Letter from Bill Heat-Moon to the Watts Family

Dear Marilyn, Thurmond, Virginia, and Hilda Watts,

I haven’t found anyone looking for a good store, but I thought I’d write anyway. Ever since I left Nameless to pad along the back-roads of the Republic, I couldn’t get my mind off of your stories and your store and the best goddam slice of buttermilk pie I ever had. In fact, I included your stories and your picture in my book. Yes, I wrote a book. It’s called Blue Highways. I hope you don’t mind being in it. I’m sending you a copy, but it probably won’t arrive for two-three weeks.

I wonder if you’ll like it. I know traveling is a bit trifling for old-fashioned folk such as yourselves. Frankly, it tuckered me out sometimes too. Maybe my book will give you a taste of the America you never got to see for yourself. Maybe it won’t. I reckon you’ll feel like you know some people, some towns like the back of your hand. There were some men in Shelbyville refurbishing a log cabin. Ignore the pop from the corner store. I’m sure the stuff you sell is better – real cane sugar. Focus on the log cabin. Bob, Tony and Kirk are preserving a piece of America that’s going endangered. Then there’s Walker and Davis from Selma. Things haven’t changed too much since King marched all those people across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Racism: that’s an old piece of America that stinks like an old sock. I don’t know how many blacks you see out in Nameless. I don’t even think I mentioned to you that I’m Indian. You would have found out when you read my book. But these were good boys, boys who liked basketball and the Air Force and grape Nehi. Boys you would rely on in a pickle. It’s a shame how they’re treated by the police. I hope you like them. Then there’s the Desert Den Bar & Filling Station in Hachita, New Mexico. Somehow it reminded me a little of your place. The proprietor’s name was even Virginia! Virginia Been. She’s been there for a long time by now. And the town has a similar story, too. Population exploded back when a copper company put a smelter right between them and the border, so the smoke would blow over to Mexico. Eventually a town popped up right by the smelter, and since it had better TV reception, everybody picked up and moved. Now the Desert Den is like a dried-up watering hole. Not that Virginia minds. She likes it that way, even if there isn’t much to do but work.

I don’t know why I hit the road. I think I give a reason in the first couple of chapters, but I forget what it was. You’ll have to write back and tell me. It might have had something to do with my ex-wife. But I know why I wrote Blue Highways. It’s because of meeting you in Nameless; and Bob, Tony and Kirk in Shelbyville; and Walker and Davis in Selma; and Virginia Been in Hachita. I figured out It’s true what they say – that America is the world’s melting pot, where all different sorts of folk have somehow hitched to one post. We are different, but united some how. But that’s changing. All the interstates getting built, all the chain restaurants, even all the legislation that claims to be new but isn’t, you’d think they’d be connecting us, but it feels like they’re driving us apart. Like they’re choking out backwoods America. In ten years, folks will never know that Cajun chicken can taste different from one side of the river to the other. The whole country is really starting to melt together, and I don’t like it. It makes it easier to cross over to your side of town, but what’s the point if it looks, feels, tastes just like my side?

These are the things that worry me. I hope you enjoy the book. I hope you find someone who wants to buy your store. But if you don’t, I hope that every time someone pulls up in front and asks you how your town got its name, you tell them the story of Nameless, because it’s America’s story, and a country should never forget its own story.

Sincerely,

Bill

Letter to John Steinbeck

Dear Mr. Steinbeck,

Of your travels through the Monterey Peninsula, you wrote, "The place of my origin had changed, and having gone away I had not changed with it. In my memory it stood as it once did and its outward appearance confused and angered me" (205). I particularly liked this insight, because I think it highlights something I've always known to be true but never though specifically about: the way change is so closely tied to a place. Of course people change. We grow up, we find new interests, we make new friends. But, as you pointed out, people don't change without any influence; no one exists in a vacuum. People change with their surroundings, and I think this is an important distinction. Maybe that's why travel is so influential--it gives you a new surrounding with which to change. 

