Beggars of life a hobo autobiography samples printable

DescriptionTully’s breakthrough novel about life on the road

Jim Tully left his hometown of St. Marys, Ohio, in , spending most of his teenage years in the company of hoboes. Drifting across the country as a “road kid,” he spent those years scrambling into boxcars, sleeping in hobo jungles, avoiding railroad cops, begging meals from back doors, and haunting public libraries.

Tully crafted these memories into a dark and astonishing chronicle of the American underclass—especially in his second book, Beggars of Life, an autobiographical novel published in Tully saw it all, from a church baptism in the Mississippi River to election day in Chicago.

Beggars of life a hobo autobiography samples A bestseller in , this vivid piece of outlaw history has inexplicably faded from the public consciousness. Jim Tully takes us across the seamy underbelly of pre-WWI America on freight trains, and inside hobo jungles and brothels while narrowly averting railroad bulls cops and wardens of order. Written with unflinching honesty and insight, Beggars of Life follows Tully from his first ride at age thirteen, choosing life on the road over a deadening job, through his teenage years of learning the ropes of the rails and -living one meal to the next. Tully's direct, confrontational approach helped shape the hard-boiled school of writing, and later immeasurably influenced the noir genre. Beggars of Life was the first in Tully's five-volume memoir, dubbed the "Underworld Edition," recalling his transformation from road-kid to novelist, journalist, Hollywood columnist, chain maker, boxer, circus handyman, and tree surgeon.

And in Beggars of Life, he captures an America largely hidden from view.

This novelistic memoir impressed readers and reviewers with its remarkable vitality and honesty. Tully’s devotion to Mark Twain and Jack London taught him the importance of giving the reader a sense of place, and this he does brilliantly, again and again, throughout Beggars of Life. From the opening conversation on a railroad trestle, Beggars of Life rattles along like the Fast Flyer Virginia that Tully boards midway through the book.

This is the book that defined Tully’s hard-boiled style and set the pattern for the twelve books that followed over the next two decades. Startling in its originality and intensity, Beggars of Life is a breakneck journey made while clinging to the lowest rungs of the social ladder.

Authors

Jim Tully (–) was born in St.

Marys, Ohio.

Beggars of life a hobo autobiography samples pdf With an OverDrive account, you can save your favorite libraries for at-a-glance information about availability. Find out more about OverDrive accounts. Jim Tully. Rare Treasure Editions. Find this title in Libby, the library reading app by OverDrive.

He is the author of numerous books chronicling the American underclass, including Circus Parade (; The Kent State University Press, ), Shanty Irish (; The Kent State University Press, ), Shadows of Men (), and Blood on the Moon (). Paul J. Bauer is a used and rare book dealer in Kent, Ohio.

He is the coauthor of Frazier Robinson’s autobiography, Catching Dreams: My Life in the Negro Baseball Leagues (). Mark Dawidziak has been the television critic at the Cleveland Plain Dealer since A theater, film, and television reviewer for about thirty years, his many nonfiction books include The Barter Theatre Story: Love Made Visible (), The Columbo Phile: A Casebook (), Mark My Words: Mark Twain on Writing (), The Night Stalker Companion: A 25th Anniversary Tribute (), Horton Foote’s The Shape of the River: The Lost Teleplay about Mark Twain (), and The Bedside, Bathtub & Armchair Companion to Dracula ().

He is also a novelist and a playwright.