"There is no feeling in the world like sitting in a side-door Pullman and watching the world go by, listening to the clickety-clack of the wheels, hearing that old steam whistle blowing for crossings and towns." -George Phillips in Riding the Rails
At the height of the Great Depression, 250,000 teenage hoboes were riding the rails and roaming America. Some left home out of desperation and went looking for work and a better life, sometimes traveling hundreds of miles on the rumor of a job waiting farther down the line. Others left out of boredom; still others with a wanderlust and romantic idea of life on the road.
The restless youth of these boxcar boys and girls, many who went from "middle-class gentility to scrabble-ass poor" overnight, is recaptured in Riding the Rails. Based on the award-winning documentary, this book dispels the myths of a hobo existence and reveals the hard stories of a daring generation of American teenagers-forgotten heroes-who survived some of the hardest times in our nations' history. Whether you're a "gaycat" (novice rider) or a "dingbat" (seasoned hobo), Riding the Rails is entertaining and inspiring, recapturing a time when the country was "dying by inches."
"Go fend for yourself," Clarence Lee's father said. "I can't afford to have you around any longer." Like hundreds of thousands of other young people across the country during the Great Depression, the 16-year-old left home, hopped a freight train, and started riding the rails. An estimated 250,000 men and women--many of them in their teens--turned to the trains as fast and free transportation. Some left out of desperation and went looking for work, sometimes traveling hundreds of miles on the rumor of a job waiting farther down the line. Others left out of boredom; still others with a romantic idea of life on the road. Many realized, too late, that they were leaving little for nothing. Henry Ford, for one, thought the boxcar teens had it made: "Why it's the best education in the world for those boys, that traveling around! They get more experience in a few weeks than they would in years at school." As one contemporary observer noted, however, after about six months on the road, "the boys and girls lost their fresh outlook and eagerness. Trips across the continent were no longer educational, but were quests for bread."
Errol Lincoln Uys (pronounced "Ace") has collected thousands of letters written by boxcar boys and girls about their experiences, and peppers his chapters on the various aspects of hobo life with lengthy quotations, allowing the riders to speak for themselves. They talk about the danger--"You had to be careful not to stumble and fall under the wheels when you climbed on the cars"--and the desperation--"We were always hungry. Wasn't just 'cause dinner was hours late. It may have been a couple of days late. You were hungry, cold, miserable, with nobody to help you." They also talk about the remarkable kindness of strangers who fed and clothed the riders. Whether you're a "gaycat" (novice rider) or a "dingbat" (seasoned hobo), Riding the Rails is entertaining and inspiring, recapturing a time when the country was "dying by inches." --Sunny Delaney--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
From Publishers Weekly
This erratic account of the 250,000 "boxcar boys and girls" who traversed the country during the Great Depression amounts to an oral history of the seldom-studied lives of teenage hoboes. Using material gathered for a documentary film of the same title (made by Michael Uys and Lexy Lovell, the author's son and daughter-in-law), Uys draws on interviews, letters and other fragments from thousands of former rail-riders who answered an announcement in Modern Maturity magazine seeking reminiscences about their lives. A number of anecdotes offer insight into the desperation that led teens to leave impoverished homes. A sign at a Louisiana cafe, for example, stated succinctly: "Dishwasher WantedAonly college graduates need apply." Jobs were so scarce that one 18-year-old climbed eagerly on a locomotive in Ohio after hearing there might be work at a Los Angeles hotdog stand. The poignancy of such moments is diminished, however, because the various episodes are hitched together like random cars on a freight train and the text takes on the aimless movement of its young subjects as they drift in search of a hot meal. The most accomplished passages frame the vicissitudes of hobo life within the larger context of Depression-era politics. For many former hoboes, New Deal programs such as the Civilian Conservation Corps offered the only alternative to hunger, jail and degrading hardship. Most remarkably, perhaps, this book shows how the occasional generosities encountered on the road instilled in these wanderers a lifelong ethos of humility and compassion toward others. (July) Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
It has been 25 years since my epic novel Brazil rolled off the presses. A best-seller in Europe and in South America, Brazil was orphaned in the United States when its editor left Simon and Schuster two months before its publication in April, 1986.
In France, critics hailed the novel as a "masterpiece," a first printing of 14,000 copies sold out in three days, and the book became a summer blockbuster. It went on to sell over half a million copies in France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Holland, Israel and Brazil.
