Tin Lizard Tales: Reflections from a Train
by Schuyler T. Wallace
List Price:
Our Price: $11.00
You Save: $4.95 (31%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $8.84 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Schuyler T. WallaceEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2007-09-08
ISBN: 1432712543
Number of pages: 348
Publisher: Outskirts Press
Book Reviews of Tin Lizard Tales: Reflections from a Train
Book Review: A Tale of Virtue
Summary: 5 Stars
Tin Lizard Tales: Reflections from a Train
Tin Lizard Tales is a book about a journey. It's not a travelogue, one of those handy pocket guides (a Baedeker) for vacationers, honeymooners or the retired, those seeking travel to wile away their stress and woes, ramp up their libidos or add another bumper sticker to their travelal ("I visited Yosemite" or "I climbed the Eiffel Tower"). No, this book is travel literature, the kind of book that takes you to places that provide theatre for exemplifying moral or aesthetic values. Tin Lizard Tales is more akin to Homer's Odyssey or Dante's Inferno or Bunyan's A Pilgrim's Progress or Swift's Gulliver's Travels than to Pausanias' Description of Greece or Johnson's A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland or Steve's Europe Through the Back Door.
That is not to say that Tin Lizard Tales won't help ease your way if you're intent on riding the rails to the destinations Mr. Wallace describes, places such as Chicago, Buffalo, New York City and Washington, D.C., both big and slope shouldered cities. It is just that its real value lies elsewhere--it's a tale of virtues, a morality tale of the consequences of good and bad behavior. It recounts a visit to that most adventuresome place, the human zoo in situ, and then, after all that gawking there, it recounts the Odyessean joy of safely returning home to those who truly care about you, to your Penelope.
This is an honest book, the kind of book you would expect from a virtuous, plain speaking man. Mr. Wallace is that man, a retired fireman from Bakersfield, California, the sort of man who gives Californian's a good name--a life long, hardworking public servant who loves his wife and family and his country, a man secure enough in what he is and what he believes to dare speak truth to the powers of socio-political sappiness (which seem to oppress us from the seaboard states these days) without off-putting self righteousness but with an ingratiating sense of humor. "Man is his own star; and the soul that can render an honest and a perfect man, commands all light, all influence, all fate."
This is a book about the aesthetics of association, with a slant reminiscent of the ancient Greek reverence for the virtue of hospitality. In this book, you will meet both Polyphemus (the rude and inhospitable) and Nausicaa (the gracious and hospitable). Mr. Wallace sees hospitality and solidarity as twinned and intertwined values: You cannot feel a sense of solidarity with rude, ill-mannered people, those who delight in abrasion or in using others to met their needs, whether those people are poor or rich or somewhere in between. Here, what is inculcated is that virtuous behavior is not matter of social class. It is a matter of family and culture, of micro and macro influences in how people mature. But fair warning: There is no balm in this book either for lip service Leftists ("blighters ... living in luxury and talking about socialism" whose inauthenticity betrays a lack of virtue) or for rapacious free marketeers (greed is not good). Unvirtuous ill-mannered behavior is not excused here on the grounds that it's impelled either by some social disadvantage or by the needs of personal freedom. Behaving in a way that allows humans to associate tolerably does not require an aristocratic pedigree or a pilgrim ancestor; it does not require wealth or membership in any particular class; it does not require athletic prowess; it does not require any particular ethnicity or racial heritage or sexual orientation. It is something learned usually from well mannered parents and peers; it's self control; a desire to restrain the narcissistic impulse. Simply, the play of virtue or its absence is not a prerogative of either the working class or the bourgeoisie; it embraces everyone.
The virtues extolled in Tin Lizard Tales have a stoic cast, the values that would be second nature to a Scot's Presbyterian, the cultural heir to the likes of John Calvin or John Knox. "Joy for humans, said M. Aurelius, lies in human actions: kindness to others, contempt for the senses, the interrogation of appearances, observation of nature and of events in nature." Virtuous are those who are brave, hard working, well mannered, courteous, efficient, family oriented, honest, loyal, clean, frugal, humble, thankful for life's simple pleasures, and able to suffer with quiet dignity. In this book, you will meet those who have the right stuff--for instance, the generous cab driver; Eleanor and George; the Langfields; the Thomas's; Priscilla; and the courageous fireman and policeman of New York City during 9/11.
Unvirtuous are those who are dishonest, envious, greedy, ill-mannered, discourteous, rude, slothful, gluttonous, irresponsible, disloyal, unclean, revengeful, and all those matriculating in the School of Tricksters. Unforgettable are the rude and vulgar characters that emerge from the baseboards during this journey: The "Balkan Bitch;" "Pizza Boy;" the perpetrators of the Chicago Black Sox scandal; the Cab Hustler and the outlaw cab driver--"Jesse James;" the ill-mannered doughboy nitwits; Mr. Bootstraps; and the ill-mannered ragamuffins on the Ferry.
In Tin Lizard Tales, we also receive a dose of the omnipresent, vulgar, ill-mannered celebrities, shilled in the media, such as Rosie O'Donnell--the vulgar victim of ambiguous gender discrimination--and Howard Stern--the vulgar exhibiter of exhibitionists, to whom virtue is pornography--and Donald Trump--the bloated huckster, cousin to Gordon Gekko but with a publicist (said Robert Hughes, "one of America's chief vulgarisms")--all role models for strident rudeness. These buffoons are worthy of their forbears in great literature--for example, those morally wayward travelers in that donkey train parodied in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales--such as the narcissistic Wife of Bath and the hypocritical Pardoner. "I preach for nothing but for greed of gain and use the same old text, as bold as brass, radix malorum est cupiditas... ."