When I reflect on my own life, it makes sense that I've changed with the places I've lived. I've moved multiple times, and at times I've found it difficult to relate to my friends in my former towns. This isn't because we're fundamentally different people; instead, it's always seemed to be more of a result of our different styles of interacting and different senses of humor. Though we still get along for the same reasons we always have--we're kind and easy-going people who can have fun together--it sometimes feels that we don't click in the way we used to, because I've adopted a way of speaking and joking and relating to others that is acceptable in my new home town but not in my old one. And I too get confused and frustrated when something changes in my absence. I'm well aware that my life continues when I leave a place, but sometimes forget that everyone else's lives continue also. When I go home during breaks, I expect my sister to be 10, just as she was when I left home after high school, and am always surprised when she's 13, even though I'm fully aware that three years have passed in my life. It's so easy to forget that time passes everywhere at the same speed.

I appreciated your insights on change, memory, and home in this passage, and enjoyed your travels and writing as a whole. Thank you so much for a wonderful read!

Best,

Devon

Letter to William Least Heat-Moon

Dear William,

Blue Highways is a gem in many different respects. Your circular route of travel was indeed unconventional. Yet, your search for a sense of understanding America in a different light and understanding yourself after some unfortunate events in your life has been a common theme in the books we have read in On the Road. Your approach as a Native author gave me greater insight to American history that I was completely unaware of, which I greatly appreciate. For example, you were able to give nuanced comparisons to the towns of Mateo and Wanchese based on your knowledge of the Native men who visited London in a colonial exploratory ship in 1584 before their return to present-day North Carolina. Have you received pushback, or mostly praise, for including Native history and themes within your writing or critiquing race in America?

If you were to go on another road trip throughout the US and a part of Canada, where would you most likely revisit? Would you base your decision on the people you met (and often photographed) there, or the overall connection you had to the place? 

Best,

Joy 

Letter to Isabel Wilkerson

Dear Isabel,

I enjoyed the Warmth of Other Suns, as you portrayed the rich experiences of 3 protagonists with such depth that it successfully described a movement that spanned decades. How did your training as a journalist prepare you for undertaking of nearly 1,000 interviews? What helped you determine that the stories of Ida Mae Gladney, George Starling, and Robert Joseph Starling, were sufficient in portraying the Great Migration? Aside from their accounts, I was struck by the explicit retelling of Claude Neal’s lynching in Florida.  In particular, I was taken aback by the details of the lynching party, his actual death, and the resulting lack of justice on behalf of the American government despite substantial evidence. I appreciate that you weaved in crucial events that both affected and reflected the political climate during the Migration. These pieces of history helped me contextualize the stories you were describing in detail. 

I also have a couple of lingering questions: How do you counter criticisms of your comparison of migrating African-Americans to that of fleeing refugees? Or, perhaps that there has indeed been a good amount of scholarship on the Great Migration before the publishing of your book? 

Thank you for your time,

Joy

Letter to Martha

Dear Martha,

I wanted to write to ask you about how you viewed your book Travels with Myself and Another as you got older and perhaps matured some more. I don't know if that's a fair description of things, the maturation, but I wanted to know if your views changed at all. You were really unfavorable and kind of insulting of some places and I wondered why you kept things that way. You were particularly harsh with your account of traveling through China, and I wanted to know if you felt the same way as you did later. I thought personally that you criticized it perhaps unfairly harshly, but that might just be my opinion from reading it so much later than when you wrote it and with a much different cultural context for it than when you had written it. I know part of what made the journey so interesting is that it was so much of a challenge and that the conditions were so poor, especially with that infection which you got towards the end, but I thought that perhaps you could have focused onto some better parts of the journey. It seemed like it was unfairly overshadowed by all the negative things which happened, which isn't a bad thing, the negative should have a place in the story, but they shouldn't be the only part of the story. At least that's my thoughts on the matter.

