In travel writing, as a genre, authority and trust are crucially important. It is these aspects that not only help keep the readers interest, but also allow for them to take the writing more seriously. From this sense of authority and trust, it allows for the reader to believe the account as not being fictitious experiences, but at least as somewhat of an actual account. This is not meant to say that every detail within travel writing must to be entirely factual, but the author must be able to gain the authority and trust of the readers for the writing to be able to have a meaningful impact. Within Chapter 4 of Carl Thompson’s “Travel Writing,” it is said that “the modern travel book is usually both more overtly autobiographical, and more self-consciously literary, than most of the travelogues discussed so far in the present chapter.This emphasis on autobiography and ‘literariness’ causes the travel book’s agenda, and its generic contract with the reader, to be subtly but significantly different from that which operates in other forms of travel writing. In a sense, it ceases to matter as much whether the information we are being given is strictly true. Instead, readers understand that they are reading for the insights they will gain into the writer’s distinct sensibility, and for the pleasure they will gain from an equally individual literary style” (Thompson 88). As the quote argued, by focusing both on the autobiographical and literary elements, modern travel writing is able to shift the purpose of the travel writing from detailing one’s accurate account of travel to entertainingly exploring the mindset of the author during his experiences. In this way, the authority and trust of the readers in not gained by painstaking accuracy of details, but through the very personal and unique mindset of the author that is explored through their travels.

This idea of gaining the authority and trust of the readers is greatly shown within William Least Heat-Moon’s “Blue Highways.” At the beginning of Heat-Moon’s journey, he states “Accompanied by only a small, grey spider crawling on the dashboard (kill a spider and it will rain), I drove into the street, around the corner, through the intersection, over the bridge, onto the highway. I was heading toward those little towns that get onto the map—if they get on at all—only because some cartographer has a blank space to fill” (Heat-Moon 4). As one can see from this quote, it matters little whether the information he is describing about the start of his journey is entirely factually true. Instead, the authority and trust in the author is built mostly upon their mindset and personality. Because of this authenticity of personality within the writing, the factual descriptions move aside for the unique point of view and thoughts of the author. In this sense, the value gained by the reader changes from the entertainment gained from their hyper accurate description of travel to finding entertainment from joining the author on his experience and the value that is to be gained from their unique mindset and perspective. This can similarly be seen within “Blue Highways” where the author states that “Chickens, doing more work with their necks than legs, ran across the road, and, with a battering of wings, half leaped and half flew into the lower branches of oaks. A vicious pair of mixed-breed German shepherds raced along trying to eat the tires” (Heat-Moon 29). These is no direct evidence that these events occurred exactly as describes, as a piece of literature detailing the author’s personal experience, there can’t be. Rather, in the description of the author of these events the reader finds both entertainment and value within the writing. For this reason, Heat-Moon is able to build both authority and trust among the readers due to the amount of their own persona and unique mindset that they are able to portray through their writing. Because of this, I believe that Heat-Moon’s “Blue Highways” is able to perfectly exemplify this idea.