"Riding" is adventurous — but bumpy

"Riding Toward Everywhere"

by William T. Vollmann

Ecco, 288 pp., $26.95

Some men (and a few women) climb onto freight trains illegally at the risk of serious injury or death because they have no other home — they ride endlessly from destination to destination. Others want to reach a destination, and hopping the freight is the only affordable way. Still others do it for sheer adventure. William T. Vollmann is one of the adventurers.

When Vollmann, the prolific, original author of "Rising Up and Rising Down" (a seven-volume examination of violence), writes a new book — and, my goodness, they come quickly — the dilemma for a reviewer is always the same: whether to open by telling readers about the book itself or whether to attempt a description of this remarkable, unpredictable and, let's face it, strange man.

Let's start with the book itself, Vollmann's 2008 model. Vollmann's text is a participant-observation account of traveling up and down and across the United States in freight cars for no discernible reason except maybe the best reasons of all — wanderlust, living free, looking for a dream place to inhabit that he calls "Cold Mountain." Another reason is obvious — gathering material for a book. It is definitely a labor of love, though. (In the acknowledgments section, Vollmann thanks his editor at Harper's Magazine, "who actually gave me money for my train hopping, and who can beat that?")

Vollmann's presumably comfortable house is in Sacramento, Calif. But when he is riding the freight trains, he often has no specific destination in mind. Hence, the title "Riding Toward Everywhere," with the emphasis on "Everywhere." Cities like Seattle are just fine, thank you, and he mentions Seattle twice (in passing, literally and figuratively), Spokane more often, and Havre, Mont., even more often — which proves that size is not everything.

Vollmann hops trains unaccompanied, sometimes accompanied by strangers with alternate comfortable lives like himself, sometimes accompanied by honest-to-goodness hobos who are otherwise homeless. Vollmann's most frequent companion is Steve, also about 50 years old, not all that spry anymore, with a regular home and family, who wants to find his own Cold Mountain, although Steve does not adopt that term.

As for Vollmann himself — well, he seems to write toward everywhere and about everything. Just a year ago, Vollmann's book "Poor People" appeared. To research that book, Vollmann, nearing age 50 but judging by his author photograph looking closer to 30, traveled the world, asking obviously down-and-out individuals, "Why are you poor?"

Before "Poor People," Vollmann published seven novels, including the hugely acclaimed "Europe Central"; three volumes of short stories; and a range of nonfiction highlighted by the scholarly treatise "Rising Up and Rising Down: Some Thoughts on Violence, Freedom and Urgent Means."

In a literary realm filled with all sorts of talented writers who can be difficult to pigeonhole, Vollmann might qualify as the most difficult of all.

If that sounds like a backhanded compliment, it is not. Sometimes his books fall short of greatness; "Riding Toward Everywhere" certainly falls short of Vollmann's best.

The book does not unfold according to any discernible logic. Some of the 12 chapters are themed, as in the rarity of women riding the rails ("Diesel Venus") or the ugliness spawned by some hobos who are racists ("A Stick of Dynamite"). The majority of chapters, however, contain surprises at the beginning or the middle or the end or all three. Without warning, Vollmann might jump from the physical beauty or physical ugliness of the landscape as seen from a freight car to a learned lesson on the writings of Ernest Hemingway or Mark Twain or Jack Kerouac.

Despite the surface disorganization of the book, Vollmann pulls off the feat of never losing or confusing the reader. That is what talent of his magnitude can accomplish.

Vollmann is always worth reading.