"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
Actually, there may be another reason the author is reluctant to apply the brakes: his distaste for various towns, villages, counties, and entire states. Planning a trip to the Texas hill country? McMurtry notes that "the soil is too stoney to farm or ranch, the hills are just sort of forested speed bumps, and the people, mostly of stern Teutonic stock, are suspicious, tightfisted, unfriendly, and mean." Missouri is "a place to get through as rapidly as possible," Ohio and Georgia "really aren't pleasant," and woe to the traveler who lingers in the one-horse towns of the West, "where it's not even wise to roll down one's windows--if you avoid getting murdered you might still breathe in some deadly desert germ."
This crankiness does have an undeniable comic appeal. Yet Roads turns out to be a sentimental journey after all, in the course of which McMurtry hopes to resurrect some of the élan vital he lost in the wake of his 1991 heart surgery. Driving, like reading itself, just may prompt some remembrance of things past:
As I prepared to drive those same overfamiliar roads again it occurred to me that my effort was obliquely Proustian, a retracing of my past that is analogous to the many rereadings I've done in the last few years, always of books I read before the surgery. In these rereadings and redrivings I'm searching, not for lost time, but for lost feelings, for the elements of my old personality that are still unaccounted for. I'm not anguished about these absentees, just curious and somewhat wistful.Indeed, anguish is largely absent from McMurtry's account, and he doesn't dwell often on this scenario of loss and recovery. Still, it comes through particularly strongly at the end, when he compares his own, transient experience of place to his father's. These final chapters cast a sadder and more substantial light on the preceding ones--and make this circuitous, sometimes tetchy book a trip worth taking. --James Marcus
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
Shipping:
FREE
Within U.S.A.
Book Description paperback. Condition: New. New Condition, Paperback book, Seller Inventory # 2306280092
Book Description Condition: New. Seller Inventory # A9-4G3V-TVMF
Book Description Condition: New. Buy with confidence! Book is in new, never-used condition 0.4. Seller Inventory # bk0684868857xvz189zvxnew
Book Description Condition: New. New! This book is in the same immaculate condition as when it was published 0.4. Seller Inventory # 353-0684868857-new
Book Description Condition: New. Seller Inventory # 409288-n
Book Description Paperback or Softback. Condition: New. Roads: Driving America's Greatest Highways 0.49. Book. Seller Inventory # BBS-9780684868851
Book Description Soft Cover. Condition: new. This item is printed on demand. Seller Inventory # 9780684868851
Book Description Condition: New. Seller Inventory # I-9780684868851
Book Description Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. As he crisscrosses America--driving in search of the present, the past, and himself--Larry McMurtry shares his fascination with this nation's great trails and the culture that has developed around them. Ever since he was a boy growing up in Texas only a mile from Highway 281, Larry McMurtry has felt the pull of the road. His town was thoroughly landlocked, making the highway his "river, its hidden reaches a mystery and an enticement. I began my life beside it and I want to drift down the entire length of it before I end this book." In Roads, McMurtry embarks on a cross-country trip where his route is also his destination. As he drives, McMurtry reminisces about the places he's seen, the people he's met, and the books he's read, including more than 3,000 books about travel. He explains why watching episodes of The Mary Tyler Moore Show might be the best way to find joie de vivre in Minnesota; the scenic differences between Route 35 and I-801; which vigilantes lived in Montana and which hailed from Idaho; and the histories of Lewis and Clark, Sitting Bull, and Custer that still haunt Route 2 today. As it makes its way from South Florida to North Dakota, from eastern Long Island to Oregon, Roads is travel writing at its best. As he crisscrosses America--driving in search of the present, the past, and himself--western chronicler Larry McMurtry shares his fascination with this nation's great trails and the culture that has developed around them. This item is printed on demand. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability. Seller Inventory # 9780684868851
Book Description Condition: New. pp. 208. Seller Inventory # 26829100