The Last Great Road Bum

by Héctor Tobar

In The Last Great Road Bum, Héctor Tobar turns the peripatetic true story of a naive son of Urbana, Illinois, who died fighting with guerrillas in El Salvador into the great American novel for our times.

Joe Sanderson died in pursuit of a life worth writing about. He was, in his words, a "road bum," an adventurer and a storyteller, belonging to no place, people, or set of ideas. He was born into a childhood of middle-class contentment in Urbana, Illinois and died fighting with guerillas in Central America. With these facts, acclaimed novelist and journalist Héctor Tobar set out to write what would become The Last Great Road Bum.

A decade ago, Tobar came into possession of the personal writings of the late Joe Sanderson, which chart Sanderson's freewheeling course across the known world, from Illinois to Jamaica, to Vietnam, to Nigeria, to El Salvador--a life determinedly an adventure, ending in unlikely, anonymous heroism.

The Last Great Road Bum is the great American novel Joe Sanderson never could have written, but did truly live--a fascinating, timely hybrid of fiction and nonfiction that only a master of both like Héctor Tobar could pull off.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Travel, Historical, Adventure, Literary Fiction, Adult Fiction

416 pages, Hardcover

First published August 25, 2020

About the author

Héctor Tobar, now a weekly columnist for the Los Angeles Times, is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and a novelist. He is the author of Translation Nation and The Tattooed Soldier. The son of Guatemalan immigrants, he is a native of the city of Los Angeles, where he lives with his wife and three children.

Reviews

[Geoff · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a really interesting post-modern take on the road novel. This is a fictionalized telling of a man, Illinois-bred Joe Sanderson, who traveled the world to fuel his desire to write fiction. While he was never published, his voice (as interpreted by the author) now shows up in he footnotes of his story to push back against the liberties the author takes to shape his narrative. And in further post-modern goodness, this is a classic road novel (a la Kerouac), but (by showing where the Sanderson traveled) it captures the relative privilege it takes to be able to travel and shows the ultimate emptiness of the traveling impulse (Sanderson never found what he was looking for on the road and never found a story he was able to tell). It also shows his growing sense of injustice and they way he sees how so many people across the globe are exploited and oppressed. But even when Sanderson found a "home" and a "purpose" among the rebels fighting injustice in El Salvador, the author (a American-born child of Salvadorian immigrants) highlights how aimless and wasteful and pointless war is. I also loved including the perspectives of Joe's family who miss him and fear for him and wonder what he is doing with his life. I'm not sure whether what you do defines a life fulfilled or wasted (at this point in my life I'm still not sure what that means other than to love and be kind and learn and teach and try to push the boulder of goodness uphill), but I can say I really enjoyed this straightforward, tangled, intriguing, honest, mendacious novel.

**Thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

[Jorge · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book. The premise sounded so good, but the story goes on and on forever and I lost interest half way through. It needed some good editing to pair it down. Perhaps there are two novels here. One about the road trips, which in themselves were problematic, because they are nothing more than an enumeration of the places the main protagonist visits, with some notable exceptions about Jamaica, Guiana, Vietnam and Biafra. The other story about the civil war in El Salvador. I wish the characters had more depth and were better developed. It was frustrating to read it at times. I almost DNF, but in the end did finish. I cannot recommend this book. Copy courtesy of Macmillan through NetGalley.