There is a wisp of nostalgia in Tin Lizard Tales, a quiet longing for a vanishing America--that rugged untamed land of the hardworking pioneer, people such as the Tryon's hacking a life from the backwoods of Pennsylvania in the early 1800s. "Virtues are," said Emerson, "in the popular estimate, rather the exception than the rule."
In Tin Lizard Tales, we realize that we are in the midst of a revision of American values. The virtues of striving, and rugged individualism--the ethic of self reliance (laggards are unwelcome) expressed in Emerson's Self Reliance--are waning. Nudged they are, slowly but inexorably, from their pride of place by that juggernaut of collectivist virtues, that ethic of self promotional positioning for government deals and identity privileges, that scheme virtues the purpose of which is to promote accidents of birth: gender or race or sexual orientation--"virtues" that appear now to trump the virtues of acquired skills and sentiments: manners, modesty, courtesy, and personal responsibility.
That is not to suggest that Mr. Wallace is not insensitive to the abuses of the past, the absence of virtue of some of our forbears. Quite the contrary. No one could fail to feel the misery of so many struggling immigrants working, so vividly described in this book, in hellish places such as the Andersonville-like Chicago stock yards in the late 19th century. After reading his chapter entitled "Life Around the Stockyards," who could not decry the base exploitation of the significantly disadvantaged? What manner of man could so callously use his fellow man? The unvirtuous of course.
Tin Lizard Tales also has a vein of American Romanticism, particularly in the chapter entitled "Culture on the Hudson." This is perhaps the thematic core of this interesting book. There we are reacquainted with the likes of Washington Irving, John Burroughs, William Cullen Bryant, the Hudson River School of painters, and James Fenimore Cooper and his famous Natty Bumppo--"the rugged individualist, self-reliant, and morally upright." Tin Lizard Tales reminds us of William Cullen Bryant's, Letters of a Traveler. And reading this chapter stirs images from the likes of Frederic Edwin Church, in his painting Twilight in the Wilderness. Here we appreciate the longstanding American love of nature, to be contrasted with the images of the city as a place of moral corruption, poverty and death. Here we have a romantic journey to the countryside, where "American nature," said Robert Hughes, "was one vast church." We have all prayed in that church. The short description of Mr. Wallace's canoe trip as a young boy with his brother up Soquel Creek in a chapter entitled "Land of the Hudson's Bay Company" stirred the same sense of awe that I had in reading for the first time Twain's description of Lake Tahoe in Roughing It or Hemingway's description of the trout streams in Northern Michigan in The Big Two Hearted River.
This book is worth reading--it has humor, moral instruction, fascinating characters in both beautiful and dangerous places, tossed with some rewarding lessons on anthropology, geography and history. Overall, it brims with personality.
Summary of Tin Lizard Tales: Reflections from a Train
A train trip provides the opportunity to blow off steam.
The author, while on a train trip through the United States and Canada, describes and comments on the people and places he sees. His reflections--sometimes critical, sometimes comical--are eye opening and wide in scope. The reader will enjoy Wallace's swats at thoughtless people, cringe at his depictions of animal cruelty, and laugh out loud at the personal predicaments he and his wife confront. Environmental stupidity, life in big cities, foolishness disguised as zealotry, terrorism, and political hacks are just a few of the topics he kicks around using the insight and common sense one might expect from an opinionated old man who's been around. Surprisingly, he also conveys warmth and unblushing tenderness--a threat to his crusty reputation.
Essays & Travelogues Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Audiobooks on Cassette
- Audiobooks on CD
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- e-Books
- Engineering
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Medicine
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Ultimate Guide to Real and Imaginary Train Travel in Books and on DVD
Murder on the Brighton Express (Detective Inspector Robert Colbeck)by Edward Marston
Allison & Busby; Published: 2008-09-30; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $19.77
Price in other shops:
The Iron Horse (Detective Inspector Robert Colbeck)by Edward Marston
Allison & Busby; Published: 2008-09-30; Paperback; Book
Best price: $12.44
Price in other shops:
The Railway Viaduct (Inspector Robert Colbeck) (The Railway Detective)by Edward Marston
Allison & Busby; Published: 2007-09-18; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.49
Price in other shops:
The Excursion Train (Inspector Robert Colbeck)by Edward Marston
Allison & Busby; Published: 2006-06-26; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.99
Price in other shops:
The Railway Detective (Inspector Robert Colbeck)by Edward Marston
Allison & Busby; Published: 2005-03-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.00
Price in other shops:
Yet There Isn't a Train I Wouldn't Take: Railway Journeys (Railroads Past and Present)by William D. Middleton
Indiana University Press; Published: 2000-03; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $19.65
Price in other shops:
Voice Overby Celine Curiol
Seven Stories Press; Published: 2008-10-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $16.47
Price in other shops:
Two Trains Runningby Lucius Shepard
Golden Gryphon Press; Published: 2004-03-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $13.97
Price in other shops:
Tin Lizard Tales: Reflections from a Trainby Schuyler T. Wallace
Outskirts Press; Published: 2007-09-08; Paperback; Book
Best price: $11.00
Price in other shops:
Strangers on a Train (Two-Disc Special Edition)Warner Brothers; Release date: 2004-09-07; DVD
Best price: $9.95
Price in other shops:
Similar Books and other products
Alison Krauss - A Hundred Miles or More: A CollectionRelease date: 2007-04-03; Music CD
Best price: $8.48
Price in other shops: