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14 reviews
19 of 21 people found the following review helpful
Writing Toward Nowhere
13 Mar 2009
Format:Paperback
A real dud, although it probably sounded like a good idea for an adventure book: a guy tries to re-live the past, goes hobo and rides the rails in 2006. Alas, (big surprise) post 9/11 railroad yards have surveillance systems and the bulls ride ATVs.
How many times does Vollmann actually manage to hop a freight? Not very many. When waiting for trains gets too boring, he heads to the airport to catch a flight home. He rides Amtrak too, and cell phones and credit cards are always close at hand.
Uneasy with the authenticity of this adventure, Vollmann points out Thoreau had more financial support than he let on, therefore his own experience is as valid as Thoreau's. Trouble is, Vollmann doesn't experience much of anything, and in his search for romantic old-time hobos, he shows little interest or compassion for the real bums he meets. It's all pretty empty, and his account runs as shallow as the Frontier Days cowboy re-enactments he disparages.
No matter how many times he uses the F-word, Vollmann (summa cum laude Cornell, the New Yorker, New York Times Book Review, Harpers, etc.) has trouble getting "hobos" to accept him, and it reads like he spoke to no more than half-a-dozen. Desperate to get enough material for a book, he tries to buy stories.
Coming across a ragged couple on the sidewalk (p. 89) he offers the woman $5 to tell him about riding the rails; she says she doesn't want to talk, that her stories are too sad; Vollmann keeps waving the fiver, but she still refuses and mentions being hungry. He might have treated the couple to a Big Mac or bag of White Castles, and maybe the stories would have flowed. Not Vollmann. He tells the couple he's going to dinner and he'll stop back later to see if they're hungry enough yet to sell him some stories. He's hurt when they get angry.
In Vollmann's world (He regrets not having bought a wife in Cambodia.) everything human is for sale, and he seems to relish humiliating this pitifully poor couple who won't trade their memories for his money. (In the same vein Vollmann glories in his appetite for prostitutes, which he might defend, I suppose, by pointing out buying women provides an author with quick access to experiences that would otherwise require the slow building of relationships.) Ironically, a major theme of the book is: "Give some people a little power (money) and they turn into Nazis..."
Later, (p. 133) he pays "Pittsburgh Ed" $20 to recount his life. Not much of a story, yet good for a page and a half, but there's still the 186 other pages to fill (It's a small book.) Lacking material Vollmann just rambles on, and not very intelligently. Too bad there isn't more about the author's friend "Steve," but Vollmann misses that opportunity. I hope Steve writes his own story.
58 of the 64 black-and-white photos (one per page) are random shots of nothing. Worse than the worst of the most vacuous vacation shots you've ever had to endure, but they bring the book up to its advertised number of pages. Thumb through them. Then ask yourself, is this an experience I really want to buy?
How many times does Vollmann actually manage to hop a freight? Not very many. When waiting for trains gets too boring, he heads to the airport to catch a flight home. He rides Amtrak too, and cell phones and credit cards are always close at hand.
Uneasy with the authenticity of this adventure, Vollmann points out Thoreau had more financial support than he let on, therefore his own experience is as valid as Thoreau's. Trouble is, Vollmann doesn't experience much of anything, and in his search for romantic old-time hobos, he shows little interest or compassion for the real bums he meets. It's all pretty empty, and his account runs as shallow as the Frontier Days cowboy re-enactments he disparages.
No matter how many times he uses the F-word, Vollmann (summa cum laude Cornell, the New Yorker, New York Times Book Review, Harpers, etc.) has trouble getting "hobos" to accept him, and it reads like he spoke to no more than half-a-dozen. Desperate to get enough material for a book, he tries to buy stories.
Coming across a ragged couple on the sidewalk (p. 89) he offers the woman $5 to tell him about riding the rails; she says she doesn't want to talk, that her stories are too sad; Vollmann keeps waving the fiver, but she still refuses and mentions being hungry. He might have treated the couple to a Big Mac or bag of White Castles, and maybe the stories would have flowed. Not Vollmann. He tells the couple he's going to dinner and he'll stop back later to see if they're hungry enough yet to sell him some stories. He's hurt when they get angry.
In Vollmann's world (He regrets not having bought a wife in Cambodia.) everything human is for sale, and he seems to relish humiliating this pitifully poor couple who won't trade their memories for his money. (In the same vein Vollmann glories in his appetite for prostitutes, which he might defend, I suppose, by pointing out buying women provides an author with quick access to experiences that would otherwise require the slow building of relationships.) Ironically, a major theme of the book is: "Give some people a little power (money) and they turn into Nazis..."
