n ne peut qu'être touché par ce récit d'une sincérité désarmante... et touchante. Laissez-vous emporter!7. Road-Kids and Gay-Cats. «Every once in a while, in newspapers, magazines, and biographical dictionaries, I run upon sketches of my life, wherein, delicately phrased, I learn that it was in order to study sociology that I became a tramp. This is very nice and thoughtful of the biographers, but it is inaccurate. I became a tramp — well, because of the life that was in me, of the wanderlust in my blood that would not let me rest. Sociology was merely incidental; it came afterward, in the same manner that a wet skin follows a ducking. I went on "The Road" because I couldn't keep away from it; because I hadn't the price of the railroad fare in my jeans; because I was so made that I couldn't work all my life on "one same shift"; because — well, just because it was easier to than not to. […] On the sand-bar above the railroad bridge we fell in with a bunch of boys likewise in swimming. Between swims we lay on the bank and talked. They talked differently from the fellows I had been used to herding with. It was a new vernacular. They were road-kids, and with every word they uttered the lure of The Road laid hold of me more imperiously. […] "Talkin' of 'poke- outs,' wait till you hit the French country out of Montreal — not a word of English — you say, 'Mongee, Madame, mongee, no spika da French,' an' rub your stomach an' look hungry, an' she gives you a slice of sow-belly an' a chunk of dry 'punk."' And I continued to lie in the sand and listen. […]Road-kids are nice little chaps — when you get them alone and they are telling you "how it happened"; but take my word for it, watch out for them when they run in pack. Then they are wolves, and like wolves they are capable of dragging down the strongest man. […] "Gay-cats" also come to grief at the hands of the road-kids. In more familiar parlance, gay-cats are short-horns, chechaquos, new chums, or tenderfeet. A gay-cat is a newcomer on The Road who is man-grown, or, at least, youth-grown. A boy on The Road, on the other hand, no matter how green he is, is never a gay-cat; he is a road-kid or a "punk," and if he travels with a " profesh, " he is known possessively as a "prushun." I was never a prushun, for I did not take kindly to possession. I was first a road-kid and then a profesh. Because I started in young, I practically skipped my gay-cat apprenticeship. […] The Road had gripped me and would not let me go; and later, when I had voyaged to sea and done one thing and another, I returned to The Road to make longer flights, to be a "comet" and a profesh, and to plump into the bath of sociology that wet me to the skin.» Because... Jack London s'explique sans détour. Que les aimables thuriféraires rangent leur encensoir! Que les cornes poussent aux redresseurs de tort, de tout acabit. Bref, qu'on se le tienne pour dit... et une fois pour toutes! 
8. Two Thousand Stiffs. «A "stiff" is a tramp. It was once my fortune to travel a few weeks with a "push" that numbered two thousand. This was known as "Kelly's Army." Across the wild and woolly West, clear from California, General Kelly and his heroes had captured trains; but they fell down when they crossed the Missouri and went up against the effete East. The East hadn't the slightest intention of giving free transportation to two thousand hoboes. Kelly's Army lay helplessly for some time at Council Bluffs. The day I joined it, made desperate by delay, it marched out to capture a train. […] Being the latest recruit, I was in the last company, of the last regiment, of the Second Division, and, furthermore, in the last rank of the rear-guard. […] I kept a diary on part of the trip, and as I read it over now I note one persistently recurring phrase, namely, "Living fine." We did live fine. We even disdained to use coffee boiled in water. We made our coffee out of milk, calling the wonderful beverage, if I remember rightly, "pale Vienna." […] Somebody told me that Quincy was the richest town of its size in the United States. When I heard this, I was immediately overcome by an irresistible impulse to throw my feet. No "blowed-in-the-glass profesh" could possibly pass up such a promising burg. I crossed the river to Quincy in a small dug- out; but I came back in a large riverboat, down to the gunwales with the results of my thrown feet. […]I told a thousand "stories" to the good people of Quincy, and every story was "good"; but since I have come to write for the magazines I have often regretted the wealth of story, the fecundity of fiction, I lavished that day in Quincy, Illinois. […] As a sample of life on The Road, I make the following quotation from my diary of the several days following my desertion. […]"Tuesday, May 29th. Arrived in Chicago at 7 A.M. . . . " […]» Jack London quitte l'armée en désertant, et mettra fin à sa vie de vagabondage. Rappelons qu'il nous décrit des faites authentiques reliés à l'histoire socio-éc
onomique états-unienne, au moment de la dépression économique des années 1980.
