Riding Toward Everywhere [Hardcover]

William T. Vollmann (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 22, 2008

Arelentlessly curious, endlessly sensitive, and unequivocally adventurous examiner of human existence, William T. Vollmann now takes to the rails. In the company of experienced fellow train-hopper Steve, Vollmann trawls the secretive waters of a unique underground lifestyle—subjecting both our national romance with and skepticism about the hobo life to his finely tuned, analytical eye. Carrying on in the footloose tradition of Huckleberry Finn, he offers a moving, strikingly modern vision of the American dream, brilliantly exploring both our deeply ingrained romanticizing of "freedom" and the myriad ways we restrict the very freedoms we profess to admire.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this sometimes heavy-handed though brief (especially for Vollmann) memoir of hopping trains and riding the rails, Vollmann, National Book Award winner for Europe Central, explores a personal and national obsession. From a certain open boxcar in a freight train heading the wrong way, he writes, I have enjoyed pouring rain, then birds and frogs, fresh yellow-green wetness of fields. Taking to the rails out West, Vollmann sometimes travels with buddies pursuing the same thrill, the same freedom people have long associated with railroads. Other times, he meets up with grizzled hobos and degenerates, reflecting on himself and his reasons for risking life and limb to see America from a speeding freight train. Whatever beauty our railroad travels bestow upon us comes partly from the frequent lovely surprises of reality itself, he says, often from the intersection of our fantasies with our potentialities. While he never really gets around to fully explaining his own reasons for doing so—he makes long, curlicue allusions to his restless soul and search for deeper meanings of things—Vollmann pieces together a kind of patchwork portrait of the lusts and longings of a nation torn by social inequity and riven with anger about the current state of affairs, especially but not limited to the war in Iraq and the ongoing sadness of American overseas misadventures. Through the self-indulgent mist, though, a sharper picture emerges. Vollmann captures an ongoing romantic vision of America—a nation always on the move, nervous and jittery, and never really satisfied with itself.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine

Vollmann has spent a good deal of time in some rough placesâ€"he made a reputation for his reporting from Bosnia and Afghanistanâ€"and his talent as a writer is hardly disputable. A prolific fiction writer and essayist (Poor People, *** May/June 2007; Rising Up and Rising Down, **** Mar/Apr 2004; Expelled from Eden; The Rainbow Stories), he won a National Book Award in 2005 for his novel Europe Central (***1/2 July/Aug 2005). A chronicle of his adventures on the rails (the book is expanded from a 2007 piece for Harper’s), however, meets with less success. Although much of the book bears the unmistakable punch of Vollmann’s prose, critics comment on the graceless prose and the lack of continuity and aim in the narrative (“no purpose, no destination, no story,” as the New York Times puts it). Still, Vollmann aficionados will find something here, even if first-timers might be better off picking up, say, Europe Central.
Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Ecco (January 22, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061256757
• ISBN-13: 978-0061256752
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,109,856 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Writing Toward Nowhere, March 13, 2009

By 

Jose Hanson (Edina, MN United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Riding Toward Everywhere (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?

22 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars lyrical and unsettling, January 26, 2008

By 

David W. Straight (knoxville, tennessee United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Riding Toward Everywhere (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.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Riding the Rails with WTV, February 26, 2011

By 

LT - See all my reviews

This review is from: Riding Toward Everywhere (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