The Mole People: Life in the Tunnels Beneath New York City [Paperback]

Jennifer Toth (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 1995

Thousands of people live in the subway, railroad, and sewage tunnels that form the bowels of New York City and this book is about them, the so-called mole people. They live alone and in communities, in subway tunnels and below subway platforms and this fascinating study presents how and why people move underground, who they are, and what they have to say about their lives and the “topside” world they’ve left behind.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Alligators breeding in the sewers of New York City is an urban legend; thousands of people living in the tunnels beneath New York is not. Ms. Toth has written a compelling, compassionate and extraordinary documentary about the "Mole People."

From Publishers Weekly

Toth's firsthand account of the sad, bizarre subculture of people who live in New York's abandoned subway tunnels and sewage lines.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 280 pages
• Publisher: Chicago Review Press (October 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 155652241X
• ISBN-13: 978-1556522413
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 0.8 x 6.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (147 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #55,301 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #68 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Social Sciences > Poverty
  • #84 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Sociology > Urban

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

138 of 148 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars intriguing cross-section of tunnel life January 3, 2002

By Shannon B Davis TOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

My birthday gift was "The Mole People - Life in the Tunnels beneath New York City." Both subterranean landscapes and alternative societies have always fascinated me, and this book contains both. New York City has some of the largest and most inhabited underground spaces of any city in the United States, and the homeless population is more visible there than some other cities. The book changed how I thought about the homeless. I avoided contact with them because they can be unpredictable. I pretended I didn't see them, thinking soup kitchens and shelters would help them. Although the book reinforces that homelessness is often a choice, it taught me that the homeless are not much different from me.

It's amazing how much space there is belowground. So many abandoned tunnels for trains, gas lines, and water. One can still wire electricity, and some abandoned subway stations still have working bathrooms. Cubbies built to house maintenance workers now house the homeless. One community got water from a broken pipe where they showered and washed their clothes. Another even had a microwave. One wonders if any of them have Internet access.

I found it interesting that many tunnel-dwellers did not want to return to the surface, or to a normal life. They are the ultimate outsiders, and they have idealist views of their own lifestyle, while believing the surface is not for them. They are invisible, outcasts, on the surface world. Life is not better there. Underground they have a family and a purpose. Men who couldn't find work and provide for the family on the surface world can be productive members of "society" beneath the ground. It amazed me how much they helped one another, forming communities where each person had their role. Of course, there were the loners and the drug addicts and the alcoholics, but others went down for ideological reasons.

Close to the surface, many people still held normal jobs above ground, and one child still attended school. With rents so high, people resort to this - you can't work minimum wage and have an apartment in Manhattan. Close to the surface, there is less community and more of a transient population. The police have a higher presence, an outreach program that sometimes helps and sometimes hinders the homeless. Many inhabitants report being beaten by the officers, while the officers say that they endanger themselves daily trying to help these people.

So often, the inhabitants would say that they believed life was better for them underground. One self-styled mayor told Jennifer that undergrounders were superior people to whom the human spirit was more valuable than material comforts. The leaders of these communities were usually quite educated, sometimes with degrees. This particular man had a library that he had brought down over the years. A schoolteacher and a nurse lived in his community, both trained in the aboveground world, but choosing to live and work belowground. Appointed runners fetched supplies from the surface.

Another common phrase is "these people need me. I'm needed down here." In the anonymous surface world, many people are not successful and end up alone and nameless. Below, they can be someone. In some ways, it is a utopia. Free from a society where they don't fit in, they no longer pay taxes or follow rules and they can live a more authentic life, where survival is a day-to day struggle, but they can feel as if they are really contributing.

Most of the interviewees were living under ground actively. I wonder if those who have left tell a different story. An exotic dancer often has an idealized view of her role, but after she has left the profession, her opinions are more jaded. Maybe people idealize their own lives,in order to mentally survive hardship. Yet, I was impressed by their ethics. As an atheist myself, I too believe we must find our moral compass on the inside. The more idealistic communities talked about the "human
morality" and "human religion", ethics like honesty and compassion. Without rules and laws, these people generally act out of their own hearts to care for their neighbors. They care for people that most of us would turn away from in disgust - crack addicts, AIDS-infected people, and the mentally unstable.

Of course, there are crazy and drug-addled people. The writer encountered one man called the Dark Angel that everyone, from the police to the tunnel-dwellers feared. He lived alone in the tunnel, and few would come near him. He believed that he was evil's incarnation on earth. There are bands of roving teenagers, and gang-members who plan their assassinations and
drug deals beneath the ground. It's a haven for those who do not want to be seen, some of whom are bad people. Rarely was the writer without a guide for her own safety.