I thought that you did a much more balanced accounting of things when you were in Africa and appreciated your style much more at that point than otherwise. You covered the things that were bad, the weather and bugs and how you came in woefully underprepared, but you also highlighted the moments which were better. I really appreciated how you described meeting the sultan or whatever his proper title was out in the bush. I thought it was much more keenly observant and looked at him and his culture in a more complete and sensitive way than when you wrote about your experiences in China and in the Caribbean islands during World War II.

I also wanted to mention your travel to Russia. What was it like? It seemed hard for me to get a sense of the actual place from your writing. You focused it more onto the interactions that you had with your friend there, which I found strange because nowhere else did you drive the story with people. What caused you to make that choice? Because it seemed like a conscious decision, you mentioned going sightseeing, but you said you could hardly recall what Red Square looked like. Was it because the reason you went to Russia was specifically to visit Mrs. M, or was there something else behind the choice of centering your account onto her? 

Letter to William

Dear William,

I wanted to write to you to ask how you felt about finding the essence of America. It seemed to me like you were looking for much the same thing that Steinbeck was looking for when he set off, and had a similar sort of experience while you were out there. Maybe I'm not looking deeply enough into this, because I don't really want to say that you were copying Steinbeck, I just wanted to mention that your two journeys seemed similar to me.

I don't think there were any areas where this was particularly evident, and I don't even mean to say that you had similar experiences while you were traveling, but it was just a sense of similarity that I couldn't shake. Let's take for example the experiences that both of you had there in the South and what transpired. I'll focus on when you were in Selma and met those three gentlemen. You had a profound conversation with them about the effects of racism that they still carry in their lives, and also a mention of how the police officers who are black treat them worse than the white ones do out of some sense of fitting in. At least that's how I remember it being described. Steinbeck didn't really have any experience at all that's analogous to this. He had the situation where he talked to the man. I can't remember quite if it was the Monsieur Ci Git or not, but he talked about how blacks wouldn't be satisfied with gains. I guess his point was more that the blacks had to learn to look at the whites just about as much as the whites had to learn how to look at blacks both of them needed to see each other as people and he wasn't so sure that was going to happen. For some reason it just seemed to me that you two had a similar sort of experience there even though the content between the two is pretty much entirely different.

I also wanted to ask you how much you felt like you were in contact with your Native American heritage while on the trip. I noticed that you fairly often mention the tribes who are residents of an area, and kind of use them to get a sense of the place for us in the story. I was wondering if you felt like through the trip and going through all of these areas that you were able to get a better sense of your heritage or if it remained much the same?

Letter to Ann

Dear Ann,

I wanted to write to you to ask how you felt about your mother. It seemed like your feelings towards her changed throughout the novel. You used to really look up to her, do you think that was a product of age or just genuinely loving her? For instance when you got into the car accident in Arizona you let her place the blame for the accident squarely on you despite the fact that all you had really asked for was to go on to the inn where you could use the credit card, Comfort Inn was the place I think. When you were younger it seemed like you realized things were strange with her but didn't really ever think about mentioning anything to her about it. For instance at the very beginning she just left you by the side of the road, and apparently she'd done this a few times before, and she returned and you didn't really say anything about it at all. Did it just seem pointless to say anything to your mom or did you just think that things were normal with how she acted despite the fact that it was unlike anything else you'd ever seen or really heard of. 

I guess I also wanted to ask about how you treated Peter Keller. It seemed like he was really nothing except nice to you and you just treated him wretchedly and manipulated him quite a lot. It seemed like something that your mother would do, well not necessarily that she would be able to, but something that she would do if she was able to get in close enough to one of the men which she thought were interested in her. Did she influence you with your treatment at all? Did she know about you and Peter or was it really just something more that you had picked up through osmosis as a set of expectations and then you just enacted them after that. 