Later, (p. 133) he pays "Pittsburgh Ed" $20 to recount his life. Not much of a story, yet good for a page and a half, but there's still the 186 other pages to fill (It's a small book.) Lacking material Vollmann just rambles on, and not very intelligently. Too bad there isn't more about the author's friend "Steve," but Vollmann misses that opportunity. I hope Steve writes his own story.
58 of the 64 black-and-white photos (one per page) are random shots of nothing. Worse than the worst of the most vacuous vacation shots you've ever had to endure, but they bring the book up to its advertised number of pages. Thumb through them. Then ask yourself, is this an experience I really want to buy?
22 of 26 people found the following review helpful
lyrical and unsettling
27 Jan 2008
Format:Hardcover
We have our images of people riding the rails in bygone days: Vollmann's book is a fine but disturbing look at the reality of that life in today's world. Vollmann describes the subculture: those whose life centers on an existence on the rails, and those like himself and his friends for whom riding the rails is more of a getaway, and who can afford to fly home if they have to do so.
Getting on and off moving trains can be a dangerous business: Vollmann has many tales about broken limbs and lost legs. You'll learn about the people in this life--the frightening and reportedly often lethal FTRA, the misfits and rebels, the people like Steve and Brian, Vollmann's friends. People outside the life are referred to derisively as "citizens", and inside the group there are codes of conduct. You might be killed for $5 worth of food stamps, but your sleeping bag will never be stolen. There are people Vollmann meets and hears of who may (or may not) be serial killers: one tale is of a heavily-tattooed man who on one tattoo area has 30 dots--one for each person he has killed.
It's all rather like, in a way, homeless street people--people who live outside the normal boundaries of society. There's a dislike of rules, of laws. But at the same time, as Vollmann shows, you show respect to the railroad--for example, simple things such as not urinating or defecating in the boxcar you might be riding in, even if you're about to jump off a mile further on. It's no longer the kind of romantic life that you might see in Emperor of the North or Bound for Glory. There is at the end of the book a collection of 65 black-and-white photographs of the life and the people taken by the author. It's a fascinating look at a little-known life.
Getting on and off moving trains can be a dangerous business: Vollmann has many tales about broken limbs and lost legs. You'll learn about the people in this life--the frightening and reportedly often lethal FTRA, the misfits and rebels, the people like Steve and Brian, Vollmann's friends. People outside the life are referred to derisively as "citizens", and inside the group there are codes of conduct. You might be killed for $5 worth of food stamps, but your sleeping bag will never be stolen. There are people Vollmann meets and hears of who may (or may not) be serial killers: one tale is of a heavily-tattooed man who on one tattoo area has 30 dots--one for each person he has killed.
It's all rather like, in a way, homeless street people--people who live outside the normal boundaries of society. There's a dislike of rules, of laws. But at the same time, as Vollmann shows, you show respect to the railroad--for example, simple things such as not urinating or defecating in the boxcar you might be riding in, even if you're about to jump off a mile further on. It's no longer the kind of romantic life that you might see in Emperor of the North or Bound for Glory. There is at the end of the book a collection of 65 black-and-white photographs of the life and the people taken by the author. It's a fascinating look at a little-known life.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Riding the Rails with WTV
27 Feb 2011
Format:Paperback
I loved this book and it being the first I'd ever read by William T. Vollman, I decided to pursue more of his writing. Vollman is one of the only middle-class white guys I've ever read who tries seemingly tirelessly to approach and understand people from the working and itinerant classes with an altogether humane approach. He does pay some hobos to share their stories with him - isn't that exactly the sort of transaction from which both of them can profit? As Vollman acknowledges in the forward to this book, by way of praising his traveling companion Steve -
"This book is dedicated to Steve Jones
who never pretended
that he or I were hobos..."
I respect Vollman for being doggedly honest in all of his (at least self-recorded) transactions with other humans, and for talking about issues that many of the rest of us find uncomfortable enough to avoid, despite their being pressing and essential for really interrogating what it means to be a moral human. I suggest everyone also read his current (March 2011) Harper's article on the homeless in Sacramento for more of this type of writing.
And finally - I am planning on riding the rails myself after reading this book. I felt more alive then, just from reading it, than I have except when adventuring on my own cross-country bicycle trip. Wahoo!
-LT
"This book is dedicated to Steve Jones
who never pretended
that he or I were hobos..."
I respect Vollman for being doggedly honest in all of his (at least self-recorded) transactions with other humans, and for talking about issues that many of the rest of us find uncomfortable enough to avoid, despite their being pressing and essential for really interrogating what it means to be a moral human. I suggest everyone also read his current (March 2011) Harper's article on the homeless in Sacramento for more of this type of writing.
And finally - I am planning on riding the rails myself after reading this book. I felt more alive then, just from reading it, than I have except when adventuring on my own cross-country bicycle trip. Wahoo!
-LT
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