||boek: Blauwe wegen - Een ontdekkingsreis door Amerika|+zwart-wit foto's|vertaling: Gideon den Tex,Gerrit de Blaauw,Marion Op den Camp|Bert Bakker

||door: William Least Heat-Moon Trogdon

||taal: nl
||jaar: 1984
||druk: ?
||pag.: 480p
||opm.: paperback|zo goed als nieuw

||isbn: 90-351-0133-2
||code: 1:000136

--- Over het boek (foto 1): Blauwe wegen - Een ontdekkingsreis door Amerika ---

Als William Least Heat Moon, een halfbloed indiaan uit Missouri zijn baan kwijtraakt en bovendien breekt met zijn partner besluit hij een Ford bestelbus te kopen en door de Verenigde Staten rond te gaan trekken. Op de oude wegenkaarten van Amerika waren de hoofdwegen rood en de secundaire wegen blauw. De auteur kiest uitdrukkelijk voor die "blauwe wegen". Hij mijdt de toeristische trekpleisters en gaat af op vreemde plaatsnamen (Tomahawk, Spotsylvania, Subtle, Left Hand, Fortuna, Wheel enz.), laat zich inspireren door historische feiten (de Amerikaanse burgeroorlog, goldrush) en ook gewoon door het toeval.

[bron: https--www.boekmeter.nl]

Hailed as a masterpiece of American travel writing, Blue Highways is an unforgettable journey along our nation's backroads.

William Least Heat-Moon set out with little more than the need to put home behind him and a sense of curiosity about "those little towns that get on the map-if they get on at all-only because some cartographer has a blank space to fill: Remote, Oregon; Simplicity, Virginia; New Freedom, Pennsylvania; New Hope, Tennessee; Why, Arizona; Whynot, Mississippi."

His adventures, his discoveries, and his recollections of the extraordinary people he encountered along the way amount to a revelation of the true American experience.

[source: https--www.goodreads.com]

Blue Highways - William Least Heat Moon [2019-10-31]

Blog, Reisinspiratie

Een tijdje geleden las ik het boek van de Amerikaanse schrijver William Least Heat-Moon met de titel: Blue Highways. Het gaat over een reis door Amerika, die de ik-persoon in het verhaal maakt. Blauwe wegen is een verwijzing naar kleinere, vergeten en vervallen wegen.

Wat is verdwenen?

Halverwege het boek reist William door een gebied dat enorm uitgestrekt en verlaten is. Hier kunnen wij ons in Nederland amper iets bij voorstellen. Hij wordt er zelf een beetje gek van en besluit te stoppen. Hij stapt uit de auto en bedenkt zichzelf dat hij zich niet moet concentreren op wat er allemaal niét is maar de dingen moet gaan tellen die hij wél ziet. Hij ziet lucht, wolken, struikgewassen, vogels, kleinere zoogdieren, natuur op micro-niveau van verschillende soorten insecten, de bergen in de verte en vele kleuren van het prachtige landschap.

De verlatenheid voel ik nu ook een beetje als ik aan de tuin en het erf denk. Er is zo weinig overgebleven van kleuren, geuren, honderd tinten groen, potten, tuinkussens enzovoort. Zelfs het onkruid begin ik al te missen.

En wat is gebleven?

Toch is er voor een gepassioneerde tuinier gelukkig altijd genoeg te doen. Zodra het weer het toelaat sta ik te vegen, op te ruimen, te snoeien, planten, verplanten en restaureren. En plannen maken! Niets zo leuk als plannen maken voor het volgende voorjaar en zomer. Een tuin is geen statisch geheel en ik ben nog nooit iemand tegengekomen die tevreden was met zijn of haar tuin. Er moet altijd wel iets veranderd worden, aangepast of zelfs gebouwd worden.

Een pauze voor nieuwe inspiratie

En dus gaan we massaal naar tuin-centra's om ideeën op te doen. Groen kopen voor ín huis kan natuurlijk ook, maar echte tuin-liefhebbers zie je toch vaker rondlopen in het buitengedeelte van de centra's. Mooie bomen en hagen: zin in! Of nieuwe bestrating? Mooiere tuinafscheidingen? Of toch eens een poging wagen een vijver aan te (laten) leggen?

Winter-pauze

En zie hier het grote voordeel van een winter-pauze: een tijd van bezinning en plannen maken voor het nieuwe jaar. Juist nu kun je goed zien hoe de bomen en struiken er voor staan, waar gaten in de hagen vallen of welke gedeeltes van de tuin een groenblijvertje tussendoor verdienen. Want de (beetje) saaie groenblijvende planten in de zomer, zijn in de winter een lust voor het oog. Op TuinTuin staan een paar interessante blogs over kleur in de wintertuin en over plannen die je juist nú kunt gaan maken. In de zomer is er tenslotte vaak nauwelijks tijd voor dit soort klussen.

