I Was Looking For A Street

Charles Willeford (1919–1988) remains one of America’s most criminally underappreciated writers. From his essential pulp works, like

and

, to his almost unclassifiably perfect novels like

and

, all of which examine humanity, darkness, lightness, and life with economical and sophisticated observation and black, black humor, to his final works, a series of books featuring a Miami detective named Hoke Moseley (

and

), Willeford transcended the crime genre to which he was relegated by most publishers and critics. But if Willeford only wrote pulp, then so did Dostoyevsky and Hemingway.

What follows is an excerpt from Willeford’s memoir,

, which will be reissued this month by PictureBox and Family. Here, at 13 years old, Willeford is running away from home to live the hobo life during the Great Depression. Need we say more? Read on…

College Humor

The Book of Knowledge

© Betsy Willeford 2010, excerpted from

the 2010 PictureBox/Family edition of