Финн Мерфи не обычный дальнобойщик: он занимается перевозкой пожитков американцев с одного конца страны на другой. Прочие водилы грузовиков, транспортирующих в основном товары и сырье, презрительно зовут таких «клопы», но они находятся вверху шоферской иерархии, и им на это наплевать, ведь это не более чем банальная зависть. Более 40 млн американцев переезжают каждый год, и платят они хорошо.

А еще Финн окончил гуманитарный вуз, что позволяет ему делать оригинальные философские замечания и далеко идущие выводы о США и их обитателях. За несколько десятилетий за рулем собственного (еще одно большое преимущество) грузовика он посетил почти все 20 000 городов страны и обнаружил, что глянцевый образ Америки, сложившийся у мира, ничего общего не имеет с реальностью. Тонны перевезенного скарба лишь укрепили в нем стоика и нестяжателя: подавляющее большинство скопленного вами добра протянет максимум лишь одно поколение после вас. Единственный бенефициар «вещизма» — платный склад индивидуального хранения. Впрочем, помимо рассуждений и дорожных историй нас ждут и встречи с самыми необычными клиентами Мерфи: Америка как она есть!

This is an irate defense of the moving industry I did not need to read. It's like talking to that one guy at every local bar, but there's no other regular around to help me escape. The narrator comes off superior and just unlikable. The stories are moving-oriented and include too much unnecessary detail. I'm also glad there are so few women because the tone when they do appear is... not great. I would have enjoyed either a more narrative tale with more open road, or more insight and thought about the benefits of a physical task.
Still the author seems to love his job, and later on in the second phase there are some interesting moments and observations on race and class, and some just horrifying stories. ( )

Murphy tells a satisfying set of stories from a lifetime on the road with wrtiting that is both simple and elegant. Murphy is a specific type of trrucker--a long haul mover who has several lifetimes of observations of people, landscape, and society to share. His stories about moving are especially poignent and how we become attached to things that are really no different from everyone else. The stories cover the underside of long - haul movers, control-freak shippers (the customers), immigrants and ends with a near mystical move of a widow and her Native American artifacts into the desert of New Mexico. Murphy's personal story is compelling having dropped out of Colby College with one year to go and became estranged from his family, he pursues his desire to drive a truck as a long haul mover. The stories are all different and the reader can almost feel the motion of riding along in the truck with Murphy. Read this book--you'll enjoy it and feel you've seen another side of America.
( )

Recollection, memories, and experiences of a college student who dropped out because he wanted to be a truck driver. He eventually became a mover but his memories encompass his beginnings at a gas station as a teenager. I enjoyed hearing about the culture and life of the truck drivers. Very informative and readable. ( )

This book gave me what I wanted, which was an assortment of stories about driving a large vehicle and details about said trucks, lingo, and the places frequented by drivers. It didn’t surprise with extra details or brilliance, but maybe I was asking too much.
We come into books with different expectations at different times, and it occurs to me that now, when I have little going on otherwise in my life, I can invest too much energy in hoping during the process of buying a book, carrying it home, admiring it for several weeks, and building a pleasant anticipation in the pit of my stomach before actually opening and reading it. In many ways, books are the only companion which I see every day; the stacks and shelves in my apartment are a physical embodiment of what hopes I have for my tangible future. Other hopes and dreams are not corporeal the way anticipated books can be.
The list of hopes for this book was high after reading the Longreads excerpt. A poster for a talk by the author came and went in my local library, another in a string of events which I always aim to attend. It’s a kind of unfulfilled optimism, the tracking of author readings, because they are not always as good as we hope they will be. In fact, I would say readings are uniquely poised to disappoint, because the nature of a reading and the experience of reading are so far removed, and there is much more an author’s voice and personality can take away from later enjoyment of the text than they could contribute with the best reading. And so in a certain way, there is a pleasant sensation that comes with the gentle hope and the gentle disappointment of imagining going to a reading and then not going to the reading—a risk has not been taken, a disappointment avoided.
After reading this book, though, I’m very curious what Finn himself is like. His characterization of himself plays into a myth similar to the “truckers as nomadic cowboys” myth that he speaks several times of wanting to dispel. He dropped out of college to become a mover against the will of his parents, championing his values of hard work and independence above tradition, and worked his way up the ladder of trucking not once, but twice, due to an extended break in his career. His rugged individualism is clearly demonstrated in his pride in being a “bedbugger” rather than another kind of trucker—he is an unseen hero, doing work that is harder and more unrecognized than others in the profession.
But this kind of personality is exactly why one would want to read a book like this. A person who is knowledgeable and proud of an unusual job is one of the best narrators, because their confidence gives them a compelling voice that we can trust.
The clarity of self he achieves, however, is countered by a simplistic sight of other characters. Dialogue reads as if it’s been filtered through one man’s memory time and time again, possessing a uniformity of style between all speakers that makes it read as if scripted. The way he describes other characters is often one-sided, deep in his own personal perceptions of them. Perhaps the burr stuck in my side about this is the affair he has with one of his shippers, Alice. The narrative of that chapter is a traditional sex savior one, where the ghost-like housewife ignored and stifled by her husband and child comes alive when she encounters the romance of the open road (and, not coincidentally, the rugged competence of Finn himself). Perhaps it could be seen as feminist in that she is the one who decides to bear up under her husband’s decisions, and that she is the person who comes to Finn in the dead of night for some action. And maybe the lackluster ending of the whole episode is a reflection of realism more than anything. And perhaps she really did say the words he wrote in the order he wrote them. All of our society is shaped by the entertainment narratives we absorb, and I have a couple friends who really do talk like they’re movie characters, so it’s not impossible that a woman would frame her liberation experience in those terms. The letdown, though, was that the rest of the book feels authentic in a way that Finn’s exchanges with Alice do not.
The final chapter was a fitting end, though, and his characterization of Mrs. McMahon is the best in the entire book. The hero-style narration fits perfectly with this indomitable woman, and provides her with dignity. The chapter is rewarding, honest, and a little mystical: all of the virtues of Murphy’s writing coming together. ( )