Review: The Lunatic Express by Carl Hoffman

Tom Paxton the folk singer wrote a song, "Looking for the Moon" in that song a person is traveling on a train in body but not spirit. The rider's heart is in the mountains while the train plods through along the tracks. "Are you looking for the moon?" Will you chase something that is out of sight? Asks the chorus. This is Carl Hoffman in the Lunatic Express.

Carl Hoffman is a travel writer and contributing editor to Popular Mechanics among other publications. His articles run the gamut from the recent oil rig explosion in the gulf of Mexico to racing the Baja 1000. This is his second book. The first was about searching for lost aircraft of World War II. The Lunatic Express is a revealing account of one-hundred and fifty nine days of travel on the most dangerous buses, boat, trains, taxis, and planes in the world.

The author says the book discovers the world through these dangerous means of transportation; however, it is really a book of self discovery. As the rider in Tom Paxton's song, Carl Hoffman travels alone except for a short period when his teen age daughter Lily joined him for five days on a bus ride in Peru. And as in the song the author is continuing to search himself on each of the dangerous rides he takes.

The reader gets a glimpse of how millions of people travel every day. The masses who cannot afford to fly or pay for private accommodations. I was often reminded of a boat trip I took with my wife on the Pearl River in China. The higher priced tickets afforded more privacy but less view and the highest price ticket sealed you off in a windowless but a private cabin. The author of the Lunatic Express avoids the first class accommodations and he is allowed to see the world.

He is jammed together with the millions of people who are constantly moving from one place to another. Each of the trains, boats, ferries, or planes is described as to why it is considered the most dangerous in the world. However, none of these conveyances break down beyond immediate repair until he is a few miles from home on a Greyhound Bus. He encounters no accidents other than running over the occasional feral dog. He is not robbed, mugged, or beaten. Well there was one time on a train in Russia but he did as much of the beating as he took.

Aside from the dirt, falling cockroaches, foul food and bathrooms, his travels were relatively safe. He proved what we already know. Yes, there are horrific accidents which happen to travelers but most of the time everyone reaches their destination safe and sound. What makes this book interesting is the author's self discovery. After he takes his lonely walks through the streets of Kabul, Afghanistan and then starts the rush to get home both in his travels and writing the reader is left hoping and wondering if Mr. Hoffman got his life together. His loneliness and how he confronts it is the central theme of the book. The reader is confronted again and again with the concept of how we are always the loneliest when we are in a crowd.

Tom Paxton's train is filled with strangers it stops at every station and fills with more. "Are you looking for the moon?" Maybe it takes a trip around the world, crushed among the throngs of humanity on a third class berth to see the moon.

The Lunatic Express, Broadway Books 2010, Carl Hoffman. 280 pages.

"Looking For The Moon" Tom Paxton, Appleseed Recordings 2002.