Riding Toward Everywhere

William T. Vollmann is kind of nuts.  In 1981, the author travelled to Afghanistan in an ill-fated attempt to join the Mujahideen rebellion against the Soviets.  He wrote a 700-page novel entirely in Elizabethan English.  Doing research for another novel, he travelled by himself to the magnetic North Pole, and almost froze to death in the process.  And so on.  

So it's not much of a surprise to find out that one of Vollmann's hobbies is hopping freight trains.  What is surprising is that the book he wrote about riding the rails is unassuming and even sort of sweet.  It's short, less than 200 pages (by contrast, his next book is a 1300 behemoth about a county in California) and, as Vollmann himself says, it's a book with very few points to make.  Vollmann's main goal seems to be to convey the joy he gets from trainhopping, the sense of freedom it gives him in an America where freedoms are increasingly restricted.   His language is descriptive and poetic, and at the same time unsentimental.  He doesn't romanticize train riding,  being frank about the dangers,  the discomfort, and most of all, the mind numbing boredom that goes along with the activity.  But he also vividly captures the moments of beauty that make the downsides worth it.  Vollmann also explores how trainhopping has been treated by other American authors like Hemingway, Kerouac, and Mark Twain. 

Vollmann never claims to be an authentic hobo.  He's upfront about the economic advantages that he and his trainriding partner Steve have, labeling themselves fauxbeaux.  They ride the rails by choice, not necessity.  But when Vollmann does encounter real hoboes, his descriptions of them are compassionate and humanizing,  without turning a blind eye to the prejudices that can exist in the community.  It's a delicate balance, but he pulls it off well, even if he does succumb to the occasional burst of purple prose.  A charming book.