RIDING TOWARD EVERYWHERE
William T. Vollmann
Ecco
Memoir/Travel
ISBN: 9780061256752

Is there a sound more romantic than that of a distant freight train whistle, stirring the imagination and giving birth to dreams of escape and adventure? Who hasn’t pictured himself clambering onto one of those trains, speeding off into the blackness of the night to an unknown destination? In RIDING TOWARD EVERYWHERE, National Book Award-winning novelist and journalist William T. Vollmann (EUROPE CENTRAL) gives voice to that yearning, offering his impressionistic vision --- freight train rides as “parables” --- of both the joyous freedom and the perils of a life riding the rails.

Vollmann’s book consists of a loosely stitched-together collection of prose poems, sketching his own trainhopping experiences --- “catching out,” as those who ride the rails term it --- and portraying the lives of some of the denizens of that world. There’s little in the way of chronology or conventional structure to the book. Vollmann and his occasional traveling companion Steve Jones, a pudgy, middle-aged fellow who seems to ride the rails in order to find his way quickly and economically to the best fishing holes, board freight trains throughout the Northwest United States, from Roseville, Oregon to Cheyenne, Wyoming, relishing the freedom of the pursuit and yet recognizing that the potential for a catastrophe always lurks nearby. Interspersed with the account of their travels is Vollmann’s expedition into the “hobo jungle,” as much an anthropologist there as he is a fellow traveler.

The men and women whose stories Vollmann tells are depicted in a sobering portrait gallery at the back of the book: gaunt, hollow-eyed, aged far beyond their years and living on the margins of a society far from the consciousness of the “citizens” (Vollmann’s derisive italics) who represent to him bourgeois respectability. Colorfully named trainhoppers like Pretty Polly, Pittsburgh Ed, Cinders, Frog and Guitar Whitey (who has logged some seven decades on the rails) share their blunt and occasionally humorous stories with him. Far from being simple tales of robust freedom, they’re tinged with isolation, sadness and loss. In these brief, empathetic portrayals, Vollmann attempts, not always successfully, to transform them from faceless hobos into flesh and blood human beings.

There is constant danger on the rails, from the obvious risk of death by injury with each mount or dismount to the exposure to thugs and robbers. Vollmann writes of violent, racist gangs like the FTRA, Goon Squad and Wrecking Crew, and shares examples of their disturbing graffiti in a series of stark, black-and-white photographs. Although the world Vollmann describes primarily is inhabited by men, he offers the stories of a handful of the women --- “Diesel Venuses” --- who have found their way into this life.

Vollmann also links himself to some of the titans of American literature who have celebrated life on the open road --- the “ecstatic openness of Kerouac’s road voyagers,” the “dogged cat-and-mouse triumphs of London’s freight-jumpers” and the “canny navigations of Twain’s riverboat youth.” It’s a fertile literary tradition, and Vollmann’s homage to it is frank and heartfelt.

But it would be misleading to suggest that RIDING TOWARD EVERYWHERE is nothing more than a romantic tribute to the hobo life. Vollmann is no anarchist, but he is harshly critical of the bargain he believes Americans have made to trade elemental freedoms for perceived security. “It is the security men,” he writes, “the necessary evils who make each succeeding year of my life more unfree than the one before, these are the ones whom I hate and fear.”

A good share of the pleasure of RIDING TOWARD EVERYWHERE lies in Vollmann’s lyrical descriptions of his train riding experience in passages like this one: “Montana trains crawl high under the rainy sky, heading toward stumpy grey peaks like bearclaws. Whitewater keeps exploding between the moss-bearded firs and spruces, pillowing upon rocks and ledges, then speeding blindly on beneath that gloomy sky.”

RIDING TOWARD EVERYWHERE isn’t likely to inspire a new generation of Americans to take to the rails in search of adventure. For Vollmann and his pal Steve, it’s a pastime in which they can engage before slipping back into their more conventional lives. For those likely to live out their days in train yards and on boxcars, it’s an existence fraught with loneliness and danger, and yet, Vollmann seems to say that the experience of pure freedom it provides offers some rough and partial consolation.

    --- Reviewed by Harvey Freedenberg

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