Bound for Glory: The Hard-Driving, Truth-Telling, Autobiography of America's Great Poet-Folk Singer - Softcover

Guthrie, Woody

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0452264456 ISBN 13: 9780452264458

Publisher: Plume, 1983

Synopsis

First published in 1943, this autobiography is also a superb portrait of America's Depression years, by the folk singer, activist, and man who saw it all.

Woody Guthrie was born in Oklahoma and traveled this whole country over—not by jet or motorcycle, but by boxcar, thumb, and foot. During the journey of discovery that was his life, he composed and sang words and music that have become a national heritage. His songs, however, are but part of his legacy. Behind him Woody Guthrie left a remarkable autobiography that vividly brings to life both his vibrant personality and a vision of America we cannot afford to let die.
 
“Even readers who never heard Woody or his songs will understand the current esteem in which he’s held after reading just a few pages... Always shockingly immediate and real, as if Woody were telling it out loud... A book to make novelists and sociologists jealous.”
—The Nation

About this title

Review:

The original road novel--even though it takes the form of autobiography. If Guthrie didn't actually invent the footloose, no- strings-attached American hero (remember this guy Twain who wrote something about lighting out for the territory?), he certainly solidified the 20th-century version. Guitar slung over the shoulder as he sprinted to boost himself aboard freight trains, a man of the people equally at home with urban intellectuals, Guthrie incarnated for generations of Americans the artist as free spirit. This is the book that created the legend.

About the Author:

WOODY GUTHRIE (1912-1967) was a legendary American folk singer-songwriter. His songs told the stories of the American people: their land, their labors, their trials and their joys. While many of his songs were born of his experience in the Dust Bowl during the Great Depression, "Honeyky Hanukah" was part of a little-known series of songs he wrote celebrating Jewish culture, inspired by his mother in law, Aliza Greenblatt, a well-known Yiddish poet who lived across the street from him during his years in Coney Island, New York.

About this edition

• Publisher: Plume
• Publication date: 1983
• ISBN 10: 0452264456
• ISBN 13: 9780452264458
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320