A review by shayneh
Rolling Nowhere: Riding the Rails with America's Hoboes by Ted Conover

3.0

Couldn't decide whether to go with "honest but infuriatingly naive" or "infuriatingly naive but honest"; it's both, and neither wins out. The author was obviously young at the time of writing, and that is just part of the book. Still, it is a story of his adventure, told from his immature point of view. He mentions John Howard Griffin's Black Like Me along the way, but the big difference between these is that Griffin brings along a lifetime of perspective and wisdom to his work that unites the tale into more than a picaresque series of episodes; Conover's feels more disjointed, almost a series of vignettes. Also, he's constantly unsure of who he is in relation to the tramps with whom he lives, invoking a familiar "mid-twenties existential quandary" motif. I'm not sure that this is a coming of age story, but it certainly is a young man's adventure.