What did you think of how your mother handled her search for men? It seemed very strange to me. She just became so dependent on the men even when they had nothing at all that they could offer her. For instance the man she had living with you at the beginning in Los Angeles. I can't remember his name but I do recall that he was a developer and that your mother thought that he might be involved with the mob. Anyways he did really nothing and your mother put up with him despite that fact. I thought the strangest thing was how she only got rid of him after he yelled at you. She had no problem herself with yelling you, and if I recall correctly even hit you sometimes. Why do you think it was such a big deal to her that the man yelled at you? Because it seemed to me that pretty much anything else that he did wasn't really a problem at all. 

Letter to John

Dear John,

I wanted to write to you about a couple of the meetings that you had with people while you were out there traveling. They seemed like they were the sort of thing that you were searching for the entire book but could only rarely find. Why do you think that is? Is it because you weren't looking well enough for things, and by that I mean looking in the right places, or do you think it's more that it's just a challenge to find the sort of authenticity out there in the world that you wanted for the book?

The first part that I wanted to write and ask about is the meeting with the actor. I can't remember if it was in North Dakota or Montana or quite where it was but I'm sure you'll remember the man I'm talking about because you seemed to like the guy quite a lot. Do you ever wish that you had gotten more information about the man? He seemed like a mystery to me. I guess that's because he was trying to make an exit at the proper time, but nonetheless it seems like you weren't able to get everything that you wanted from your encounter with him. Did you feel that way as well? Or were you pleased with how things went with your encounter, because to me it just had the sense of being unfulfilling and kind of inauthentic. He seemed like a real person, but it didn't appear to me as if you had much genuine conversation with him.

Another moment that I wanted to raise with you is the point again in that sort of area, the mid-North, though that's not actually a place, again I will depend on you to remember precisely where it occurred. The place I am referring to is the hotel with the boy who was looking East. The one who you gave a lovely speech about the virtues of being a hairdresser for. Did you think you made the right choice supporting him? It's certainly what he wanted, he seemed extraordinarily dedicated to making it away from where he was now into New York I think it was, or if not specifically New York at least away into some city. It seemed like he didn't have a bad life set for himself there, and I don't think it's fair of you to recommend travel as a solution to the problems that he was having there. I meant I think it could certainly be a solution, but there were times in your own travels when you seemed unfulfilled and kind of lonely. Like back in Monterey, it is home but it isn't any longer and that's something which you lose when you go away. I don't know. The third encounter I wanted to raise connects to this I guess. Again it's about happiness, and it comes from the happiness of staying put and being contented with what's at home. It was the man at the beginning with the dairy form and the phD. He wasn't going anywhere, and he's the only person that I can remember you particularly mentioning for being happy throughout the whole story. I guess what I'm saying is perhaps you should have just recommended to the boy that he's just as likely to find happiness if he stays put rather than giving pretty much unequivocal support to him moving away to try to find happiness. I don't disagree with what you did, but I think it's worth mentioning. 

Letter to Chuck

Hi Chuck,

Really glad to be able to write to you. I guess the main purpose of this is to ask you what it was like writing your book as it was actually happening. In class we've read a lot of peoples' accounts of their travels, but most of the time they're reflective and written after the fact. Of course they kept notes on their travels, but America Day By Day, Blue Highways, and Travels with Charley were all written after the authors had completed their journeys which I suppose makes you unique. I'm sure that you edited your material after the trip had happened to emphasize certain things, and you made sure to highlight the fact that not everything is necessarily true in your book, but still you had the proximity to the events. 

Do you think that you were able to produce a more cohesive piece of work because you wrote a lot of it while it was happening? I would imagine that it makes for a more honest emphasis than you get if you're writing it reflectively. By that I mean that you're a lot closer to what's happening so the things that are most important to you as they happen are also the most important in the writing. You don't have an expectation upon yourself to write something more profound out of an experience you had that was influential when it happened, but perhaps not possessed of everything that you ascribed to it later. 