9. Bulls. «If the tramp were suddenly to pass away from the United States, widespread misery for many families would follow. The tramp enables thousands of men to earn honest livings, educate their children, and bring them up God-fearing and industrious. I know. At one time my father was a constable and hunted tramps for a living. The community paid him so much per head for all the tramps he could catch, and also, I believe, he got mileage fees. […] But it's all in the game. The hobo defies society, and society's watch-dogs make a living out of him. It rarely pays to stop and enter into explanations with bulls when they look "horstile." A swift get-away is the thing to do. It took me some time to learn this; but the finishing touch was put upon me by a bull in New York City. […] Now I didn't know anything about the coming of the police; and when I saw the sudden eruption of brass-buttoned, helmeted bulls, each of them reaching with both hands, all the forces and stability of my being were overthrown. Remained only the automatic process to run. And I ran. I didn't know I was running. I didn't know anything. It was, as I have said, automatic. There was no reason for me to run. I was not a hobo. I was a citizen of that community. It was my home town. I was guilty of no wrong-doing. I was a college man. I had even got my name in, the papers, and I wore good clothes that had never been slept in. And yet I ran — blindly, madly, like a startled deer, for over a block. And when I came to myself, I noted that I was still running. It required a positive effort of will to stop those legs of mine.» Dans ce dernier article, on est tenu en haleine par le récit d'aventures, plus périlleuses les une que les autres. Il en réchappera... par chance. Le vagabond, ce «mangeur de durs», vivant à la dure, tirera des leçons de sa courte vie de hobo. Il en gardera une soif inassouvie de liberté, et un penchant marqué pour la justice sociale.
Jack London, le «Pionnier de la route» ouvre avec The Road le chemin à un autre style de vagabondage, celui de Jack Kerouac.
8. Two Thousand Stiffs. «A "stiff" is a tramp. It was once my fortune to travel a few weeks with a "push" that numbered two thousand. This was known as "Kelly's Army." Across the wild and woolly West, clear from California, General Kelly and his heroes had captured trains; but they fell down when they crossed the Missouri and went up against the effete East. The East hadn't the slightest intention of giving free transportation to two thousand hoboes. Kelly's Army lay helplessly for some time at Council Bluffs. The day I joined it, made desperate by delay, it marched out to capture a train. […] Being the latest recruit, I was in the last company, of the last regiment, of the Second Division, and, furthermore, in the last rank of the rear-guard. […] I kept a diary on part of the trip, and as I read it over now I note one persistently recurring phrase, namely, "Living fine." We did live fine. We even disdained to use coffee boiled in water. We made our coffee out of milk, calling the wonderful beverage, if I remember rightly, "pale Vienna." […] Somebody told me that Quincy was the richest town of its size in the United States. When I heard this, I was immediately overcome by an irresistible impulse to throw my feet. No "blowed-in-the-glass profesh" could possibly pass up such a promising burg. I crossed the river to Quincy in a small dug- out; but I came back in a large riverboat, down to the gunwales with the results of my thrown feet. […]I told a thousand "stories" to the good people of Quincy, and every story was "good"; but since I have come to write for the magazines I have often regretted the wealth of story, the fecundity of fiction, I lavished that day in Quincy, Illinois. […] As a sample of life on The Road, I make the following quotation from my diary of the several days following my desertion. […]"Tuesday, May 29th. Arrived in Chicago at 7 A.M. . . . " […]» Jack London quitte l'armée en désertant, et mettra fin à sa vie de vagabondage. Rappelons qu'il nous décrit des faites authentiques reliés à l'histoire socio-éc
onomique états-unienne, au moment de la dépression économique des années 1980.9. Bulls. «If the tramp were suddenly to pass away from the United States, widespread misery for many families would follow. The tramp enables thousands of men to earn honest livings, educate their children, and bring them up God-fearing and industrious. I know. At one time my father was a constable and hunted tramps for a living. The community paid him so much per head for all the tramps he could catch, and also, I believe, he got mileage fees. […] But it's all in the game. The hobo defies society, and society's watch-dogs make a living out of him. It rarely pays to stop and enter into explanations with bulls when they look "horstile." A swift get-away is the thing to do. It took me some time to learn this; but the finishing touch was put upon me by a bull in New York City. […] Now I didn't know anything about the coming of the police; and when I saw the sudden eruption of brass-buttoned, helmeted bulls, each of them reaching with both hands, all the forces and stability of my being were overthrown. Remained only the automatic process to run. And I ran. I didn't know I was running. I didn't know anything. It was, as I have said, automatic. There was no reason for me to run. I was not a hobo. I was a citizen of that community. It was my home town. I was guilty of no wrong-doing. I was a college man. I had even got my name in, the papers, and I wore good clothes that had never been slept in. And yet I ran — blindly, madly, like a startled deer, for over a block. And when I came to myself, I noted that I was still running. It required a positive effort of will to stop those legs of mine.» Dans ce dernier article, on est tenu en haleine par le récit d'aventures, plus périlleuses les une que les autres. Il en réchappera... par chance. Le vagabond, ce «mangeur de durs», vivant à la dure, tirera des leçons de sa courte vie de hobo. Il en gardera une soif inassouvie de liberté, et un penchant marqué pour la justice sociale.
Jack London, le «Pionnier de la route» ouvre avec The Road le chemin à un autre style de vagabondage, celui de Jack Kerouac.
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Visitez le site français sur Jack London. Complet et intéressant.
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