Auto Biography: A Classic Car, an Outlaw Motorhead, and 57 Years of the American Dream, by Earl Swift
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Auto Biography: A Classic Car, an Outlaw Motorhead, and 57 Years of the American Dream, by Earl Swift
Free Ebook PDF Auto Biography: A Classic Car, an Outlaw Motorhead, and 57 Years of the American Dream, by Earl Swift
A brilliant blend of Shop Class as Soulcraft and The Orchid Thief, Earl Swift's wise, funny, and captivating Auto Biography follows an outlaw auto dealer as he struggles to save a rusted '57 Chevy—a car that has already passed through twelve pairs of hands before his—while financial ruin, government bureaucrats and the FBI close in on him.
Slumped among hundreds of other decrepit hulks on a treeless, windswept moor in eastern North Carolina, the Chevy evokes none of the Jet Age mystique that made it the most beloved car to ever roll off an assembly line. It's open to the rain. Birds nest in its seats. Officials of the surrounding county consider it junk.
To Tommy Arney, it's anything but: It's a fossil of the twentieth-century American experience, of a place and a people utterly devoted to the automobile and changed by it in myriad ways. It's a piece of history—especially so because its flaking skin conceals a rare asset: a complete provenance, stretching back more than fifty years.
So, hassled by a growing assortment of challengers, the Chevy's thirteenth owner—an orphan, grade-school dropout and rounder, a felon arrested seventy-odd times, and a man who's been written off as a ruin himself--embarks on a mission to save the car and preserve long record of human experience it carries in its steel and upholstery.
Written for both gearheads and Sunday drivers, Auto Biography charts the shifting nature of the American Dream and our strange and abiding relationship with the automobile, through an iconic classic and an improbable, unforgettable hero.
Auto Biography: A Classic Car, an Outlaw Motorhead, and 57 Years of the American Dream, by Earl Swift- Amazon Sales Rank: #661795 in Books
- Brand: Swift, Earl
- Published on: 2015-03-17
- Released on: 2015-03-17
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.00" h x .83" w x 5.31" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 368 pages
Amazon.com Review Earl Swift Wiley Cash Wiley Cash, author of This Dark Road to Mercy and A Land More Kind than Home, interviews Earl Swift about Auto Biography.
Wiley Cash (WC): The star of Auto Biography is a particular ’57 Chevy that passes through a number of lives that you chronicle beautifully. But the car’s co-star is Tommy Arney, a hard-nosed ex- and future convict and the car’s current owner. Tommy’s incredible history of family trouble, violence, and survival is threaded throughout the book. How did you first meet Tommy?
Earl Swift (ES): One evening in December 1993, my editors at The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, Virginia, dispatched me to the Body Shop, a go-go bar Tommy owned: He’d taken the state to court over a regulation forbidding the sale of mixed drinks in the presence of a woman’s bare midriff or buttocks, both of which were in ample supply at his club and the biggest draw for his clientele. He prevailed in the dispute, so I was assigned to interview him. I enjoyed the visit thoroughly - if you were with Tommy in those days, you were either having a great time or getting your ass whipped - and I left the meeting impressed that this bear of a man, whose formal education had ended in fifth grade and who’d long danced along the law’s ragged edge, was a really smart, engaging fellow with a great sense of humor.
WC: Tommy is definitely a hero-outlaw like Tony Soprano or Billy the Kid. This type of figure feels distinctly American to me. Do you believe Tommy fits that role?
ES: I do see him that way. The young Tommy was a lethal fellow, with an explosive temper and a chip on his shoulder the size of a tectonic plate. But he lived by a personal code: Few of his victims weren’t on the prowl for trouble. And alongside the violent and mean Tommy Arney was an utter charmer, generous and funny, straight-shooting and smart.
WC: Auto Biography follows this ’57 Chevy through a number of lives before it lands in Tommy’s possession, and it follows the evolution of our nation through so many important eras: Civil Rights, Vietnam, Watergate, the Reagan years, etc. Which owner and era interested you the most as you were writing about him or her?
ES: I guess every journalist looks back most fondly on those stories that required the greatest effort or ingenuity to land, and in that respect writing about the car’s sixth owner, Mary Ricketts, brought me particular satisfaction. I interviewed Mary several times in 2004 and spoke with her occasionally in the years that followed, but it was only after her death in 2011 that I found out — at her memorial service — that she’d suffered an aneurysm years before I met her, and that the Mary I’d met was nothing like the Mary who’d owned the Chevy. So I set out to reconstruct her as she was in the 1980s. It took a few months, but with tremendous help from her friends and family, I was able to do it.
WC: Auto Biography reminds me of a frame tale like Canterbury Tales or a film like “The Red Violin”. The frame of the story is the life of this single car, but the story’s heart is the lives through which it passes. Is there a book or a film that inspired you to structure Auto Biography in this particular way?
ES: What inspired me to attempt this was my own automotive past. I’ve owned old cars and bad cars, and a few cars that were both old and bad, and while cursing them under my breath would sometimes find myself wondering about the poor saps who had drove these wrecks before me. I’ve also had a few great cars that I’ve sold too soon, and I’ve contemplated their fates since — wondering whether their new homes are as loving as the one I provided.
