The Road - 9780813538068

The RoadAuthor(s): Jack London, Todd DePastino\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: Rutgers University Press, United States\nImprint: Rutgers University Press\nISBN-13: 9780813538068, 978-0813538068\nSynopsis\nIn 1894, an eighteen-year-old Jack London quit his job shoveling coal, hopped a freight train, and left California on the first leg of a ten thousand-mile odyssey. His adventure was an exaggerated version of the unemployed migrations made by millions of boys, men, and a few women during the original \""great depression of the 1890s. By taking to the road, young wayfarers like London forged a vast hobo subculture that was both a product of the new urban industrial order and a challenge to it. As London's experience suggests, this hobo world was born of equal parts desperation and fascination. \""I went on 'The Road,'\"" he writes, \""because I couldn't keep away from it . . . Because I was so made that I couldn't work all my life on 'one same shift'; because-well, just because it was easie.