I was buoyed as much by my international sales figures as by the words of eminent Brazilian literary critic, Wilson Martins, who wrote in the prestigious Jornal do Brasil:
"Uys has accomplished what no Brazilian author from José de Alencar to João Ubaldo Ribeiro, as well as Jorge Amado and Bernardo Guimarães was able to do.
"He is the first to write our national epic in all its truly decisive moments.
"Uys is the first to have the talent required for the task, to see us with total honesty and sympathy, the first to understand Brazil as an imaginary creation, coherent in its apparent inconsistencies, organic in its historic development.
"Descriptions like those of the war with Paraguay are unsurpassed in our literature and evoke the great passages of 'War and Peace.'"
French reviewers were similarly enthusiastic: "A masterpiece! Brazil has the look and feel of an enchanted virgin forest, a totally new and original world for the reader-explorer to discover," crowed L'Express, Paris.
"No one before knew how to bring to life Brazil and her history. Uys's characters are brilliant and colorful, combining elements of the best swashbuckler with those worthy of deepest reflection. Most stunning is that it took a South African, now a naturalized American, to evoke so perfectly the grand but interrupted dream that is Brazil," lauded Le Figaro.
I began my writing career as a newspaperman on the Johannesburg Star and at the helm of the Cape edition of Post, then the country's biggest weekly publication serving its African and mixed-race population. Following a stint in London, I became Editor-in-Chief of Reader's Digest in South Africa. In 1977, I emigrated to the United States to work at the magazine's international headquarters.
I met the American author James A. Michener through my work at the Digest and worked for two years on Michener's South African saga, The Covenant. Commenting on our collaboration, Stephen J. May, Michener's most recent biographer, concludes: "Michener committed a scarlet literary crime and used his celebrated influence in publishing to get away with it." - The affair is chronicled in an extensive literary archive on my website.
I spent five years on the writing of Brazil. I devoted a year to my primary research, including a 15,000-mile trek through Brazil, almost entirely by bus in order to get a feel for the vast country and its people at ground level.
My journey took me into the Sertão, the arid backlands of the Northeast, and to the Casas Grandes of coastal Pernambuco. I voyaged the Amazon River from Belém to Manuas and explored southernmost Rondônia. I roamed the highlands of Minas Gerais and followed the route of the bandeirantes, the Brazilian pathfinders, from São Paulo to the south.
I returned to the United States at the end of October, 1981 to begin what would become a 750,000-word manuscript written entirely by hand. It took a further four years to complete my task seeking a vision of the Brazilian El Dorado, not beyond the next hill or the river ahead but deep within the soul.
Like my fictional hero, the bandeirante Amador Florés da Silva, I knew periods of utter loneliness and fear, times when I felt the sertão closing in on me but always, I broke through the barrier. I never lost the will to understand the Brazilian genius.
If my spirits ever sank, I had only to re-read Wilson Martins's review of Brazil. -- Professor Martins truly understood the scope and nuances of my work. As time passed, many other readers who stumbled across the book sent me their own appreciations of Brazil.
"I don't believe I would ever have felt this strongly about my people if I hadn't read your book - I feel more Brazilian!" wrote Moises dos Santos, a Brazilian living in the United States. Birdie Hope effused: "I read your entire book aloud to my husband on a series of trips we made -- he drove as I read. We started in Mato Grosso, Brazil and finished somewhere in Kansas! The edition we read was an even 1,000 pages. Loved it! It's fabulous! Congratulations for writing it."
In 2000, I signed a reprint agreement with Silver Spring Press, a small publisher in Connecticut. I added an afterword bringing the story up to Brazil's 500th anniversary celebration. Seven years later, my French publisher issued a new edition of Brazil (La Forteresse Verte.)
Brazil was on the "long tail" at Amazon riding on that river sea with its vast schools of customers. Occasionally, sales of the new edition and secondhand copies sent Brazil rippling upward from the tip of the tail to somewhere in the fat middle. It was enough to satisfy a passionate author that someone, somewhere was dipping into his book. This encouraged me to keep paddling, no matter the current.
Then came Kindle, and for Brazil, a totally new world opened up. Having fought so long and hard for my masterpiece, I was ready for this new challenge. I took three decisive steps to launch the e-book, producing:
* Kindle Illustrated Guide to Brazil
Linked to the e-text is a unique and free online guide with more than 200 images and maps, providing an indispensable companion on a fictional journey through five hundred years of Brazilian history. Captions drawn from the narrative enhance the reader's sense of immersion in time and place. The novel guide is also interwoven with the author's original Brazilian journal and working notes.
