There's a scene in the Cameron Crowe film Almost Famous that
encapsulates a whole (beat) generation of cliches about life on the
road in the American West. The squabbling rock group, idealistic
journalist and knowing band of groupies are sitting on the tour
bus, strumming acoustic guitars and singing along to Simon and
Garfunkel: 'They've All Gone/To Look for America'. It captures the
dream in an instant - the open road and an empty appointments book.
It's wistful, romantic and, of course, totally unreal. Or is it? In
Ghost Riders, Richard Grant charts the history of the American
drifter. Drawing cultural succour from Jack Kerouac, Hunter
Thompson and Easy Rider, and spiritual inspiration from Cortes and
the conquistadors, Grant takes us on a fascinating, meandering
journey. Bathed in big sky and soaked in sour mash whiskey, it's a
picaresque, personal and whimsical narrative held together (just
about) by Grant's journalistic style. We learn about Cabeza de
Vaca, the would-be conquistador and first European hobo on the
continent, who journeyed across the deserts of the Southwest with
an entourage of 4000 Indians (Grant insists that 'Native Americans'
is patronising terminology). And the decline of the Apache tribes,
who feared imprisonment as the worst torture of all. And Joe
Walker, the first European American to see the Pacific - and who,
as the old Western joke goes, would 'take a bath every springtime,
whether he needs it or not'. But throughout, Grant never abandons
us to dry history and anecdote. He's a hobo himself and is coming
along for the ride. He explains how 'the best of us find a measure
of wisdom, enlightenment and self-fulfilment through constant
travel. The worst of us are fleeing from ourselves'. Where he
stands on that spectrum, we're left to guess. (Kirkus UK)
'Who among us has not felt his heart beat a little faster at the sight of a plane soaring into a wide blue sky, or admired the fellow who tears up the gas bills? . . . In this engaging and finely written book, Richard Grant, a restless Englishman and something of an itinerant himself seeks out the wanderers, the rootless, the "legion of drifters, grifters, hoboes and tramps". Grant traces their historical antecedents (the ghosts of the title are the nomadic horsemen of the American West) and ponders what drives a man to spend his life in motion . . . He is a first-class writer . . . I enjoyed this book immensely' Sara Wheeler, Daily Telegraph
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