Mostly Reviews
Dec. 5th, 2009 02:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bluegargantuaHi,
In quick succession, I have also finished reading Mostly True by Bill Daniel. Mostly True is done in this faux magazine style and is dedicated to hobo graffiti.
It's...well, you've got to have an interest in hobos or graffiti or railroads or all of it to enjoy it.
Since I do, this was a fun read for me. It's loaded with photos and interviews and art. Most of it is drawn from the author's documentary film about hobo graffiti called Who is Bozo Texino? the Secret History of Hobo Graffiti. Bozo figures prominently in Mostly True as well and shows an interesting evolution. The original Texino (a rough sketch of a man wearing a large cowboy hat with a star on it and smoking a long-stemmed pipe) was originally done up by a railroad worker named J. H. McKinley. After marking boxcars with his trademark signature for many years, another young man was inspired and took up the marking, eventually altering it to a slimmed down form that could be drawn faster. According to the records he kept, this new artist (referred to only as "Grandpa" in the book) has put his version of the Bozo mark on both sides of some 350,000 cars.
The book also contains interviews with the artist of "Herbie" (a man in a sombrero sleeping beneath a tall tree) and the "Colossus of Roads" (another pipe smoking cowboy). Along with a smattering of other interviews and pieces. There's no coherent narrative thread, but it's more something to browse through. Again, of interest only if the subject matter really fires you up, but well worth it if you are.
later
Tom
In quick succession, I have also finished reading Mostly True by Bill Daniel. Mostly True is done in this faux magazine style and is dedicated to hobo graffiti.
It's...well, you've got to have an interest in hobos or graffiti or railroads or all of it to enjoy it.
Since I do, this was a fun read for me. It's loaded with photos and interviews and art. Most of it is drawn from the author's documentary film about hobo graffiti called Who is Bozo Texino? the Secret History of Hobo Graffiti. Bozo figures prominently in Mostly True as well and shows an interesting evolution. The original Texino (a rough sketch of a man wearing a large cowboy hat with a star on it and smoking a long-stemmed pipe) was originally done up by a railroad worker named J. H. McKinley. After marking boxcars with his trademark signature for many years, another young man was inspired and took up the marking, eventually altering it to a slimmed down form that could be drawn faster. According to the records he kept, this new artist (referred to only as "Grandpa" in the book) has put his version of the Bozo mark on both sides of some 350,000 cars.
The book also contains interviews with the artist of "Herbie" (a man in a sombrero sleeping beneath a tall tree) and the "Colossus of Roads" (another pipe smoking cowboy). Along with a smattering of other interviews and pieces. There's no coherent narrative thread, but it's more something to browse through. Again, of interest only if the subject matter really fires you up, but well worth it if you are.
later
Tom
