Travels With Lizbeth [Hardcover]

Lars Eighner (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1993

A homeless man describes his travels, celebrating the companionship of his dog, Lizbeth, and recounting their ongoing struggle to survive on the streets of Austin, Texas, and along California highways.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

A writer of gay erotic fiction, Eighner first attracted the attention of the literary world when the Threepenny Review published "On Dumpster Diving," his essay on how to forage for food, clothing, and other items from dumpsters. That piece is included in this remarkable account of Eighner's three years of homelessness. After quitting his job at a state mental hospital and being evicted from his rented shack, Eighner embarked with his dog, Lizbeth, on an odyssey of hitchhiking from Texas to California and back and of struggling to live on Austin's inhospitable streets. Refusing to panhandle or steal and fiercely attached to Lizbeth (a bed at the Salvation Army would have meant putting her to sleep), he endured numerous misfortunes and indignities. At first, Eighner's wierd prose--stiff, with lots of big 19th-century words--is off-putting, but then his unique voice--part naif innocent, part eccentric fool--has the reader rooting for Eighner and Lizbeth. Strongly recommended.
- Wilda Wil liams, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Travels touches on many subjects, but its most dominant quality is good storytelling. Eighner fills his pages with vivid descriptions, perceptive observations, humor, and writing that carries the reader easily over troublesome issues. His theme is homelessness. Since Eighner is knowledgeable, clear-eyed, and sharply articulate about the social welfare system, his book is also about waste, self-righteousness, and generosity in an affluent society. It's a story of poverty, physical stress, and ever-present anxiety, yet his dog Lizbeth, who can't be trusted to guard anything or keep quiet when necessary, brings with her a warm and amusing story of man and pet. It is also, variously, about a homosexual, mistrustful, talented, and difficult man doing his best to set and follow his own well-ruminated and admirable priorities under distressing conditions. Together, the pieces form an unaffected, absorbing narrative. Virginia Dwyer

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 271 pages
• Publisher: St Martins Pr; 1st edition (October 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312099266
• ISBN-13: 978-0312099268
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #737,756 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars an entertaining, informative read, March 16, 2000

By 

Jasmine Guha "Jassa" (Austin, Texas USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Travels with Lizbeth: Three Years on the Road and on the Streets (Paperback)

I live in Austin and so I am familiar with a lot of the places mentioned in the book. Austin is currently (and was becoming at the time of publication) an economically prosperous city with it's much touted high-tec industries and growing affluence. Of course not everyone benefits from the growing economy and this book shows that there are some that do not benefit at all. The experiences of living on the streets of Austin and the southwest with a dog are told with great humor and wit. The fact that this book is very well written suggests that Lars Eighner doesn't fit the usual homeless stereotype of being ignorant, uneducated and useless to society. In fact in the book Eighner mentions having regular job before his circumstances changed. It does make one wonder how many other people are out there who go through similar experiences in life. anyway, this book is definitely worth a read.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Yes, one of the great memoirs and one of the great memoirists, February 4, 2006

By 

Anarcissie "*Anarcissie*" (NYC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Travels with Lizbeth: Three Years on the Road and on the Streets (Paperback)

Lars Eighner is a better writer and a better story-teller than most of the people filling books in bookstores and lying on Oprah these days. But those are not the only reasons you should read the book. The primary reason is because, unlike almost anyone else you will meet in public life -- authors, professors, officials, savants, celebrities -- Eighner is an intelligent, honest, humane, authentic and _original_ person. Reading _Travels with Lizbeth_ is like reading _Walden_: there's some kind of mind on the other side of the page, a mind which unlike the ciphers on television is awake and can see things. Including, as he says towards the end of the book, "all the way to the bottom", because he's been to visit more than once while most of the rest of us were pretending it wasn't there. (As the social fabric continues to decay we might want to get to know something about its geography.) I am reminded of Whitman's "Who touches this book touches a man." And a dog as well. Buy, beg, borrow or steal this book. It might wake you up a little. And if you're already awake it'll help you to know that there's someone else out there, across the night.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the great memoirs, March 27, 2004

By 

jason812 (Winter Park, FL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Travels with Lizbeth: Three Years on the Road and on the Streets (Paperback)

This is one of my favorite memoirs. It reads less like an autobiography than a collection of related short stories, each one witty, poignant, and carefully drawn.

It also serves as bracing lesson, not so much about "homelessness", but about how even an uncommonly intelligent and capable, if somewhat non-standard, person can slip through what's left of our social safety net and end up on the street. As Eighner tells it here, if it weren't for a couple of strokes of random good fortune, he would not have been a position to put a roof over his head again, much less publish this book.

For those wondering what Eighner is up to now, he's still writing. Examples of his recent and not-so-recent work can be found on his website, which can be easily found by putting "Lars Eighner" in a search engine. As for the reviewer who felt cheated because the book did not offer sufficient details of Eighner's sex life, there's a link to Eighner's erotic writing on the site as well -- that ought to satisfy your cruelly frustrated needs.