Rolling Nowhere: Riding the Rails with America's Hoboes [Paperback]

Ted Conover (Author)

Book Description

Release date: September 11, 2001

In Ted Conover's first book, now back in print, he enters a segment of humanity outside society and reports back on a world few of us would chose to enter but about which we are all curious.

Hoboes fascinated Conover, but he had only encountered them in literature and folksongs. So, he decided to take a year off and ride the rails. Equipped with rummage-store clothing, a bedroll, and a few other belongings, he hops a freight train in St. Louis, becoming a tramp in order to discover their peculiar culture. The men and women he meets along the way are by turns generous and mistrusting, resourceful and desperate, philosophical and profoundly cynical. And the narrative he creates of his travels with them is unforgettable and moving.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Vivid, sensitive... this always compelling odyssey explains life beyond the pale of comfort."
--Los Angeles Times

"Rolling Nowhere is so vivid that every few pages the urge to clack the dust from one's own clothes is almost irresistible."
--The New York Times Book Review

From the Inside Flap

In Ted Conover's first book, now back in print, he enters a segment of humanity outside society and reports back on a world few of us would chose to enter but about which we are all curious.

Hoboes fascinated Conover, but he had only encountered them in literature and folksongs. So, he decided to take a year off and ride the rails. Equipped with rummage-store clothing, a bedroll, and a few other belongings, he hops a freight train in St. Louis, becoming a tramp in order to discover their peculiar culture. The men and women he meets along the way are by turns generous and mistrusting, resourceful and desperate, philosophical and profoundly cynical. And the narrative he creates of his travels with them is unforgettable and moving.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Vintage (September 11, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375727868
• ISBN-13: 978-0375727863
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.6 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.3 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #106,418 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #25 in Books > Travel > Food, Lodging & Transportation > Railroad Travel
  • #38 in Books > Professional & Technical > Transportation > Railroads

More About the Author

Ted Conover is the author of several books including The Routes of Man and Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing (winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize). He also wrote Coyotes, Whiteout, and Rolling Nowhere: Riding the Rails with America's Hoboes. His writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, and National Geographic. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, he is Distinguished Writer-in-Residence in the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University. He lives in New York City.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 29 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Riding the rails July 30, 2002

By Ronald Scheer

Format:Paperback

As a young man, in his early 20s, Ted Conover traveled on foot and by rail over most of the Western states, first with hoboes and then with undocumented farm workers from Mexico. In his travels, he discovered two itinerant worlds, sometimes overlapping, that are often misunderstood, and invisible to most Americans. In many ways naïve and sometimes too trusting, Conover also discovered the limits of his middle class upbringing. His first two books, "Rolling Nowhere" and "Coyotes" were based on his experiences. Together they represent a kind of coming of age in America.

With little knowledge of real hobo life, Conover left college in the East, jumped a train in St. Louis and headed west. In the months that followed, he crossed and recrossed 14 states, meeting and traveling with a dozen or more modern-day hoboes. He learned from them how to survive, living off of handouts, sleeping rough, avoiding the railroad police. And he learned about loneliness and loss of identity.

There are moments of pure pleasure, a tin cup of steaming coffee on a cold high plains morning, the unbroken landscape gliding by open boxcar doors. And there are times when the romance of adventure disappears completely -- in bad weather and bad company. I greatly enjoyed this book and was often touched by Conover's youthful pursuit of independence and experience, often taking risks and crashing head-on into realities he does not anticipate. At the end, the romance of the rails has been pretty much stripped away; he's not sorry, but he's had enough.

His book "Coyotes" is a great companion to this one, as it shows him a little older and somewhat wiser, on yet another risk-taking adventure that throws him into yet another marginal world.

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars In the Land of In Between December 29, 2001

By Jena Ball VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

You've got to give Conover credit, the kid has guts. Discontent with his college studies, which seem a bit unreal and removed from real life, he decides to do some hands on research and give the life of a hobo a try. Predictably, things are not what he expects. The life of a hobo (more accurately known as a tramp) is far from romantic and most often full of hardship and danger. However, Conover also discovers a world of fascinating folks who, when push comes to shove, are not so different from the rest of us.

There is Lonny, the eternal optimist whose head is full of dreams that never materialize, Pistol Pete with his injured hand and jealous sidekick BB who propose a 3-muskateers deal and then run off with most of his gear, Forrest and Bill with whom he discovers the depths of being a tramp, and Monty who is pursued by personal ghosts.

Equally important to Conover's education is his personal transformation from a well-dressed, polite city kid to a rail smart tramp who won't let anyone take advantage of him. His hair grows, his clothes become dirty, layered and ragged, he learns to smoke and drink cheap booze, to scavange in dumpsters for leftover food and how to apply for food stamps. Even more revealing to him is how he is treated as his physical appearance changes. Suddenly people look away, a policeman finds a reason to arrest him for walking on a public sidewalk and he is treated with mistrust and even disgust when he goes into stores.

Conover emerges from his adventures with a bad case of head lice but nothing worse physically. However, it is clear that his inner psyche has undergone a transformation. He has questioned the assumptions of his middle class upbringing and dared to immerse himself in the lives of one of our country's most misunderstood groups. In writing frankly about his experiences, he forces the reader to see hoboes for who and what they really are - people like the rest of us doing the best they can to get by in this world. Such a revelation is always a bit of a shock, but in this case it was also heartening. The people in Conover's book are full of life and memorable quirks. They are real characters in every sense of the word, who force you to respond to their lives. The book is not an appeal to save the downtrodden, a psychological dissertation on the causes of poverty or a condemnation of a society that produces hoboes. It is simply one man's quest to understand another way of life and himself in doing so. You'll come away challenged, touched and questioning some of your own assumptions about how life should be lived.

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars a moving remembrance of days gone by November 6, 2001

By Andreas Drexler

Format:Paperback

The hobo has been declared extinct many times, just as
America is always declared robbed of her innocence.
However, it IS true, I can vouch as a freight-train rider
myself, that economic and legal changes have greatly
reduced the number of tramps in recent years. What Ted
did as a very young man was to explore a shadowy and
dangerous world that is full of unforgettable memories
and vast scenic rewards and to come out the other end
with a great book. He captures the longing, the pain,
the exhilaration of exploring the country in a way shunned by its
increasingly organized and comfortable citizens. He captures
the agony and durability of the (almost entirely) men who
wind up in this underworld and manage to stay alive and
sometimes even defiant. This is a great book. Along with
"Good Company" by Doug Harper (1980), it is one of the very
few testaments to freight-train riders to come from recent times.