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Riding Toward Everywhere, by William T. Vollmann  (Released Jan. 2008)

 

 

           Whether or not you have ever read a book by William T. Vollmann, a quick look almost anywhere on the web reveals that he is a complex and diverse writer and thinker who searches in earnest, or perhaps ceaselessly, for a subject that inspires him. 

 

            Riding Toward Everywhere chronicles Vollmann’s equally ceaseless and uneasy search for his own sense of freedom which he pursues, illegally and at times dangerously, by jumping the freight trains that wander the country and carry him on a physical and emotional journey as broad and diverse as the territory covered by the trains themselves. 

            Vollmann’s journey is fraught with literal and metaphorical dangers.  Not least is the likelihood of being crushed under tons of rolling steel or being beaten or arrested by every hobo’s nemesis, the “bulls” who roam rail yards like feral cats.  But, for Vollmann, there is the equal risk of being crushed under the enormous weight of his sometimes troubled, sometimes confused, sometimes nostalgic but always relentless need to be somewhere other than where he finds himself at any given moment. 

            This book is brilliantly written.  Vollmann’s descriptions of the endless panorama provided by a speeding freight train are often breathtaking in their complexity and lyricism, and his infatuation with the stunning juxtaposition of this rolling geography is often contagious.  Setting aside the risk of death, injury or imprisonment, just as he so often does, the desire to join him is sometimes overwhelming. 

            Just as there are on his journey, though, Riding Toward Everywhere has its troubled spots.  Among them is Vollmann’s disappointing tendency to interrupt himself.  After a long and exciting passage depicting the effort to hop a train, for example, he ends the otherwise suspenseful and tense story by simply saying, “ . . . we gave up and caught a plane home.”  It goes without saying that it is at that point that all fantasy is lost and the reader is plunged head first into the fetid waters of dull reality. 

            Troubling, too, is Vollmann’s affliction with what can perhaps best be described as a kind of political Tourette’s Syndrome.  Again interrupting himself, he periodically take vicious swipes at the current administration in Washington, DC, the class structure in this country and a host of other social ills.  Setting personal politics aside, these outbursts are shattering distractions that have the same effect as an actor stopping in the middle of Hamlet, turning to the audience and asking, “So, whaddaya think so far?”

            Through it all, though, Vollmann provides a fascinating, sometimes disjointed, but always revelatory look at a life and an attitude that is light years from the reality of almost every reader.  And that makes it worth the trip. 

            Riding Toward Everywhere is due out in January, 2008.

 

 

 

 -Rod Lang

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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