I declared March to be Biography Month and have finished my first one: Ramblin’ Man: The Life and Times of Woody Guthrie by Ed Cray. It was first rate and here’s my review which I’ve also posted at LibraryThing:
I didn’t know much about Woody Guthrie except the myth and a few bits and pieces that came out in Arlo’s movie Alice’s Restaurant. The story behind the myth is much more intriguing and downright tragic. Guthrie was the outrageous spirit who shocked the world into thinking about things they would rather ignore and who lived out his beliefs each day of his life. He ignored the niceties and lived close to the bone, hurting in some way almost everyone with whom he came into contact, including his three wives. At least twice in the book, Guthrie friends comment that people with great talent aren’t necessarily great people.
One particularly intriguing point is made close to the end of the book. While Guthrie’s family suffered hard times in the depression, his siblings went on to lead fairly prosperous middle class lives. Guthrie chose poverty, his restless nature making a settled life impossible.
Even after finishing the book, I’m not sure I know the real Guthrie. He was depicted as a slovenly, ill mannered man, unable to be monogamous, seemingly determined to annoy even those who loved him almost unconditionally. Something of a let down for me, I suppose, raised as I was on the myth, and yet there is another side to the story, a sense of something almost mystical about Woody who lived by his own lights and his own thoughts even while trying to find his way in the world. He was living what others were talking about, using his gifts to bring attention to injustice.
And, what a life he led! Part of the generation of writers and thinkers whose Communist sympathies were popular during the New Deal but came up against the McCarthy era red hunts. He seemed to be all over the country and then back again, riding the trains, making detours, writing and writing and writing. The words seemed to flow from him, the constant no matter where he was, from the woods of Topanga Canyon to the swamps of Beluthahatchee, he wrote…songs, poems, articles, memories, fiction, borrowing typewriter time from friends until he could afford his own. It was the words that kept him going, the words that told the story of not just Guthrie but of America.
What to Read Next…
About 3/4 of the way through the biography, I downloaded Bound for Glory on my Kindle and started the first few pages. Now, I’m torn: Bound for Glory is semi-autobiographical so it would sort of count towards my biographical goal. But I posted a picture of the month’s reading…I had a plan. Aldo Leopold is next on the pile and then I’ll probably want to take a detour and read A Sand County Almanac. What to do?
The suspense builds…
