Stranger on a Train: Daydreaming and Smoking Around America with Interruptions [Hardcover]

Jenny Diski (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 4, 2002

The book about America de Tocqueville might have written had he spent some time in the nation’s smoking sections

Using two cross-country trips on Amtrak as her narrative vehicles, British writer Jenny Diski connects the humming rails taking her into the heart of America with the track-like scars leading back to her own past. As she did in the highly acclaimed Skating to Antarctica, Diski has created a seamless and seemingly effortless amalgam of reflection and revelation. Stranger on a Train is a combination of travelogue and memoir, a penetrating portrait of America and Americans that is at the same time an unsparing look in the mirror. Traveling and remembering both involve confronting strangers—those we have just met and those we once were—and acknowledging the play of proximity and separation. Diski has written a moving, courageous, and deeply rewarding book about who we are, and the landscapes through which we have passed to get there.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

"I am not a travel writer in any reasonable sense of the word," Diski confesses. "I do not feel compelled to bring the world to people, or meet interesting characters, or enlarge my circle of acquaintance. I just want to drift in the actual landscape of my destination." Despite the disclaimer, the British novelist (Only Human) does all of the above in this eloquent exploration of the psyche America's and her own. The work is divided into two parts. Journey One begins aboard a transatlantic cargo ship where Diski is among a handful of passengers en route to Savannah, Ga. From there, she takes Amtrak to Arizona. Journey Two takes place a year later as Diski circumnavigates the U.S. from New York's Penn Station to Portland, Ore., and back, stopping in the suburbs of Albuquerque to stay in the backyard trailer of a friend from the first sojourn. As in the Hitchcock thriller of (almost) the same title, strangers whom Diski befriends in the smoking sections, or "sin bins," of the trains divulge the details of their lives; Diski, however, plays it close to the vest, sharing intimacies with readers only about her difficult childhood, struggles with substance abuse and more. "I became remarkably unhappy at having been chosen to survive," she recollects after her first trip, comparing the experience of saying goodbye to her travel mates to leaving the psych ward of England's Lady Chichester Hospital at age 14. As she did in Skating to Antarctica: A Journey to the End of the World (1998), Diski again blurs the borders between traditional travelogue and memoir to create a transcendent work.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

English novelist Diski (Only Human) mixes memoir and travelog in a sharp, vivid, but ultimately disappointing narrative written around two train journeys, one across the southern United States and the other around its perimeter. She begins each journey with seeming enthusiasm, but before long, she starts feeling that she has opened herself up too much to strangers. She then panics and withdraws, needing to hide away in her tiny cabin on the train. A short visit to the home of a woman she meets on the first journey ends in paranoid terror when Diski becomes convinced that the family won't let her leave. Intermittently, she flashes back to other times in her life, including an unhappy childhood and several episodes of severe depression. The places she visits (Phoenix, Chicago, Jacksonville) are entirely incidental to the story, the scenery is best seen through a train window, if at all, and the people she meets are unremarkable. In the end, Diski seems happiest when exiled to a dingy smoking car puffing desperately on a cigarette, heading home. Not a priority purchase. Linda M. Kaufmann, Massachusetts Coll. of Liberal Arts Lib., North Adams
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Picador; 1st edition (October 4, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312283520
• ISBN-13: 978-0312283520
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,637,601 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Well worth the read, July 1, 2006

By 

Stephen E. Stratton "liberryn" (Camarillo, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Stranger on a Train (Hardcover)

I enjoyed Diski's self revelations and conversations with Americans on her cross country train trips. Yes, she clearly needs her cigarettes, and yes, she discusses what are clearly uncomfortable settings of her own mental health, but people, her writing is fantastic, and she creates a definite view of what train travel in the US is like these days. The reviewer that wonders what happened in certain legs of the journey needs to realize that yes, one does sleep on the train and certain geography is doomed to be missed in such a trip. THis book is less about the external geography and more about the internal geography the authors sees with her traveling compatriots across America. A wonderful look at Americans and at an author examining herself while traveling.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book, August 30, 2008

By 

Mike Naughton "Mike" (Washington State) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Stranger on a Train: Daydreaming and Smoking Around America with Interruptions (Hardcover)

This is a wonderful author. Her books are entertaining, valuable and insightful. Highly recommended.

This book in particular gives one the pleasure of a train trip without suffering through Amtrak delays. A must-read to train travel fanciers.

4.0 out of 5 stars Solitude up in smoke, September 23, 2009

By 

J. Alyce - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Stranger on a Train: Daydreaming and Smoking Around America with Interruptions (Paperback)

A militant solitaire with a quirky passion for traveling in circles (literally) being "entertained" by strangers as if they were coin-operated. Some great quotes in this book about Alone Time. Ended without an end, however...like a train just seemed to run out of steam.