Exhilarating, panoramic, full of ideas, natural history, and mordant social observation, his journey into the wild heart of North America turns into a profound exploration of the wilderness of the human heart. Raban is searching and compassionate. . . . And he is at all times eloquent. So you love Larry McMurtry's work. McMurtry's take on his surroundings is both well informed and informal, giving him a part interviewee, part tour guide tone.
Roads is worth the trip.
I don't think I'm likely to encounter anything so extreme as the snows of Antarctica or the dunes of Arabia along the American interstates. At least I hope not. But I want to drive them anyway just to see what I see. I merely want to write about the roads as I find them, starting in January of 1999, in Duluth, Minnesota, at the north end of the long and lonesome 35. The ritual trapping and killing of bluefin is known is Sicily as the Mattanza.