[vicki honeyman · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The Last Great Road Bum" is a book of fiction and nonfiction, culled together by Hector Tobar from world-traveler Joe Sanderson's lifetime of writing from the road. 18-year old Joe left his family's comfortable Champaign-Urbana, Illinois home in 1960 to explore the world and write his "great American novel." His travels began in Mexico City where he and his family were visiting after Joe's high school graduation. At the end of the trip, his family went one way, Joe the other, as they left him to venture on his own. Rather than returning to Illinois, Joe found himself following the road northward, then turned eastward, then left the North American continent to spend his next 22 years traveling from one war-torn country to the next. He witnessed the Korean War north of Seoul. He went to Vietnam to observe the war firsthand, which he was able to do by assuming the role of a journalist. By age 26 Joe Sanderson's sympathetic worldview was alive. He traveled to the battleground frontlines of the Republic of the Congo and Lagos, Nigeria. In farmine-stricken Biafra he became a Red Cross volunteer, delivering food and medical supplies, learning how to be a "doctor" to the suffering. His worldwide travels took him to hundreds of cities and communities, but his journey ended in the 1980's near San Salvador, where he became sympathetic to and then a member of the guerrilla rebels during the Salvadoran Civil War. Joe died a hero in that war, fighting alongside the rebels to gain civil and human rights for El Salvador.

Pulitzer Prize awarded Hector Tobar spent years gathering Joe's two decades of journals and family letters home, as well as interviewing the people across the globe who were included in his writing. What Tobar has created is Joe's great American novel taken verbatim and with extrapolation from the stories and thoughts Joe meticulously recorded while traveling and experiencing the world as a road bum.

I appreciated every lovingly and poetically written sentence and paragraph that Hector Tobar applied to recount the story of Joe Sanderson, using Joe's words as well as his own. This is an important book that will not get lost in the maelstrom of the thousands of books published this year. I predict it will be a Big Book, one that will be discussed and pondered over. In his quest for a life worth documenting, it is one man's true accounts of the horrors and the heroes of war, and all that he experienced in-between.

[Samantha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Snagged this galley at the PLA conference. Thank you!

This turned out to be not quite what I expected. I went in thinking there would be more narrative to the “road bum” story, but that part of the story was quickly covered. More an intimate view of the Salvadorian Civil War.

Not written like a “war story”. (Though, to be honest, I have never read a war story, so I only have a made-up version of a war story in my head.) My favorite thing about this book is the romanticism of writing letters and the power of writing, if even for yourself, and how it could come into the hands of someone in the future trying to fill in the banks of history.

This book IS based off a real person, Joesph David Sanderson. Definitely worth the read. I knew nothing about this war & the history of El Salvador and now I intend to learn more.

As always, pick it up for yourself and judge from there.

[Heather Lake · Rating 2 out of 5]

Great concept but it lacked focus and most of the adventures felt meandering without much reflection or purpose. The section of the book where he was a guerrilla fighter especially felt like "joe enters village, witnesses horrible civilian deaths in graphic detail, leaves, enters new village" on repeat about ten times. Loved the idea here but could've been a lot shorter with more of an impact.

[Holly]

DNF. I like Hector Tobar, but the cheeky fourth-wall breaking and then Joe Sanderson's gonzo-ingenue attitude didn't sit right with me. Perhaps I spent too much on the first half of the book before Joe's transformation. Based on reviews by Siddhartha Deb and Paul Theroux (among others), I should come back and read the final section.

[Jeff · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a fictional account of Joe Sanderson’s travels based on his notes, letters, and manuscripts; all of which were going to become the great American novel that Joe always wanted to write. However, it seemed that Joe was a better character in his novel that as the actual author. Hector Tobar allows Joe to contribute observations in the form of footnotes as he is alive and reading his story as well as using actual letters and writings that Joe wrote, such as the letters to his mother that she numbered and kept in order.
I love books about people traveling such as Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, how ever too much of this novel focuses on the wars in the countries that Joe travels too. The last section of the book involves Joe involved in guerilla warfare in El Salvador which is repetitious and drags on far too long making me lose interest about three quarters of the way through the book.

[Chelsea Yang · Rating 5 out of 5]

:') He was annoying...but I didn't hate him. Well written enough to pull that off.

[Tuck · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maps on endpapers, photos interspersed. About a fellow who decides, without really making the decision, to travel the world on a shoe string. Mayhem ensues. Good idea for story, characters seemed flat though author did try to show is their 4d facets.

