Tully's best known work is BEGGARS OF LIFE (1924), which was
subtitled by the publisher "A Hobo Autobiography." Tully
wrote that this was misleading as it was "a compilation of
dramatic episodes in the life of a youthful vagabond."
He also said he was a "road-kid, and not in the strict sense
if the word, a hobo." As examples of other later famous
road-kids, he mentions the boxers Jack Dempsey, Kid McCoy and
Stanley Ketchell and writers Jack London and Josiah Flynt.
Decades later, Charles Willeford would be another road-kid
who became a writer.
************ I'm not sure if Richard or Jim wrote this. Good
stuff. The hobo influence on the hardboiled genre is an
interesting connection. There's an essay in Madden's TOUGH
GUY WRITERS OF THE THIRTIES which specifically points to
hobos as the origin of the hardboiled P.I., and I've been
wanting to read Orwell's DOWN AND OUT IN PARIS AND LONDON and
London's PEOPLE OF THE ABYSS for a while. Sounds like maybe I
should put Tully's book on my list.
miker
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