Book contents
- Vagabonds, Tramps, and Hobos
- Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture
- Vagabonds, Tramps, and Hobos
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Part I Context
- Part II The Vagabond and the Tramp
- Part III The Hobo Transformed
- 5 Between Hobohemia and Academia: Nels Anderson’s Double Voice
- 6 ‘The Laureate of the Logging Camps’: Language, Food and Revolution in the Work of T-Bone Slim
- 7 ‘I’m a Hobo Myself Sometimes’: African-American Transiency in Black Vernacular Music
- Conclusion: The End of the Road? Transiency beyond the Hobo
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- Recent books in this series (continued from page ii)
6 - ‘The Laureate of the Logging Camps’: Language, Food and Revolution in the Work of T-Bone Slim
from Part III - The Hobo Transformed
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 July 2023
- Vagabonds, Tramps, and Hobos
- Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture
- Vagabonds, Tramps, and Hobos
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Part I Context
- Part II The Vagabond and the Tramp
- Part III The Hobo Transformed
- 5 Between Hobohemia and Academia: Nels Anderson’s Double Voice
- 6 ‘The Laureate of the Logging Camps’: Language, Food and Revolution in the Work of T-Bone Slim
- 7 ‘I’m a Hobo Myself Sometimes’: African-American Transiency in Black Vernacular Music
- Conclusion: The End of the Road? Transiency beyond the Hobo
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- Recent books in this series (continued from page ii)
Summary
Chapter Six focuses on T-Bone Slim (real name Matti Valentinepoika Huhta), a second-generation Finnish-American hobo who became the IWW’s most popular and influential writer. In hisnewspaper columns and songs, Slim represented the hobo not only as a worker, as Anderson had, but also as the revolutionary vanguard of a post-capitalist society. He parodies mainstream and conservative ideas about work, hobos, and the working class more generally. He challenges the common stereotype of hobos and tramps as being unintelligent through wit and verbal dexterity that assumes intelligence in his transient audience. He uses puns, neologisms and dynamic wordplay to involve his readers in the process of making meaning. In doing so, he creates a mode of literary genius that is communal rather than individualistic, and which in turn allows him to challenge mainstream understandings of literary success. The chapter shows how Slim brings his body and the bodies of his working-class readers into his writing by representing hunger as a defining class experience.
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- Vagabonds, Tramps, and HobosThe Literature and Culture of U.S. Transiency 1890–1940, pp. 167 - 199Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023