[Lisa Carter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Héctor Tobar has written a meta sort of story: a written account about and based on the personal journals and manuscripts of Joe Sanderson, a wannabe novelist and world traveler. It's perhaps the most intriguing style I've ever read, combining fiction and non-fiction, and more than one point of view.

What I loved most were Tobar's chapter end notes, written in the voice of the protagonist, commenting on what he got right and wrong in the retelling. These were delightful and provided perhaps more insight into Sanderson than his own journeys.

"What [Sanderson] wanted was a life as interesting as a novel." While Sanderson adventured far and wide, into war zones and places far off the beaten track, this book felt more like a bus tour. Countries, sites and experiences were ticked off one after the other, like a bucket list checklist.

In fairness, that seems true to Sanderson's personality and style. It may have felt a bit superficial and repetitive after a while because of my own personal travel style: seeking deeper stories and insights into fewer places.

Thank you to Farrar, Straus and Giroux for this advance copy.

[Kevin Murray · Rating 4 out of 5]

An over-sized gringo finds himself in the middle of the Salvadoran revolution. What an interesting idea for a book!

Joe Sanderson was a Midwestern kind of guy coming of age in the early 1960s. When the 1960 presidential election came along (can that really be 60 years ago?), he was pledging at a Gainesville frat and wearing a Nixon/Lodge button. But he was not to be a Gator. The wanderlust got him, so he spent the next two decades bumming around the world... Jamaica, Vietnam, Tierra del Fuego, Biafra and the Congo. He only made it back to Urbana to get out his ropes and brushes and paint flagpoles to scrape together enough dough to finance the next excursion.

Not even Héctor Tobar could make this up. It must be a true story.

Sure enough, Sanderson is real, but the book is a novel, not-so-loosely based on the journals our hero left behind. Yes, Sanderson was an addictive scribbler who dreamed of being a novelist. Tobar seems to like to take great true stories and turn them into novels. In this one, not even some of the names are changed to protect the innocent. Who's innocent?

This one is not great literature, but, for me, it was a great story. I did find myself getting a little impatient with the drifter's diary when, about halfway into the book, Sanderson finally makes it to El Salvador.

After seeing suffering and injustice all over the world, Joe was ready to do something about it. He was no ideologue (like so many others who landed in El Salvador at that time), but he was ready. Tobar follows Joe to the National University, to street demonstrations and to neighborhoods like Mejicanos and Cuscatancingo, where young and old tired of dictatorship and decided to do something about it. A cordial conversation with a beautiful young woman could have easily have left him dead in an alley, but he managed to convince her that he was not a blonde-haired spy, and he survived. Others were not so lucky in those times of fully-justified paranoia. One remembers such conversations.

In short order, he is "incorporado." Another gringo at another time in the war might have gotten hooked up with an NGO or fallen in with young, hip journalists living fast around the Camino Real. But not Joe, not in 1980...he had no idea what he was getting into, but he was clear that he wanted to get into it.

Of Central American heritage himself, but LA-grown, it's easy to see how this story took Tobar by the heart and the head and simply would not let him go through its ten years in the making. Perhaps he had things to learn about his own past in the telling.

Tobar manages to open windows on the way violence comes to beget itself as, over time, war seeps into the veins of the warriors. The heroes are elsewhere, despite the justice of the cause. It was not for nothing that they gave this author a Pulitzer. He wizards with the words. He is equally adept at capturing the desperation of parched poverty on the foothills of Chaparrastique, and at making you feel in your own bones the relief of getting back to cool evenings (and no mosquitoes!) in the mountains north of the Torola.

Through it all, Joe continues to write and Tobar can't get enough of it. He insists that Joe's writing was "unreadable," but he reproduces page after page of it in his novel. Maybe the need to pretty up Joe's writing was the reason to make this a novel.

