ABOUT NA BAT BOOKS NABAT BOOKS is a series dedicated to reprinting forgotten mem­ oirs by various misfits, outsiders, and rebels. The underlying concept is based on a few simple propositions: That to be a success under the current definitionis highly toxic - wealth, fame and power are a poison cocktail; that this era of tri­ umphal capitalism glorifies the most dreary human traits like greed and self-interest as good and natural; that the "winners" version of reality and history is deeply lame and soul-rotting stuff Given this, it follows thatthe truly interesting and meaningfullives and real adven­ tures are only to be had on the margins of what Kenneth Rexroth called "the social lie". It's with the dropouts, misfits, dissidents, rene­ gades and revolutionaries, against the grain, between the cracks and amongst the enemies of the state that the good stuffcan be found. Fortunately there is a mighty subterranean river of testimony fromthe disaffected, a large cache of hidden history, of public secrets over­ looked by the drab conventional wisdom that Nabat books aims to tap into. A little something to set against the crushed hopes, mountains of corpses, and commodification of everything. Actually, we think, it's the best thing western civilization has going foritself . BEGGARS OF LIFE A Hobo Autobiography OTHER BOOKS IN THE NABAT SERIES You Can't W'in- Jack Black Sister Of The Road· The Autobiography of Boxcar Bertha - Ben Reitman BAD: The Autobiography ofJames Carr - James Carr Memoirs ofVidocq: Master of Crime - Franc;:ois Eugene Vidocq Beggars of Life - Jim Tully Out of the Night - Jan Val tin BEGGARS OF LIFE A HOBO AUTOBIOGRAPHY JIM TULl..Y INTRODUCTION BY CHARLES WILLEFORD AK PRESS I NABAT EDINBURGH, LONDON, l=lND OAKLAND 2004 This edition copyright© 2004 Nabat/AK Press 1st Nabat Edition First published 1924 by Albert & Charles Boni Holistic Barbarian Reprinted by permission of JET Literary Associates, Inc. Beggars of Life ISBN 1 902593 78 2 AK Press AK Press 674 A 23rd Street PO Box 12766 Oakland CA Edinburgh, Scotland 94612-1163 USA EH8 9YE A catalogue record for this title is available from the Library of Congress Library of Congress Control Number: 2003112985 Series editor: Bruno Ruhland Cover, cover art, book, and series design donated by fran sendbuehler, mouton-noir - montreal If you know of any memoirs by misfits, outsiders, or subversive types that deserve to be back in print, please write to Bruno at AK Press in Oakland. Prisoners can receive this book by sending $10.00 to AK Press at the Oakland address noted above. Printed in Canada To Rupert Hughes A Friend And Charlie Chaplin A Mighty Vagabond TRAVEL The railroad track is miles away, And the day is loud with voices speaking, Yet there isn't a train goes by all day But I hear its whistle shrieking. All night there isn't a train goes by, Though the night is still for sleep and dreaming, But I see its cinders red on the sky, And hear its engine steaming. My heart is warm with the friends I make, And better friends I'll not be knowing, Ye t there isn't a train I wouldn't take, No matter where it's going Edna St. VincentMillay TABLE OF CONTENTS Holistic Barbarian - Charles Willeford I St. Marys 1 II Initiation 5 III Amy, The Beautiful Fat Girl 18 IV Adventure Again 22 v A Tale Of The Philippines 32 VI A River Baptism 37 VII Further Escapade 43 VIII Bill's Story 49 IX A Mix-Up 55 x The Roads Diverge 60 XI A Wo man And A Man 67 XII A Turn In The Road 73 XIII A Long Rest 81 XIV An Election Victory 84 xv The Victory Ball 86 XVI The Road Again 92 XVII A Samaritan's Fate 98 XVIII A Wo rld's Record 101 XIX The Kangaroo Court 105 xx A Wild Ride 110 XXI A Switch Is Thrown 117 XXII Burned Out 120 XXIII The Jungle 125 XXIV Oklahoma Red 132 xxv An Easy Ride 138 XXVI The Man Of Visions 143 XXVII A Wo man Remembered 147 XXVIII Happenings 153 XXIX A Train Passes 157 xxx Steel Trail's End 160 XXXI Wo rds 164 )IM TULLY: HOLISTIC BAR.BAR.IAN CHARLES WILLEFORD JIM TULLY was a short stocky man, without much neck. His arms and shoulders were powerful, and he was physically strong from driving tent stakes, making chains, fighting, and hanging on to the iron ladders of fast intercontinental freights.His kinkyred hair, too thick to be combed, resem­ bled Elsa Lanchester's electrified hair in the movie Bride of Frankenstein. A cheerful, cynical stoic, he believed in nothing - or so he claimed - and in no one other than himsel£ Like Jack London, Jack Black, and Josiah Flynt, Tully was a road kid who found a way to get off the road. He learned how to write. In 1943, Damon Runyon, in a burst of enthusiasm, placed Jim Tully among the top