* Errol Lincoln Uys - A Writer's Website
A wide-ranging personal website sharing the author's archives, journals and working notes. The Making of Brazil and Michener's Secret Covenant offer meticulously documented and intriguing insights into what went into the writing of these two books, from conceptual outline to final printed manuscript.
* Twitter Edition of Brazil
I am also tweeting my 340,000-word book in 140 (or fewer) - character tweets for thousands of followers. Brazil is the first huge epic to be micro-blogged on Twitter, each tiny "episode" contributing to daily installments of 20 to 50 tweets. The novel's Twitter handle is @BrazilANovel
The spectacular rise of the nation of Brazil over the past two decades couldn't be timelier for me, as events like the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics loom on the horizon. Twenty-five years ago, people made light of ''Brazil, land of the future and which always will be." This is no longer so today, as Brazil takes its place among emergent nations.
The timing for a big book on Brazil is perfect. Brazil is ranked No 1 on Kindle's Brazilian-related books, the e-book's success driving strong sales of the print edition.
If I've one thing to be thankful for - and there are many - it's that I never stopped believing passionately in Brazil
My interest in this book was sparked by a bit of family history. A great-uncle of mine hoboed on trains before the 1920s. Born in 1900, he was attempting to hop a train in 1919 in Chicago, but lost his grip, fell from the car, and lost a leg beneath the train. All I know about this uncle was from a newspaper clipping from 1919 when a brave reporter interviewed my great-uncle just before he died from the infection in his leg.
The stories in "Riding the Rails" were tremendously moving to me. It gave me a perspecitive of the Depression and of Hoboes I hadn't had before. The personal stories were incredible, and the lucidity of expression by these people looking back on those difficult years was accurately relayed in the book. More than once I had to stop reading because of the tears in my eyes. I know this must sound melodramatic, but this book really moved me. But also, I must say this book reaffirmed my faith in human kindness and the perseverance of the human spirit.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
This work was thoughly enjoyable. From the first moment I recieved it I reflected on its contents, pouring over each page as a child first learning of his past. "Riding the Rails" vividly portrays children thrust into adulthood upon their first adventure across our wide open country.
Not that they were out to conquer the world or to make their mark, but moreover to find a better way of life, or just simply to survive.
These are the stories of those that did survive. Let's not forget those who fell beneath the wheels of destiny, or those that died silently in cold empty boxcars amid the despair of the Great Depression. Their pain is silenced, but much of their legacy lives on.
Mr. Ulys, thank you for all your efforts in preparing this book and for bringing these subjects to the light of day.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Riding the Rails tells a story not often heard about life during the Great Depression. Although the story is fresh, it really puts into perspective what was going on in America at that time. By using teenage runaways to illustrate the struggles of our country, Ulys puts a very human face on the time period. I thought the way the book was divided into sections with each section illustrating a different aspect of the runaways' lives, was extremely helpful. Each section began with an overview of the particular subject, using people as well as facts to tell the story. The section ended with the true life stories of the runaways told in their own words, which I found to be the most enjoyable part of the book. You could tell a lot of research went into finding reliable and interesting sources, because all of the personal accounts were compelling. This book tied together so many aspects of the economic disaster that was the 1930s. By showing readers a face behind the poverty, they can understand how the country's economy has everything to do with the lives of its people. The stories told are so sad and hard to believe that it can serve as motivation to see that our country learns from its mistakes and never lets the economy become what it was at that time. Overall, I found this to be an interesting read and well worth the time to gain insight into a compelling piece of history.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
First Sentence:
At the height of the Great Depression, 250,000 teenage hoboes were roaming America. Read the first pageKey Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
New York, Great Depression, United States, New Mexico, Los Angeles, World War, New Orleans, San Francisco, San Jule, West Virginia, Lexy Lovell, North Carolina, North Dakota, National Archives, Southern Pacific, Wall Street, African Americans, Baton Rouge, Chicago World's Fair, Civilian Conservation Corps, Clarence Lee, Daddy Joe, John Fawcett, South Dakota, Courtesy of the Library of Congress
New! Concordance
|
Text StatsBrowse Sample Pages: Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Surprise Me!