Back in Urbana, Joe's family awaits his return, as they always have. They can't begin to understand their son/brother, but they love him and his comings and goings add meaning to their lives. After all, they live in a country where a broken-down movie actor has taken over the Presidency.

As the war's bloodiest year turns into 1981, Joe is ready to have a beer and a burger with brother Steve in Illinois. Much of what he has seen has inspired him, but he has had it with being the single gringo in a tragedy destined to last another decade (he would never have believed that it could last that long). The drifter must eventually drift, but this time moving on is not just a question of bumming a ride or having the dough for a bus ticket. War can make getting out of Morazán tricky when you are carrying an M-16.

This reader desperately wanted Tobar to flip the script, let Joe paint a couple of more Illini flagpoles and send one more manuscript off to NY. You can do that in a novel, right? But, alas, Joe ended up spending more time near Meanguera than he ever expected. Not all the gringos got to pack up their guayaberas and head back to the land of the free.

[Fatima · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars

I stumbled upon The Last Great Road Bum randomly at a used bookstore and was instantly fascinated by the premise. A gringo who fights and dies in the El Salvador civil war? Definitely unique. After reading it I had the opposite complain to most of the reviews—I was more interested in the second half than the first, but I also admittedly have a deep interest in the Salvadoran civil war and on reading as many first hand accounts of it as I can.

I went back and forth a lot on whether or not I actually liked Joe. To me, he was at best an eager tourist, and at worst, a bored white man looking for entertainment in the strife of third world countries. It was hard to stomach his desperation to experience war first hand, the way he went out of his way to weasel into active war zones when the native people of those lands would have likely done anything to get themselves and their families out. Violence and destruction are already horrible enough without needing voyeurs. Even when he finally commits himself to a cause (which he seeks out as to “not miss another civil war”) and is actually willing to fight alongside the people, he grows bored and wants to abandon it within a year; proving that no matter how many golden-hearted-good-samaritan-kind-american reasons he gives for participating, he doesn’t truly identify with the struggle. And how can he? A man with the privilege to float through the world as he wishes, knowing he can always return to his idyllic american bubble. What does he know of unescapable poverty, oppression, and violence? Nothing.

I understand the desire to want to see the world and its wonders, and when he was merely an awed tourist Joe was his most likable, but aside from that? I felt mostly disdain.

The writing itself was interestingly formatted. For the most part it was flowy and descriptive but there were these frankly odd and jarring moments when Tobar would randomly switch into first person for only a sentence or two. They made no sense and really took you out of the story, especially when you consider that first person narration from Joe was already added through footnotes. I actually liked these footnotes, so it further frustrated me that no one advised Tobar against the random POV-switching.

The Last Great Road Bum is an interesting enough and thought provoking read, but only if you don’t really take it at face value.

[Sean Owen · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The Last Great Road Bum" is a novel based on the life of Joe Sanderson. Sanderson grew up in literal middle America, but rejected a more normal life to travel all over the world and those travels would form the basis of the great novel he would someday write. He made a few attempts at the novel but was rejected by publishers. Ultimately he died fighting with the rebels in the civil war in El Salvador.

Tobar resurrected Sanderson's story from unpublished manuscripts preserved by the rebels after his death, interviews with friends and family, and an archive maintained by his family containing letters and previous attempts at the novel that would never be. A lesser writer would have chosen to write this in the eye-roll-inducing non-fiction style in which the author makes an interesting story all about themself. Tobar keeps the focus on Joe by the use of the novel and even uses the footnotes as a hypothetical set of rebuttals voiced by Joe to the fidelity of the novel to his life.

Through much of the novel Joe's motivations are somewhat out of reach. Joe clearly says his goal is to write a novel and tells everyone he is going to meet that this is the reason for his travel. But it's pretty clear early on that this is a simple way to explain his rootlessness. Writing a novel is a noble cover for someone who can't stay still. The picture that finally emerges especially during his time in the revolution is of a lonely and lost person who constantly moves in search of new scenery because staying still mean being stuck with unchanging scenery in one's own head.