five American writers. H. L. Mencken, who was one of the first of many editors to recognize Jim Tully's ability, published Tully in the closing issue of Smart Set, and fea­ tured many of the vagabond tales during his long editorship of The American Mercury. Mencken wrote, "If Jim Tully were a Russian, read in translation, all the professors would be hymning him. He has all of Gorky's capacity for making vivid the miseries of poor and helpless men, and in addition he has a humor that no Russian could conceivably have." Louis Kronenberger described Tully's writing as "a succession of direct hard blows from the shoulder. The prose has the defiant blare of trumpets; all of it is speed and force and action. It is not art. But it is the creative and compelling journalism of a creative mind." For every booster, Tully had a half-dozen detractors, and many critics despised him for his arrogance. To the general reading public, Tully was a curiosity, a tramp who wrote about a lifestyle they hadn't known about. They bought his books eagerly. Tully's uncommon adjustment to his rapidly changing times, together with his disinterested observation of life, indicate a much finer intelligence than he was ever given credit for during his lifetime. Jim Tully was born near St. Mary's, Ohio, June 3, ca. 1891. As a result of a lingering heart ailment, he died June 22, 1947, in Hollywood. His death I II Int roduct ion made headlines in many metropolitan newspapers, and a fair evaluation of his life and work was printed in the New YorkTimes. Today his name is for­ gotten by contemporary readers, and all of his books are out of print. But the critical neglect of this important American writer is under­ standable. Tully was a paradox. Together with Dashiell Hammett, Tully was one of the founders of the hard-boiled school of writers in the U.S., but his earlier important work has been overshadowed by the personality features he wrote for national magazines during his later years in Hollywood. During twenty-one years as a full-time professional writer, Tully made two fortunes: one as a leader in the field of naturalist - "proletarian" - fiction and non-fic­ tion, and the second by describing the shallow lives of Hollywood movie stars and other celebrities for mass circulation magazines. Although his personality feature articles postdate his superior autobio­ graphical books, he commanded top prices in both writing fields.Tully eval­ uated people as he saw them, not as they saw themselves, and, in America, "new" journalism was a highly original approach to non-fiction.How he felt personally about the people he interviewed frequently made him unfair to his subjects. For example, he downgraded Arnold Bennett when he inter­ viewed him in London, because the novelist had none of Tully's books on his shelves. Tully was both feared and hated as an interviewer, but he was never turned down because it was prestigious to have an article by Tully published in a national magazine. As an Irishman, Tully had little compunction about making a good story better than it already was by exaggerating the facts, but he had very little imagination. One critic called him a "frustrated novelist," a comment the author resented bitterly. But the observation was fair. Tully's mind was too literal for imaginative, inventive fiction. The vivid characterization of the movie director in his novel]arnegan was practically a step-by-step biography of Jim (The Covered \%gon) Cruze. To provide the gauche director with needed touches of sensitivity, Tully snatched tracer elements from the life of his friend, Paul Bern (Irving Thalberg's right-hand man and "artistic con­ science.") Tully's first novel, EmmettLawler, was a barely disguised autobiograph­ ical account of his dreary boyhood in an orphan home, of slave labor on the isolated farm of a maniac, followed by sketchy incidents of his later life as road kid, factory slave, tramp, circus roustabout, and professional fighter.He knew so little about writing at the time, the firstdraft of Emmett Lawlerwas Holistic Barbarian III one 100,000 word paragraph. EmmettLawler, however, adumbrates his later autobiographical books, and its publication in 1922 was the beginning of his writing career. As he matured and developed his spare, blunt style, Tully returned to his vagabond years for the material of his best autobiographical books - Beggars of Life, ShantyIrish, CircusParade, Shadows ofMen, and Blood on the Moon. Altogether, counting Broadway plays and other works he wrote in collabo­ ration with Robert Nichols, Frank Dazey, and Charles Behan, twenty-nine books were published under Tully's name.