Riding Toward Everywhere

by William T. Vollmann

Book Overview

Vollmann is a relentlessly curious, endlessly sensitive, and unequivocally adventurous examiner of human existence. He has investigated the causes and symptoms of humanity's obsession with violence (Rising Up and Rising Down), taken a personal look into the hearts and minds of the world's poorest inhabitants (Poor People), and now turns his attentions to America itself, to our romanticizing of "freedom" and the ways in which we restrict the very...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0061256757
• ISBN13: 9780061256752
• Release Date: January 2008
• Publisher: Ecco Press
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 1.06 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.5" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

as usual, BREATHE!

As usual, WTV's writing flows like a mighty river, turning one upside down and backwards but ever onward... with breathtaking turns of phrase. I'll ride with him anywhere.

lyrical and unsettling

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.