Train Whistle Guitar

Train Whistle Guitar is a 1975 novel by American author Albert Murray. A bildungsroman, or novel that focuses on self-development, it follows Scooter who comes of age in 1920s Alabama. The story focuses on no single plot arc, but rather consists of a series of short (though significant) lessons that evoke the unique moral and emotional challenges of childhood. Scooter’s childhood memories take place mainly at his primary school, the barbershop of Papa Gumbo Willie McWorthy, and in various encounters with a musical gunfighter named Luzana Cholly. Murray does not represent Scooter as a single self, but rather as a chorus of voices spread throughout time, each of which has a slightly different set of knowledge and beliefs about the world.

The novel is narrated in the past tense, from a hypothetical present in which one version of Scooter has made it through college, survived fighting in World War II, and lived out a long and happy adult life. The story’s events are only those memories that the boy, now old, can still remember, and are constantly modified in the cross-talk between his younger and older selves. Scooter most vividly recalls his education, which began in the schoolhouse in the Deep South but long outlasted it: eventually, he comes to realize that each day is an exercise in self-education. In the story’s first scene, Scooter introduces a fixture of his childhood: a chinaberry tree that grew in front of the small home where he lived with his parents. The boy formed a fantastical, almost spiritual relationship to the chinaberry tree, which he called his “spyglass tree.” He recalls climbing to the top and looking out at the horizon, in awe of his own smallness and insignificance. His moments gazing at the horizon taught him to appreciate life’s vastness and complexity, motivating him to never stop expanding his understanding of the world.

Scooter’s story spreads outwards from the focal point of the chinaberry tree. He explores the surrounding fields and town, and begins to search for people who can serve as good models for his self-development. Murray portrays Scooter as the hero of an epic adventure, though the narrative facts of his adventure are seemingly ordinary. Each episode presents a challenge, for which Scooter develops a solution, and ends having learned a new lesson. For example, in one episode, Scooter runs away from home, intent on becoming a man. He hops a train that is heading north and quickly realizes he understands too little about the world to call himself an adult. He turns back and returns home having learned a lesson in humility. All of the episodes are tied together by Scooter’s sense of destiny: he follows his gut and welcomes failure, knowing that failure is the only way of obtaining useful knowledge about his identity and world.



Other episodes expose Scooter to uncomfortable but illuminating emotions that gradually contribute to his maturation. For example, upon discovering a corpse in a bog, he learns a lesson about the transcendental connection between his own mortality and the eventual decay of all life. He experiences humanity’s triumphs, such as romantic love, and observes its terrible failures, such as the plague of racism in America. These experiences cumulatively give him a sense of the precarity and interdependence of every human life. The story is punctuated with references to the music of his old friend Luzana Cholly, who taught him jazz. The loose, lilting, emotionally variable character of the jazz genre becomes a metaphor for Scooter’s own strategy of physical and emotional wandering. Train Whistle Guitar extols the virtues of the wandering and open protagonist, celebrating life despite its sorrow and brevity.