Bound For Glory
by Woodie Guthrie
Here's a question for you: at what point does the transcription of dialog become so difficult to read that you almost give up? And another: is it necessary? And another: is it even possible to read three hundred pages of it without going mad?
It's easy to read something like this: "I wuz born travelin'." You don't have to do a double-take, like I did on a lot of phrases, but did it add anything to the narrative?
When he's transcribing a black person's speech, maybe it's even necessary: "Some weeks it's buttah. Some weeks eggs. An' now you speaks out something' 'bout milk. Lawd God, little rattlesnakes! C'mon, I'll he'p you."
But other times, I don't get it, "I'm driver 'n d'lilvery boy." Why wasn't it, "drivah" instead of "driver"? I've struggled with it myself, and I think the answer is clear--add in just enough colloquialisms to give the mood, but not so many as to overwhelm the reader.
Anyway, I'll shut up now. It was really good all the same--a unique voice from a unique time of history telling his life story like he remembered it. His family and their tragic split; playing war with slingshots and rocks; living in an Oklahoma oil boomtown and returning to find it busted; escaping the dust; freight trains to Cal-i-for-ni-ay where fruit spoils on the ground but you're not allowed to pick any of it. At end he started putting in snippets of songs--I wish he'd done that throughout. But I guess that didn't make sense when he wasn't a singer--for the first twenty or so years of his life he was a sign painter and a bum.
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