ghost riders travels with american nomads

Even when the stories and lives around him are unwelcoming, unfamiliar and completely uncomfortable. Despite the more buttoned up world he seems to represent as the narrator, he’s surprisingly comfortable and familiar. Maybe this is the world that shaped Grant? Maybe. Some of these nomads are true Escapologists: people who’ve abandoned affluent lives at various points and for various reasons. Sure some of the American Nomads he confronts are from more privileged circumstances (Exeter, Princeton, Wall Street). Searching for the answers leads Grant into sometimes beautiful, sometimes challenging encounters, but he never seems to flinch from the motly cast of characters.

Why was the type so prevalent in America…?.Was it a natural human impulse, recognized and obeyed, or was it a disease of the soul?.What drove a man to spend his life in motion?.In the prologue he asks questions that shape the film. The hodgepodge of wandering souls he interviews may not accurately represent the overall nomadic population in the southwestern United States, but they mirror his own curiosity and the trajectory of his film seems to chronicle his personal quest to understand what is happening in his own brain and body. Grant’s unabashedly working through his own wanderlust, his own struggle with settling down and living a “normal life”. That’s an appropriate way to describe the documentary as well.

Several reviewers have referred to the book as a meditation. Richard Grant took up the wandering impulse in his 2003 Grove Press book American Nomads: Travels with Lost Conquistadors, Mountain Men, Cowboys, Indians, Hoboes, Truckers, and Bullriders (which was published in the UK by Little Brown under the name Ghost Riders: Travels with American Nomads.) ( American Nomads: Travels with Lost Conquistadors, Mountain Men, Cowboys, Indians, Hoboes, Truckers, and Bullriders (by Richard Grant) Why have they chosen to live a wandering life, and what do they gain and sacrafic? Characters include rodeo cowboys, a traveling preacher, punk kids riding freight trains, a Wall Street drop-out, a wild man of the mountain backcountry, and retirees in motorhome. The film takes the form of a 6,000 mile journey around the American Southwest in search of modern-day American nomads.

Have ninety minutes to spare? Questioning your commitment to the Norman Rockwell ideal? Feeling the pull of the road? You just might appreciate American Nomads, a documentary about modern day vagabonds wandering the Southwest that was broadcast byBBC4 on November 16, 2011 .Įight years in the making, American Nomads is a ninety minute documentary film written and hosted by Richard Grant, and inspired by his book American Nomads (Ghost Riders UK).

Ghost riders travels with american nomads