Travels with Lizbeth: Three Years on the Road and on the Streets

by Lars Eighner

Book Overview

"When I began writing this account I was living under a shower curtain in a stand of bamboo in a public park. I did not undertake to write about homelessness, but wrote what I knew, as an artist... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0449909433
• ISBN13: 9780449909430
• Release Date: September 1994
• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• Length: 271 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.0" x 8.7"

Customer Reviews

Yes, one of the great memoirs and one of the great memoirists

Lars Eighner is a better writer and a better story-teller than most of the people filling books in bookstores and lying on Oprah these days. But those are not the only reasons you should read the book. The primary reason is because, unlike almost anyone else you will meet in public life -- authors, professors, officials, savants, celebrities -- Eighner is an intelligent, honest, humane, authentic and _original_ person. Reading _Travels with Lizbeth_ is like reading _Walden_: there's some kind of mind on the other side of the page, a mind which unlike the ciphers on television is awake and can see things. Including, as he says towards the end of the book, "all the way to the bottom", because he's been to visit more than once while most of the rest of us were pretending it wasn't there. (As the social fabric continues to decay we might want to get to know something about its geography.) I am reminded of Whitman's "Who touches this book touches a man." And a dog as well. Buy, beg, borrow or steal this book. It might wake you up a little. And if you're already awake it'll help you to know that there's someone else out there, across the night.

One of the great memoirs

This is one of my favorite memoirs. It reads less like an autobiography than a collection of related short stories, each one witty, poignant, and carefully drawn. It also serves as bracing lesson, not so much about "homelessness", but about how even an uncommonly intelligent and capable, if somewhat non-standard, person can slip through what's left of our social safety net and end up on the street. As Eighner tells it here, if it weren't for a couple of strokes of random good fortune, he would not have been a position to put a roof over his head again, much less publish this book.For those wondering what Eighner is up to now, he's still writing. Examples of his recent and not-so-recent work can be found on his website, which can be easily found by putting "Lars Eighner" in a search engine. As for the reviewer who felt cheated because the book did not offer sufficient details of Eighner's sex life, there's a link to Eighner's erotic writing on the site as well -- that ought to satisfy your cruelly frustrated needs.

an entertaining, informative read

I live in Austin and so I am familiar with a lot of the places mentioned in the book. Austin is currently (and was becoming at the time of publication) an economically prosperous city with it's much touted high-tec industries and growing affluence. Of course not everyone benefits from the growing economy and this book shows that there are some that do not benefit at all. The experiences of living on the streets of Austin and the southwest with a dog are told with great humor and wit. The fact that this book is very well written suggests that Lars Eighner doesn't fit the usual homeless stereotype of being ignorant, uneducated and useless to society. In fact in the book Eighner mentions having regular job before his circumstances changed. It does make one wonder how many other people are out there who go through similar experiences in life. anyway, this book is definitely worth a read.

Was looking for a travel novel and got a lot more.

I guess I was comming from the (reading Jack Kerouac) direction and was just looking for a good realistic travel novel. But what a surprise, what a story and a writer. I've read a lot of dissappointing "on the street" flavoured "I'm roughing it for the moment, while I write" tales obviously written from the security of a budget/career/home to go back to. This stuff is real, it sinks in that Lars does not have a way out and is in it for good, he is on no joy ride yet carries an incredible adventure. He is one of the most Human characters I have ever read. My opinion on homeless people has certainly changed. Unfortunately its going to be even harded to find any downbeat writing with any heart or street credibility after this.

A man and dog team explores the urban and interurban jungle.

Lars Eighners book, "Travels with Lizbeth" is an account of homelessness, written in the elegant style of another era. It is almost as though Robinson Crusoe, instead of being cast up on a desert island, instead found himself, with his faithful dog companion, stranded on the streets and highways of the American southwest. The strange characters, the improbable events, and the philisophical musings on his state, make Eighner a true character, and one is amazed that he was able to climb out of that morass, though perhaps not for long, as Eighner once again is living on the edge of homelessness. One can't help but chuckle about his accounts of the weird people he encounters, made all the more interesting by his sexual orientation (he is gay).