‘PrairyErth: A Deep Map’

 I have been taking apart William Least Heat-Moon’s PrairyErth, trying to figure out how it works. That’s the same thing as wondering whether there’s a better way to write a book like that, and so anything I’d say about the structure of the book would sound more critical than I’d intend it to be. But no one spends so much time with a book that doesn’t intrigue him.

Least Heat-Moon called the book a deep map, and I think he delivers on the claim. It’s a map of Chase County, Kansas, which had a population of about 3,000 when Least Heat-Moon was exploring it in the 1980s.

The book has 76 chapters; 72 are in 12 sections of six chapters each. Each section is about a township in the county. Least Heat-Moon decided on that structure, following Thomas Jefferson’s plan of putting the country on a grid system.

That’s a call the next writer should second-guess. Some of the townships are more interesting than others. At least one of the townships is so empty that Least Heat-Moon fills the section with the tragic history of the Kansas, or Kaw, people, who were driven from the county to what’s now Oklahoma in 1873. That tragic story is one of the best in the book. But a reader might be aware that the story doesn’t exactly fit the structure the author chose.

Each section has six chapters, the first of which is titled “From the Commonplace Book.” Each is a collection of quotations from other writers. The introductory and concluding sections also have a “From the Commonplace Book,” along with one other chapter. So 14 of the 76 chapters, 18 percent, are collections of quotations and readings. That’s not a complaint. I thought it was closer to genius. With this kind of book, much of the story involves history. I liked the quotations from original sources.

The last chapter is a record of two friends, Least Heat-Moon and Clive “Scott” Chisholm, going on a three-day walk through the county, trying to find traces of the Kaw Trail. The trail was used by ancient hunting parties. Parts of it were incorporated into the Santa Fe Trail by people of European ancestry. And the trail was used when the Kaw people were forced to leave their homeland. It’s an interesting dialog that might remind you of the film My Dinner with Andre.

PrairyErth is a big book, 200,000 words, Least Heat-Moon says. Three times the planned length. Least Heat-Moon discusses choices he made in the writing, and he also has a section on the topics he left out. I wondered whether getting off the grid system would have allowed him to address some of them. I would have read about chiggers, dugouts and the farmer who refused electricity. I’d also like to know about hopper-dozers, Model A cars that were modified to scrape grasshoppers off crops.

If I ever get around to making a deep map, I might do a few things differently. But this is a book I admire.

• Source: William Least Heat-Moon’s PrairyErth; Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1991.