Vagabondage: A Timeless Reaction to the Malignancy of Western Civilization [Hardback]

Vagabondage: A Timeless Reaction to the Malignancy of Western Civilization

by Ian Cutler

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Anyone who wants to understand the vagabond as a core archetype of humanity can hardly do better than become a fellow traveller on Ian Cutler’s magnificent journey across several millennia of tramping. This book will change your idea of what civilization and especially Western civilization means; it may also change your idea of what it means to be human.

Yiannis Gabriel
Emeritus Professor
Bath University, UK

Ian Cutler expertly and impressively covers a staggering amount of literary and philosophical territory in “Vagabondage: A Timeless Reaction to the Malignancy of Western Civilization.” He deftly explores a wide range of aspects of this challenging and complex subject, insightfully probing the mighty depths beneath this fascinating territory. Along the way, he puts you in such celebrated company as Robert Louis Stevenson, Jack London, Virginia Woolf, Charles Dickens and Jack Kerouac, as well as some rovers and writers whose words are lesser known but no less valuable. Throughout this odyssey, Cutler remains our able guide, pointing out the common themes that have shaped and defined vagabond literature.

Mark Dawidziak
Kent State University

Ian Cutler is the greatest living authority on the now almost extinct tramp writer. In this beautifully written and scholarly analysis of the philosophy of male and female literary vagabondage he traces the genre’s roots back to the Cynics.
Reading it made me want to pack my rucksack and escape from the noisy buzzing of the human zoo and tramp the rolling road leaving my cares and obligations behind me.

Dr. Andrew Lees
Honorary Professor of Clinical and Movement Neurosciences
University College London

This book concerns why the writers featured sought to exile themselves from mainstream society, not least by embracing the ‘natural’ world and an ascetic lifestyle. With the help of generous references from the 30-plus vagabond writers featured (plus many more contributions from secondary texts—102 referenced in the biblio), Cutler has identified what he regards as the key features of the temperament and philosophy of those who rejected mannered, conventional society for a vagabond life.
Each chapter addresses a different aspect of vagabondage under such themes as: wanderlust; the compulsion not to live a settled existence; asceticism; affinity with nature; the desire to retain the innocence (and mischief) of childhood; aloofness yet compassion for the rest of human-kind; and the rejection of formal education for knowledge experienced via their own senses.
Refusing to be compromised by the grand narratives of religion, politics, law, nationalism, and convention, and regarding themselves as ‘citizens of the universe’ rather than slaves of what they regarded as geographical and political states artificially created by humans.
Cutler attempts to rescue from obscurity, the philosophy first espoused by the ancient Cynics and now practiced—outside of any organized movement—by this disparate group of thinkers and writers. He is not aware of any other text that shows these particular arguments in the way they are presented here, or draws the same conclusions from the life and writings of the many vagabond writers cited in this work.

Born in 1948 to a British army officer (who later returned to farming) and a Jewish mother who had arrived in the UK on the Kindertransport—her parents murdered in the camps—Ian Cutler left school aged 15 with no qualifications and no regrets. Hating the narrow provincialism and boring facts and figures, about Britain in particular, Cutler wanted to see the world that he suspected offered much more than he had seen so far. After attending agricultural college and working in Africa, Central America and the Middle East, Ian Cutler settled into a career in both the NHS and Social Care in the UK, retiring as a Local Government Director of Adult Social Services in 2011. After publishing his first journal article in 2000 prompted by his own cynicism, Cutler continued to write and to publish biographical and philosophical texts. His first book was published in 2005. Since 1985, Cutler has lived in Cardiff, Wales, UK, with his wife—the writer Angela Morgan Cutler. He has continued to travel widely with Angela throughout the succeeding years. They have two sons who now work in the video game industry, one as an artist and the other as a musician and sound technician.

Cynicism, vagabondage, tramp literature, asceticism, cosmopolitanism, wanderlust, nature