Het weer is opgeklaard. Ik ga net als William Least Heat Moon naar buiten en kijken naar wat er allemaal nog wél is. En plannen maken!

Marga van der Vet [bron: https--boekrecensiesblog.nl/blue-highways-william-least-heat-moon]

Een man danst niet op americana [2003-04-28]

Liedjes van weemoed en verlangen, vertolkt voor een publiek van blanke mannen van middelbare leeftijd. Mannen met soms een hoed, mannen die nooit dansen, maar meeknikken op de muziek...

In de kortstondige ogenblikken vlak voor zonsopgang en net na zonsondergang - als het geen dag en ook geen nacht is - laten de oude wegen weer iets van de kleur van de hemel zien. Dan krijgen ze werkelijk een geheimzinnig blauwe tint, en dat is het moment waarop de aantrekkingskracht van de blauwe wegen het sterkst is; dan is de open weg een invitatie, een mysterie, een plaats waar je jezelf kunt verliezen.

William Least Heat Moon (1982)

Vraag aan Theo de Keng uit Terneuzen wanneer de americana voor hem begon en hij neemt een trek van zijn joint, kijkt je peinzend aan en zegt dan, op zo'n lijzige toon die je al zeker dertig jaar niet meer gehoord hebt: 'Aahh, the sixties, máán.'

Volgens Theo de Keng loopt er één rechte lijn van de Grateful Dead naar wat er deze zaterdagavond in Vredenburg is te horen op Blue Highways, hèt festival van de americana.

...

Bart Jungmann [bron: https--www.volkskrant.nl/nieuws-achtergrond/een-man-danst-niet-op-americana~bbd34085]

--- Over (foto 2): William Least Heat-Moon Trogdon ---

William Least Heat-Moon (born William Lewis Trogdon August 27, 1939) is an American travel writer and historian of English, Irish, and Osage ancestry. He is the author of several books which chronicle unusual journeys through the United States, including cross-country trips by boat (River Horse, 1999) and, in his best known work (1982's Blue Highways), about his journey in a 1975 Ford Econoline van.

Least Heat-Moon has Osage and European ancestry. The Trogdon family name comes from his Euro-American lineage, and the Heat-Moon name reflects his Osage lineage. William's father is Heat-Moon, his elder brother is Little Heat-Moon, and he is Least Heat-Moon.

Born in Kansas City, Missouri, Least Heat-Moon grew up in Missouri where he attended public schools. He earned bachelor's, master's, and Ph.D. degrees in English, as well as a bachelor's degree in photojournalism from the University of Missouri. Least Heat-Moon was a member of the Beta-Theta chapter of Tau Kappa Epsilon. He later served as a professor of English at the university.

Least Heat-Moon resides near Columbia, Missouri, in Boone County near the Missouri River.

Blue Highways (1982) is a chronicle of a three-month-long road trip that Least Heat-Moon took throughout the United States in 1978 after he had lost his teaching job and been separated from his first wife. He tells how he traveled 13,000 miles, as much as possible on secondary roads, and tried to avoid cities. These roads were often drawn on maps in blue in the old-style Rand McNally road atlas, hence the book title. Living out of his van, he visited small towns such as Nameless, Tennessee; Hachita, New Mexico; and Bagley, Minnesota, to find places in America untouched by fast food chains and interstate highways. The book records his search for something greater than himself and includes memorable encounters in roadside cafés. This memoir was very popular, making the New York Times bestseller list in 1982-83 for 42 weeks. It was also the winner of a Christopher Award in 1984.

PrairyErth: A Deep Map (1991) is an account of the history and people of Chase County, Kansas. This work introduced the concept of a deep map.

River-Horse (1999) is Least Heat-Moon's account of a four-month coast-to-coast boat trip across the U.S. in which he traveled almost exclusively on the nation's waterways from the Atlantic to the Pacific. During this nearly 5,000-mile journey, he followed documented routes recorded by early explorers such as Henry Hudson and the Lewis and Clark expedition.

Columbus in the Americas (2002) is a brief history of Christopher Columbus's journeys.

Roads to Quoz (2008) is another "road book." This covers "not one long road trip, but a series of shorter ones" taken over the years between books. Robert Sullivan of the New York Times Book Review commented that Least Heat-Moon celebrates "serendipity and joyous disorder."

Here, There, Elsewhere (2013) is a collection of Least Heat-Moon's best short-form travel writing.

An Osage Journey to Europe 1827-1830 (2013) was translated and edited by Least Heat-Moon and James K Wallace. It is the account of six Osage people who traveled to Europe in 1827, accompanied by three Americans.

Writing 'Blue Highways (2014) is an account of how Least Heat-Moon wrote his best-selling book Blue Highways. In reflecting on the journey, he also discusses writing, publishing, personal relationships, and many other aspects that went into writing the book. It won an award for Distinguished Literary Achievement, Missouri Humanities Council, 2015.