I guess a possible example of some things that you did which I felt was not entirely honest, as in it likely happened but wasn't as fully realized when it did as when you wrote it. One of these was when you were in South Carolina I think it was. Your run over the hill where you imagined what would happen if you were to die at that precise moment. The web of connections that it would bring out to pass the information along to everyone. I don't doubt that you considered what it would be like if you died. I think that the nature of your trip almost ensured that you would think about death being so involved with writing about it, but I don't honestly think that you made all those connections while you were out there on your run, it seemed like the sort of pensive reflective moment which could only occur from a retrospective look at what you were feeling while you were there.

Letter to Robert

Dear Robert,

I'm writing to you to ask what it was like for you to become gradually less marginalized in society. I know from your story when you were growing up that there was such a large contrast between the school that you were able to attend and the school for the white children. I know that was hard for you, and then coming back from serving as a surgeon overseas was another tough adjustment for you.  I'm amazed by your tenacity to persevere and go West despite all the problems which you faced.

I guess what I'm really wondering is even when you were older and segregation had passed did you ever feel like a full member of society? Or was that just impossible after what you had gone through during your youth.

Your trip to Las Vegas was a bit of a triumph, you were able to get into the casinos and clubs despite the fact that they were still officially segregated at the time, and I know that made you happy. It seemed like it was a sort of affirmation of the rise in your status since you had gone West to undreamed of heights. Despite this triumph though, they turned you down at the Riviera and you had to stay elsewhere. Even at this high moment you were sort of knocked down, well if not knocked down because Jimmy managed to get you rooms at the Sands, at least shifted. How was that experience? Did it taint the triumph at all or were you still as pleased as you would have been otherwise with how things turned out for you?

Letter to Martha Gellhorn

Dear Martha, 

I appreciated a piece of wisdom you discussed in your memoir, which reads, “It is true that we need a root of personal experience from which to grow our understanding. Each new experience plants another root; the smallest root will serve.” I also believe that experiences lend to an individual’s perspective, which, in turn, enables them to increasingly navigate later circumstances and experiences with more grace and understanding. 

Though you focus extensively on the “best parts” of your “super horror journeys,” I would have liked to have read more about more positive moments of your travels. Or, your commentary about the importance of your relationships or your experience as a woman news correspondent at your time. Indeed, you mention that most people want to be entertained by the unique and peculiar parts of your experiences, namely the horrible parts, but other experiences could also be interesting to a reader such as myself. 

In relation to some of the places that you discuss in the memoir, have you revisited any of the destinations? If so, how has your view of the country changed? In particular, do you still feel positively about the presence of colonial governments in certain states, such as the Dutch in the Caribbean town of Paramaribo that you visited? 

Best,

Joy  

Letter to Ms. Gellhorn

Dear Ms. Gellhorn,

I am a college student, and my class and I just finished reading your memoir, Travels with Myself and Another.  It was really interesting to learn about your life and the people you met.  I find it funny that such a prominent and established journalist such as yourself would have a poor memory.  I guess that I have always assumed that journalists remember in great detail all of the places they have been to and the things they have written about, but it is normal to forget details as time continues.

In your book you describe several trips that you take, describing them as “horror journeys”.  Do you have a favorite horror journey?  In our class we have discussed that sometimes the trips that go awfully, entirely awry can create fun memories, but you still seem to describe your horror journeys in a negative light.  Do you think you will remember these trips more fondly later in your life?  Or will your negative recollections of these continue forever?

Though you state that you “never thought of writing about travel,” you wrote this book.  Were you happy with the way that it turned out?  I always feel as if I am forgetting something when I tell a story.  I’m sure that read over your memoir and edited it many times, but do you ever wish you had included something that you did not?  Or is there something you wish you had not included?  As someone who is often very critical of myself, I wonder how authors perceive their own memoirs, especially those that they originally never thought they would write.

Thank you for sharing your experiences in this memoir and thank you for all of the great journalism works that you did.