[Bob Schnell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Joe Sanderson of Urbana, IL is the "Last Great Road Bum" in Hector Tobar's somewhat fictional memoir/biography. All events and persons are based on Joe's journals and letters as well as interviews with family and friends. Tobar chooses to call the book a fiction because there was a bit of speculation and uncertainty involved. Once the reader understands this, it is a hell of a tale.

Blessed/cursed with wanderlust, Joe travels the world aimlessly with no visible means of support. He writes letters to his parents and brother and keeps a journal in hopes of one day publishing a book. Joe traveled to countries that would soon be engulfed in war and disaster, so he becomes a sort of chronicler of a better, simpler time. Eventually he takes on the cause of the rebels in El Salvador and joins the resistance. The last third of the book details his life as the "gringo guerilla" and his fate there.

Joe is like the many surf bums and hippies who were always on the move looking for the next wave or spiritual experience, except he was not a surfer or pilgrim. He just couldn't stay in one place for long. I found it to be a fascinating tale, one that could not be repeated today.

[Elyse Porter · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was not what I expected. I was prepared to read a book about a happy-go-lucky American who just traveled around the world during the 1960-70s and lived an interesting life. In reality, the first half of this book was about that while the second half was about Joe's final years, as part of El Salvador's rebel army fighting in the Salvadorian Civil War.

Joe Sanderson was a real person and Héctor Tobar was the author that used all of Joe's writings from his time traveling to write his story (Joe died fighting in the Salvadorian Civil War and as such, he never got to finish his own novel). It was such a unique book but it was also a bit long and meandering, I think because of that disconnect. Overall, this book took me a long time to read but I did enjoy the premise and I learned a lot about the Salvadorian Civil War (which I previously hadn't known about at all). Final thoughts: Joe Sanderson was a very cool dude who didn't really know his place in the world but was enjoying life trying to figure it out.

[Itasca Community Library · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jeff says:
This is a fictional account of Joe Sanderson’s travels based on his notes, letters, and manuscripts, all of which were going to become the great American novel that Joe always wanted to write. However, it seemed that Joe was a better character in his novel than in real life. Hector Tobar allows Joe to contribute observations in the form of footnotes, as he is alive and reading his story, as well as using actual letters and writings that Joe wrote, such as the letters to his mother that she numbered and kept in order. I love books about people traveling such as Jack Kerouac’s On the Road; however, too much of this novel focuses on the wars in the countries that Joe travels too. The last section of the book depicts Joe involved in guerilla warfare in El Salvador, which is repetitious and drags on far too long, making me lose interest about three-quarters of the way through the book.

[Joseph Waugh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stunning travelog of an American dissatisfied with his own culture and in a constant search for something he can't describe. In an "Into The Wild"/ Christopher McCandless-esque fashion, Joe Sanderson takes to the road and travels the world, eventually ending up in El Salvador to fight alongside guerrillas and field workers in the Salvadoran Civil War. Scathing in its rebuke of U.S. carelessness and the results of catastrophic foreign policy.

[Julian Douglass · Rating 3 out of 5]

Starting of 2022 with this book. To be honest, I think I expected more from this book than I got. The plot was fast, but unexciting. The characters never really developed that much, and even the exciting parts of when Joe was in El Salvador kinda fell flat for me. I guess I am rating this book on the fact that my expectations were not met rather than any true issue with the book.

Anyways, happy 2022 everybody.

[Kenny Kwiek · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book had a pretty slow build up which lead to me reading it at a very slow pace. I thought it was very interesting to read a fiction/non-fiction type of book. The style in which Héctor wrote was great, particularly towards the second half. I see a bit of myself in Joe. Not the intense vagabond lifestyle, but I do consider myself a bit of wander. Open to an adventure. Also makes me ask myself why I want to go to certain places.

