something new. "Roads to Quoz" is also such a book. Its wisdom, depth and humor take you on journeys that are pure joy for the intellect and the imagination. Heat-Moon's "roads to Quoz" cover a vast area, so I was suprised that one of his Quoz stories mentioned a tiny town in Kansas called "Otis". It is where my mother grew up. I cannot explain such crossings of paths, but at least now I have a word for them: Quoz. This is simply a gem of a book. It looks forward and backward at the same time, giving insights along the way, and finding wonder. Gary Gackstatter, St Louis