Back to books suggested by my booktube viewing. This one has something to do with railroads, of which I am something of a fan on. It is an memoir of a fellow who like me, traveled by rail, though he did it in real life, not virtually like me. But, like me, he didn't bother to buy a ticket to ride...
My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.
Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.
Beggars of Life: A Hobo Autobiography by Jim Tully B
This is the story of Tully's early years crisscrossing the country as a hobo around the turn of the last century. When his mother died in 1892, his Irish ditch-digging immigrant father was unable to look after him and turned the six year old boy over to an orphanage in Cincinnati where he spent six years before running away from job he had been given. As a teenager, with a wanderlust, a desire to write, and no desire to live a mean life of a factory worker, he took to traveling about the country hitching rides on trains and begging for food and money to buy food, and drink. This is his unvarnished account of that life and of the people he met until he finally settled down in Kent Ohio, taking various jobs and in 1910, a wife.
Of necessity, this is a episodic account of that life, especially in the first years of being on the road as a young teenager. He recounts the hobos he met, and the stories they told. His story is filled with encounters, and near encounters with the police and railroad detectives who were trying to keep hobos off the trains and of being thrown into jail as a vagrant. He tells the story of some of the ordinary people who would give him a meal in their houses, and send him along with food for another day, as well as days with no food. He talks about how kind prostitutes were to him, and the kinship of people in misfortune, though that was far from universal. Indeed, the lack of morals of many hobos, including himself, a trait needed to survive the life.
Tully was an avid reader, and even as a teenager he wanted to be a writer, so that this account is not the work of a typical hobo, but of someone who had the eye and the talent to recall the life he had led, a decade later, and bring it to life.
It is an interesting worm's eye view of life in this country a hundred years ago plus. It was certainly a harsher, and for many, a much harder life back then. Progress moves too slowly, but it moves.
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