Graffiti On Low or No Dollars

by Elberto Muller

Paperback

Published August 1, 2023

Reviews

[Jacob Crofford · Rating 5 out of 5]

This really feels like it single-handedly reignited my passion for reading. Elements of Hunter S. Thompson, Kerouac, Bukowski, gore Vidal. Incredible imagery and surrealist blurred lines between reality, daydream, and heroine-induced hallucination.

It’s all over the place, every chapter is literally a new state, but the worldview is consistent on every page. If you don’t know anything about the vast, obscured-from-the-light subcultures of freight train hopping and graffiti, this could definitely pique your interest in them. If you are familiar with them at all, this book will be a treat.

Both subcultures, and muller’s outlook, are the quintessential American ideology. We are all letting out a blood-curdling scream deep down inside, each transmitted to us at our own personal volume. For those of us who perceive it as a scream, it’s muted through drugs and the tremendous shutters and creaks of a freight train. For many of us, it’s a high-pitched whine that’s undetectable 99% of the time, kept at bay by dumbbells and espresso martinis and studio laughter. For those of us in the middle, we throw paint at the wall, throw our body against the ground, throw ourselves into misguided love, not caring where we go as long as that voice stops shouting.

That’s all the waxing poetic i can do because I realize that what I’m trying to say is conveyed a lot better in this book, one of many pieces of art that could only ever come from our third-rate war machine fascist shopping mall of a country. It’s a hard book to find but totally worth the read.

[Ang Gonzalez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awesome and amazing. Thoroughly relished reading this North American travelogue of a train hopper. Stunningly original language, hallucinatory, grimy, all set in a subterranean dystopian world populated by spectral figures, junkies and freaks. Minneapolis represent.

[Mark G · Rating 3 out of 5]

Half the pages fell out of the book before I could finish.

[Γιώργος · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the hands of the wrong writer, or maybe the wrong human being in general, the subject matter of Graffiti On Low Or No Dollars could be tedious, but here it's not. Elberto Muller methodically bums his way through half-real, half-imagined backwaters of America, and even if a town is nothing more than an old dishrag, he stops and tries to wring a couple drops of genuine humanity out of it. Stylistically there are plenty of detours and departures, occasionally zooming out feverishly into something more literary, for lack of a better word. A very human book, not like a lot of the overly-constructed crap out there. A book that actually depicts humanity. Sometimes you spend your whole life trying to look within yourself only to realize that there's nothing there and you were trying to crack an empty safe. For a long time America has been doing the same thing. And sometimes that's not a bad thing, either. This is all you have, just try to enjoy the ride.

[oleksii 665 · Rating 5 out of 5]

I finished this book in Bulgaria, lying on a sun lounger by the pool in a villa on the side of a mountain, where besides the villa there is an abandoned house, a car graveyard, and an animal shelter made of garbage and rusty sheets of metal, in the middle of nowhere, tomorrow I have to go back to Berlin where nothing awaits me

[Niko Hinz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kinda all over the place but that ought to be expected I guess. Short chapters were such entertaining ways to work though insanely obscure parts of the country

[Aaron Mcilhenny · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dazzling. Magnificent. Copies of this book should be distributed to every American schoolchild.

[Ashley Thai · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finally. A good book.

[Griffin Duckworth · Rating 5 out of 5]

I treat this book like my bible. Perfect to open up and read a passage when I'm feeling lost.

[Bad Cat Behaviour · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this blend of culture, art, surrealism, and stark reality. I was exhausted near the end, with never having a true home to return to, but that is the lifestyle.