[MV]

Goodreads Giveaway - never received. (comment for my inventory purposes)

[Andy Stone · Rating 1 out of 5]

One of the most frustrating books I’ve ever read. It started with the most fantastical and amazing true story, but was bogged down by boring storytelling and a constant switching between first, second, and third person narration.

[Patrick A · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like a great meal, this great book is best enjoyed at a moderate pace.

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a life..story...
What a great job of research...to pen...
A life lost...and found...and finally told

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a fascinating story. At first Joe Sanderson’s travels don’t seem that much different from the typical twenty-something backpacker pre-Internet and cell phone. But then Joe becomes sympathetic to anti-imperialist struggles and works as a medic in Biafra and then joins the rebels in early 1980s El Salvador. Hector Tobar writes with great empathy and, unlike the way Americans have been brainwashed against Central America, shows how one Yankee fought for what he believed in, even if it went against the policies of his own government. Tobar writes an unapologetic character in Joe Sanderson, and one who may have been a little old school when it came to gender equality. But more than anything, Joe seemed naive at times and an idealistic dreamer at others. I enjoyed the fast pace during Joe’s many travels around the world. The rebel chapters slowed down a bit, but that was necessary in order to show how war dragged Joe down and how entrenched he became in it. This is a book I’ll remember for a long time.

[ChristopherBell · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a great throwback to the road bums of the world. This has so much to offer, history, culture, societal issues, and a deep hard look at the results of political upheaval in recent history.

[Ken Dowell · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Last Great Road Bum is a novel. It’s also a true story. Joe Sanderson is the road bum. He is a real guy, growing up in Urbana, Ill, in the 1950’s. Sanderson traveled the world keeping a diary, making notes and sending letters home. That collection of writings is the basis for Hector Tobar’s story.

Sanderson got off the train that led from high school to college and instead found himself camped out with Rastafarians in Jamaica, then bartending in a Jamaican brothel. This would be the start of two decades of “bumming” around the world, with an occasional cash infusion from his mom, and with a gravitational pull to hot spots like Vietnam and the Congo.

Sanderson wanted to be a writer. His notes were to be the source material for his book. Based at least on the letters quoted here, he might not have been that good at it, even though he had a story to tell. Did Tobar write Sanderson’s book? I have a hard time envisioning Tovar’s words on Sanderson’s tongue. A road bum waxing poetic?

The first half of the book covers the aforementioned two decades of travel. For the most part it breezes through Sanderson’s exploits with little depth. For example we suddenly find that Sanderson bought a Cessna and flew around the south. Where did he get the money to buy a plane? When did he learn to fly? Did he have a license? Well, we don’t know because the whole episode is covered in a couple sentences.

Before you know it, Sanderson is 38 and is embedded into a group of guerilla fighters in El Salvador. At this point, The Last Great Road Bum is a different book, a more compelling one. Here is all the detail and depth that was missing from Sanderson’s first two decades on the road. Perhaps Sanderson’s notes were more extensive as he spent a good deal of time in safe houses with nothing to do other than write. The result is a unique and interesting look at a revolutionary movement from inside that movement. It’s young, dogmatic, sometimes thoughtful and sometimes immature, both brutal and empathetic.

Whatever issues I had with the way this story is written, it is, without a doubt, one interesting story, adventurous and heartbreaking.

[Mandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really wasn’t sure what to expect when I started this, but within pages I was totally hooked. A true story turned into a compelling novel – the novel the subject of the book couldn’t manage to write himself. Joe Sanderson had a thirst for adventure and left his middle-class comfortable and loving home in Urbana, Illinois, aged 18 to become a self-confessed road-bum. He would explore the world then turn his travels into the Great American Novel. Well, he didn’t manage that, but over 20 years he wrote 1000s of journal pages and many letters home and these later came into the possession of author Hector Tobar, who turned them into this novel, complemented with interviews with Joe’s family and many of the people he met during his peregrinations. Joe’s travels however weren't of the self-indulgent Kerouac type though. He deliberately sought out conflict zones and fully immersed himself in the places and situations he found himself in – from Vietnam to Nigeria to Jamaica to his nemesis in the revolution in El Salvador. He wanted to confront reality and perhaps make a difference. He didn’t want to be just an observer but to be a participant. As we travel with him, we get a potted history of the places he visited, in particular his last adventure in El Salvador. I found the book an absorbing and immersive journey and the mix of fiction and non-fiction expertly handled. A great read.

[MA Lyons · Rating 3 out of 5]

TL;DR: I would recommend the book. I found this book frustrating, and, at times, I struggled to understand what the purpose of all of it was. I think that may be the point, though. It is almost a warning of the flawed ways people seek to find meaning in their lives and completely miss.

Before I jump into my full review, I want to note that Héctor Tobar accomplished a monumental feat in tying together Joe Sanderson's piecemealed life story through his letters and a long-lost journal that Héctor himself recovered in El Salvador. The mere completion of the novel is admirable, and Héctor has done a truly benevolent task in delivering Joe the novel he always wanted to write but couldn't.

Joe's story, as you might expect given the documentation of it, is, for the most part, aimless and often frustrating. I often felt like an older sister who wanted to shake him and tell him to get it together. It wasn't the fun travel story, but instead the story of a true bum trying to find fulfillment through seeking the extreme opposites of his vanilla, safe life in Illinois. As frustrating as it was when he traveled to the DMZ for fun, it was also somewhat of a relief to see his character grow from observer to actor as he developed relationships with the people and places he traveled to.

Lastly, I appreciated reading about the Salvadorian civil war through a new lens. It's not common to get an account from the point of view of a "Gringo," but written by a Central American.

[Susan Emmet · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hector Tobar should be congratulated for yearslong work on this biographical novel. Joe Sanderson's story of a life dedicated to traveling the world is arresting, no doubt. Invention, buttressed by access to his letters, novel attempts, journals and "scribblings," is ambitious. However, the pre-Salvadoran first part read like more of a summary of travel (with notable exceptions) and the second half was a clear indictment of US policy in El Salvador (and other South American countries). Portraits of compadres are fleshed out and "Lucas" (Joe) attains stature as a thinking, active participant/adult rather than a wandering soul asking his parents for financial support when his flagpole painting job money runs low.
Joe's letters to his mother are moving. His inability for most of his life to commit to anything other than travel is sad. His desire to see/experience is admirable, but he skips the light fantastic with little concern for consequence. Plus I was bothered by the footnotes from Joe to the Author. Seemed childish, but I guess Joe remained childish well into adulthood.
He sure wanted to learn, to drink in the world. To be remembered for that yearning is fine. Tobar makes that clear.

[Glen Helfand · Rating 3 out of 5]

The allure of the road in fiction is indisputable. We want to go on adventures, as did the real life protagonist of Héctor Tobar's novel. It is the definition of picaresque as it follows Joe Sanderson who lived his life as a dudely adventure, traveling the world starting in the 1960s and ending up fighting with the people in El Salvador. He viewed himself as a writer, though his books were apparently too unformed to be published. It is an appealing subject, that split between life and writing, and Tobar applies some interesting strategies which blend actual materials and fictitious ones, including footnotes attributed to Sanderson (who clearly did not write them). But none of these quite take hold. This book is as episodic and shifty as its protagonist who wandered and wrote letters home. He remains a cipher, unknowable, his actions repetitive-- going to a far flung, war torn country, insinuating himself into a culture, meeting women ambivalently, running out of money, heading back to the states for some midwestern meals. Repeat. There's a promise of a more meta layer that never happens. It seems the subject got the best of Tobar, who happened upon Sanderson's papers and knew there was something there, but this isn't quite it.