Best,

Selby Sturzenegger

Blue Highways

We've talked a lot not just about travel, but about why people travel. What sparks it? What do they hope to get out of it? At the beginning of his memoir, William Least Heat-Moon explains why he is drawn to the road: "I took to the open road in search of places where change did not mean ruin and where time and men and deeds connected." In part, he seems to be running away from something--namely, the "desperate sense of isolation" he experienced at home, which felt like "an alien land." However, his explanation is interesting because he is also running to something--where time and men and deeds connected. He's looking for more meaning. A search for purpose and meaning is one we've seen in many of our books and movies; travel seems to be a way to find greater meeting for many people. Sometimes this search is portrayed more as a restlessness, and the only solution is going somewhere else. Heat-Moon's explanation seems less like this, in part because he sees the beauty in returning home and in creating a full circle with his trip. He just hopes that, somewhere along the way, he finds a place where things are different. I find this to be an important part of travel--it's not always about escaping; sometimes it's about different experiences and the things you learn from them, which I think Heat-Moon would agree with. At the end of the memoir, he writes, "If the circle had come full turn, I hadn't. I can't say, over the miles, that I learned what I had wanted to know because I hadn't known what I wanted to know. But I did learn what I didn't know I wanted to know."

Anywhere But Here

It was uncanny how much Adele and Ann in Anywhere But Here reminded me of my mom and me during my earlier teenage years. Whether I like it or not, the statement, "The thing about my mother and me is that when we get along, we’re just the same. Exactly." is exactly the truth for me. This was also the case for "Strangers almost always love my mother. And even if you hate her, can’t stand her, even if she’s ruining your life, there’s something about her, some romance, some power." However, unlike Adele, my mother has always been my staunchest advocator, provider of moral support, and has sacrificed a great amount for my success.

Back to Ann, the novel recognizes that life events are seemingly overly dramatized in your adolescence upon looking back on them once you are older. This is particularly true in a relationship between a pre-teen/teenage daughter and her mother  In the moment, the perfume-buying attempt was certainly worth the anguish and backlash Ann directed toward Adele only for her to feel differently years later. Overall, I really admired the detail Simpson placed in the characters' development.

However, I felt that the book was lacking some organization. I would have appreciated more structure regarding the flashbacks and shifting perspectives throughout the book.

Letter to Ms. Simpson

Dear Ms. Simpson,

I just finished reading your book, Anywhere But Here, and I really enjoyed it!  At times, it was difficult to read, but I found it to be super interesting.  The amount of detail in your book was incredible, and at times I felt as if I was in the same room as the characters.

The relationship between Adele and Ann is a central focus in the book.  How did you come up with the idea for this rocky mother-daughter relationship?  When they are traveling from Wisconsin to California, they have an interesting ritual.  The two will fight, Ann will get out of the car, Adele will drive away, wait just long enough for Ann to get scared, come back, and take Ann to get ice cream.  I feel like this shows a lot about their relationship.  What do you think?  Do you think that the road helps demonstrate the nuances of their relationship?  Adele is running away from Wisconsin and her problems, but she continues this ritual as they get further away; what does this say about her character?  Were you trying to emphasize that even though she was getting geographically further from her issues, she was not maturing in a way that would help her in the future?

I am also interested in Ann and the reasons that you wrote her to be such a strong character.  I feel like she proves that we do not have to be like our parents and that we can become whoever we want to be.  Was that your intention?  I feel as if it would be very difficult to forgive my mother if she had emotionally manipulated me the way that Adele treated Ann.

Lastly, I thought the way in which the narrator switches to be very unique.  The book is mostly narrated by Ann, but there are other chapters with different narrators to give background on Adele.  Adele narrates the final chapter; why did you have her only narrate the last chapter?  And was there any particular reason that only women narrate the book?

Thank you so much for writing a thought-provoking and engrossing novel.  I hope to hear from you soon!

All my best,

Selby