Even ensconced in the surface world of professional jobs and rat-free air-conditioned apartments, we can see why these people chose to leave all that for a life underground, without laws and structure. They survive better than one would expect. It allows people to start over, or even to start for the first time. For some people, it is the best option they have, and reading about the rapes and thefts at surface-world shelters, one understands why they would flee to deeper and deeper bowels of the earth.

Jennifer Toth did a brave thing, and her compassion and courage impressed me. She entered their world, nearly unbiased, and she kept in touch with her subjects. Her book, though scholarly, is not the least bit boring. She writes with a personal style and a first-person perspective, and her landscapes are hard to forget. She communicates that the mole people are more human than their name implies, sometimes more human than those of us
above.

33 of 35 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Truth stranger than fantasy. July 30, 2000

By H. J. Wakenshaw

Format:Paperback

Anyone with an interest in homelessness should read this, especially if you enjoyed Lee Stringer's autobiographical "Grand Central Winter". Toth explores the areas that Stringer didn't, literally and figuratively, delving deep into the bowels of NYC, and into our collective conscience to uncover the Mole People.

Whether you believe in the existence of the Mole People or not, (and if they do not exist, I find it difficult to understand why a sizeable police team has been assigned to deal with them) this is a fascinating book; quite difficult to put down, which is high praise for a work of non-fiction on such a grim subject. Toth writes in a vivid, but honest and open way about her tunnel experiences; her youth lends clarity and simplicity to what could, from the pen of an older writer, have become a messy opinion laden tirade against society's ills. Here, the stories are fresh and vigorous, tinged with sympathy, humour, sadness, but above all, evidence of the author's enormous respect for her subjects. Toth gives no answers. The pasts of the people she introduces to us are hazy at best, and while sweeping generalisations can be made about why they chose to live underground, Toth herself is never so arrogant as to try to offer solutions or even possible causes for their problems. She challenges widely held ideas about how much of a problem the underground homeless are without either condoning or criticising any single individual or agency. She is always balanced, whether dealing with policemen or the homeless man whose stories about himself seem to change as often as the weather, absolutely non-judgemental, which in a book of this type, is refreshing.

The stories she tells are almost all unbelievable. Either because the her subjects and their apparent hopelessness and retreat from our society is so sad, or because of the resilience and enterprise shown by them in creating homes complete with more mod. cons. than you'd imagine. Toth shows us all manner of people to reflect our own society - the cultured, the simple, the educated, the mad, the sane, the clean, the dirty, the hopeful, the hopeless, the philosophers, the religious, the regular Joes, the jobless, the employed, the old, the frighteningly young. The only distinction which is hard to make is that between good and bad character; in the tunnels, you may not necessarily be the person you were on the outside. Underground, there are fully functioning communities, with councils, health care and education systems in place. There are rules and laws that upturn our 'topside' ideas of law and order; there are also healthy amounts of loving, caring, sharing and charity shown towards each other by the members of underground communities.

Toth writes well. The only fault I can really find with "The Mole People" is that the chapter dealing with the history of the underground sticks out like a sore thumb in the middle of the book, spoiling the flow. It would have been better as the start or end of the book. However, it is in itself an interesting, well written and important chapter, too good to be banished to an appendices. Lest we think that the Mole People live in some alternative Utopia, Toth shows us the appalling and gruesome, even, at points, terrifyingly dangerous aspect of life underground. Things that don't bear thinking about in our clean and ordered world, but which Toth willingly encountered, at great risk to herself, in order to bring these strange, surprising, horrific and beautiful stories to light. But those are Toth's stories to tell - to read about them, buy this amazing, well written and attitude changing book.

27 of 33 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating May 8, 2001

By J. N. Mohlman VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

In "The Mole People" Jennifer Toth tells the story of the New York City homeless who have taken up residence in the subway tunnels and sub-basements of Manhatten. In clear, eloquent prose, Toth introduces the reader to the genuinely surreal existence of people who live out much of their lives in dark, man-made catacombs. With both the eye of a scientist and the compassion of a concerned human being, Toth examines what has driven these people underground, and how it is they exist in such an environment.

This book is astonishing in that something that reads like a bizzare work of fiction is in fact true. It is hard to believe that people could or would live in subway tunnels. but Toth's reporting is compelling. My one complaint is that she didn't do much to research the architetural aspects of sub-surface NYC. I suspect she would have done much to silence her critics if she had mapped her travels and compared them to available blue-prints.