Charley v. Blue Highways

Reading William Least Heat Moon's Blue Highways has inspired me to take a different approach to my final project than I was initially planning. Originally, I conceived of presenting a small collection of my friends' stories retold in the styles and related themes of the authors we have read in this course. Blue Highways, aside from agitating my travel bug, has caused me to reconfigure my project as a collection of stories reflecting my own personal travels in, you guessed it, Thailand. I am still drawn to the idea of shaping these stories stylistically and thematically according to our authors, but now I want the travel stories to be mine.

The notion that gives me pause, however, and the reason for this blog, is why wasn't I thus inspired by John Steinbeck's Travels with Charley? I've been thinking more about the differences between these books; and why, despite their similar themes, they failed to inspire me in the same way. Yes, we have the whole Steinbeck-made-it-all-up controversy (and that could feed into what I'm about to say regarding the potency of invented versus lived experience), but the two authors' choice of subjects and subsequent recording/reflecting of experience seems to me to get more fully to the root of their varying effects.

Steinbeck seemed to spend more time than Least Heat Moon talking with folks who weren't quite a part of the particular region he was in and/or their conversations took place in a moving vehicle. This might sound like a strange observation for a road novel; but if you're trying to get to the “heart(s)” of America, stopping and conversing sounds more authentic. Some examples: the young soldier Steinbeck speaks with on the ferry, the businessman he “gets to know” by what was left behind in the hotel room, the actor he meets on the road who happens to be a traveler himself, the three different characters he picks up on his way out of New Orleans...

It's not that any of these struck me as particularly false when I was reading Travels with Charley, and I do think the hotel invention is rather clever. But when I compare these instances to Least Heat Moon's detailed descriptions of shacks and cabins and trailers and his conversations with those inhabiting them, I cannot deny a much clearer ring of veracity. His asides into the various histories of the regions he visits as well demonstrate the affection and true interest he has in those places. The effect is subtle, less novelistic, yet it is, in my opinion, what makes Blue Highways the more rewarding read.