Reviews for Transient Ways

The average rating for Transient Ways based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2009-05-21 00:00:00 Dean W. Ballew I don't know how to categorize this little book. Some parts of it seem to be true stories of hopping trains and squatting and being dirty and happy. Other parts of it seem to be fiction, maybe autobiographical fiction. There are also poems in it, but I didn't like those much at all. I'm assuming the parts told in first person are true, or at least mostly true, as true as any of us write about our lives. And I'm assuming that the parts told in third person are fiction, or at least partly fiction. Sometimes fact and fiction get all mixed up during the writing processing. I could have it all wrong. It's really impossible to know. I liked the parts told in the first person. I didn't like the third person parts so much. And as I've already said, I didn't like the poetry much at all. (The copy I have came in a fat zine pack from Cassidy and is falling apart, pages dropping out all over the place.)

Review # 2 was written on 2017-12-09 00:00:00 Jill Rice Picked up this little book for 3 bucks at Alley Cat books in SF, found it hanging on the wall and it caught my eye. Cover has images of people hopping freight trains and the word "Transient" in the title, so I admit it caught my interest from the start. I enjoyed the book, it doesn't go out of its way to impress you, to convince you, it is merely stating a way of life. I can't tell how autobiographical it is, but it works better as a type of memoir rather than fiction. One of the elements I enjoyed most was the lingo. "Wingnut", for example, is a popular one. The language used makes it feel like a true document of someone writing down a few thoughts, moments, rough poetry, on scrambled pieces of paper in between cities.