Celestial Mechanics: A Tale for a Mid-Winter Night (2017) is William Least Heat-Moon's debut novel.

Least Heat-Moon's works focus very heavily upon the theme of Ecocentrism. Because his best known work centers on different methods of traversing the North American landscape, one might say that the ecosystem serves as a necessary foundation for Least Heat-Moon's writings. Jonathan Levin, provost of the University of Mary Washington, labels Least Heat-Moon a "literary naturalist." Specifically, he attempts to illustrate a hybrid relationship between humans and the environment and how each entity influences the other. Nature is presented more as an active character in Least Heat-Moon's narratives as opposed to a backdrop. As a result, Least Heat-Moon calls into question the nature of how society defines its own geographical boundaries. Renee Bryzik, a professor at UC Davis, likens Least Heat-Moon's method of illustrating this socio-environmental interaction to a reinvigorated analysis of Bioregionalism. According to Bryzik, what seems most fascinating to Least Heat-Moon are instances where the line dividing society and nature becomes blurred, and it is difficult to tell whether society has influenced the environment or vice-versa.

Least Heat-Moon's writings also present a critique of how societal progress has negatively affected the ecosystem. The insights that Least Heat-Moon gained in his travels along the blue highways were two-fold in that while he was able to come to terms with his own personal growth, he was simultaneously able to contemplate how he as a human being fit into the greater fabric of the universe. In essence, his ability to comment on the state of the ecosystem post-Blue Highways stemmed from his acquired understanding of how humans interact with their physical surrounding, and how they should interact with their environment. River Horse is particularly effective as a medium for commentary on contemporary environmental resource management as his travels were reliant upon a different kind of blue highway: the rivers of North America.

Although Blue Highways is remembered primarily for the physical trek, which covers about 38 of the 50 states in the U.S., the quintessence of the book is the internal journey that Least Heat-Moon takes. The blue highways allowed Least Heat-Moon the space and the freedom to reflect upon who he was, who he wanted to be, and how he fit into the greater world around him. Initiated by the loss of his job and the unraveling of his marriage, his own search for "self" quite literally took him down the road less traveled. . Blue Highways has been likened to a cross between John Steinbeck's Travels with Charley, and Jack Kerouac's On the Road.

Apart from Least Heat-Moon's own admission that Travels with Charley partially influenced the decision to travel and write Blue Highways, the literary tones of both books also parallel each other. Both authors were interested in exploring the U.S. as thoughtful and reflective observers. Least Heat-Moon's circumstances mirror those of Kerouac's protagonist as well, and the work shows a spiritual dimension reminiscent of "Beat" culture. He was himself influenced by Beat writers such as Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and admitted to reworking the concept of Kerouac's On the Road.

One aspect of Blue Highways as a travel narrative is that it is a snapshot of American culture that echoes the sentiments of Beat Generation writings and even Romantic Era travelogues, but does so in the late 1970s. His decision to strike out on the open road in search of spiritual truths continued a tradition that captured the cultural outlook of a certain era in U.S. history (the 1950s-1970's). To a certain extent this tradition has been lost.

Although Least Heat-Moon's works echo Transcendentalist spiritual concepts, he has stated that he does not consider himself to be a "Transcendentalist".

Bibliography

Blue Highways: A Journey Into America. Fawcett, 1982. ISBN 0-449-21109-6
The Red Couch: A Portrait of America. With Kevin Clarke and Horst Wackerbarth. Olympic Marketing Corp, 1984. ISBN 0-912383-05-4
"A Glass of Handmade." The Atlantic, November 1987.
PrairyErth (A Deep Map). Houghton Mifflin, 1991. ISBN 0-395-48602-5
River Horse: The Logbook of a Boat Across America. Houghton Mifflin, 1999. ISBN 0-395-63626-4
Columbus in the Americas (Turning Points in History). Wiley, 2002. ISBN 0-471-21189-3
Roads to Quoz: An American Mosey. Little, Brown and Company, October 2008. ISBN 978-0-316-11025-9
Here, There, Elsewhere: Stories from the Road. Little, Brown and Company, January 8, 2013. ISBN 0316110248
An Osage Journey to Europe 1827-1830: Three French Accounts. University of Oklahoma Press, October 2013. ISBN 0806144033
Writing Blue Highways: The Story of How a Book Happened. University of Missouri Press, May 2014. Hardcover, 978-0-8262-2026-4 / E-book, 978-0-8262-7325-3.
Celestial Mechanics: A Tale for a Mid-Winter Night. Three Rooms Press, April 2017. Hardcover, 978-1-941110-56-0 / E-book, 978-1-941110-57-7.

[source: 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.

[source: https--www.goodreads.com]