Woody Guthrie Autobiography (exerpt)

Here's an exerpt from the beginning of "Bound for Glory". This the real thing. He writes plain and that's my kinda book. The following paragraphs show that Guthrie could not only hold his own as classic songwriter and poet, but also as a writer. Here is how he describes a boxcar filled with hundreds of men:

"I set down with my back against the wall looking all through the troubled, tangled, messed-up men. Traveling the hard way. Dressed the hard way. Hitting the long old lonesome go.


Rougher than cob. Wilder than a woodchuck. Hotter than a depot stove. Madder than nine hundred dollars. Arguing worse than a tree full of crows. Messed-up. Mixed-up, screwed-up people. A crazy boxcar on a wild track. Headed sixty miles an hour in a big cloud of poison dust due straight to nowhere."

This is going to be my kind of book.