HOBO: A Young Man's Thoughts on Trains and Tramping in America

After a fight with his father, 19-year-old Zebu Recchia hitchhiked out of Denver, changed his name and didn't turn back. Twenty-three notebooks and a book contract later he rented a room in Las Vegas and wrote a memoir of his six years on the road. Full of Kerouacian philosophizing and Beat lingo, the work chronicles Cotton's first three weeks away from home, beginning with his decision to ride the rails and head to Mexico after meeting "Half Step," a hobo who earned the nickname by falling off a freight train and losing four toes. Along the way Cotton offers tips for aspiring tramps ("If you don't have a blanket you can stuff newspaper in your clothes and it'll act as insulation") and forced descriptions of nature ("The clouds parted and the sun fell like a golden egg out of the sky's mighty asshole"). Sexual encounters read like soft porn. Inspired by the ubiquitous diner waitress, his tamest fantasy involves a woman "[burning] her apron, [quitting] her job, and [lying] across a Sealy Posturepedic like a Mayan goddess." Cotton provides a compact history of the American hobo in his epilogue. "It's what I learned from talking to tramps and from sitting in the Las Vegas public library for three days," he writes; the glossary defines terms like "Bale of straw" ("A blond woman"). Masquerading as a coming-of-age novel/social history, Cotton's adolescent diary is one interminable trip. (June)