From Booklist This is a fascinating dual biography of Tommy Arney—described as a rough customer, which is putting it mildly—and of a 1957 Chevrolet which is in Arney’s possession when the book opens. In addition to owning a North Carolina strip club, Arney runs an auto-junkyard-cum-used-car-lot (neither is quite an adequate description). When not in major legal or financial difficulty, Arney—an informally educated, erratic, but remarkably well-informed individual, articulate both in profane and more standard English—and his remarkable crew perform herculean work (meticulously described here) in restoring automobiles. The author tells Arney’s story deftly and with great, often raw, humor, and it rarely loses momentum. The tale of the ’57 Chevy’s passage from owner to owner until purchased (and laboriously prepared to be sold) by Arney is fittingly contextualized within the central place of the automobile (in particular, this automobile, a classic) in American culture. --Mark Levine
Review “I’ve never met Earl Swift, but from the very first page of this book I like him. Auto Biography is exuberant, big-spirited, and more than occasionally profound.” (TRACY KIDDER, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Mountains Beyond Mountains)“Earl Swift has done something astonishing. He has let us see the unwinding of the American Dream through the windshield of a single 1957 Chevy-and through the stories of every one of its owners. Auto Biography is funny and sad and wise, an ingenious joyride of a book.” (BILL MORRIS, author of Motor City Burning)“Fascinating... The author tells Arney’s story deftly and with great, often raw, humor, and it rarely loses momentum.” (Booklist)“A true tall tale that doubles as a complicated fable, Auto Biography is the wild and woolly saga of a 1957 Chevrolet station wagon, its 13 owners, and Tommy Arney, the appetite-forward, contradictorily honorable character who restores the four-door chariot to a glory even greater than its original.” (Christian Science Monitor)“[A] must read … It’s the bromance of the ages: a ruined man and and a ruined ‘57 Chevy find happiness in each other’s arms.” (New York Post)“Engrossing and entertaining.... The narrative tactfully unfolds with deeply human stories of struggle, ambition, hopes, dreams.... Swift is a wonderful guide and the stories he relates are engaging in their own right.” (Publishers Weekly)“Dazzling. … Many readers likely will feel the description Swift paints of Arney in the first page and a half of the book is worth the $26.99 price tag alone.” (Daily Progress (Charlottesville, VA))“A good fun read. … There’s rust, havoc, renovation and redemption, for the car and several of its owners. … The car talk is interesting and accurate; an easy and well written read. Swift is a big name, award-winning writer, and his chops show well here.” (Matt Stone, former editor, Motor Trend Classic)“A fresh, personal perspective on America’s love affair with the automobile.” (Joe Bargmann, of Popular Mechanics, Road & Truck, and the wildly popular blog, "Backseat Driver")“Full of crackerjack reporting and fuel-injected mirth... Swift’s lengthy step-by-step description of the disassembly and recreation process is as nail-biting as any drugstore action-thriller. It’s hard to conceive of a more riveting (or unriveting) work on the subject than Auto Biography.” (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)“Swift delivers on the ambitious scope of his subtitle, and will capture the imagination of classic car fans and non-fans alike. Highly recommended.” (Jason Fogelson of Forbes)“Entertaining and enlightening.” (Fort Worth Star-Telegram)“Swift negotiates a phrase like a car with a tight turning radius.” (The Durham Herald Sun)“An entertaining, surprisingly informative and action-packed tale.” (Houston Chronicle)“Swift excels at such descriptions of autos and people, as well as observations on society and pop culture.” (Dallas Morning News)“A great read, with the cast, dialogue and drama of a novel.” (Detroit Free Press)
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Most helpful customer reviews
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful. Classic Car Takes Back Seat to Human Car Wreck By takingadayoff Auto Biography is about a classic 1957 Chevrolet station wagon that is being rebuilt by the owner of a used car lot (don't dare call it a junkyard), one Tommy Arney, a violent, foul-mouthed, operator who deals in various businesses such as go-go bars and real estate. Author Earl Swift has managed to trace the ownership of the car in question all the way back to its original owner. He tells the story of the car through the people who have owned the car. It's a crazy idea, and you hope that a half a century of history as told through such a quirky lens will be revealing in some way, that it will be a slice of America.But throughout, it's really the story of Tommy Arney, now in his late fifties, slightly less violent than he used to be, but still as menacing. The first story Swift tells about Arney is Arney's recollection of a long ago sailor bar melee in which he was approached by a cop with a K-9 growling and ready to rumble. Arney warned the cop not to set the dog on him or he would "[m]uck the dog up." The dog attacked, Arney grabbed the dog by the neck, choked it until it passed out, then beat the cop with his own German shepherd.How can a car compete with a character like that? And yet, in Swift's telling, Arney is something of a charmer as well as a Tasmanian devil. Well, I'll have to take Swift's word for that. Arney's business dealings were so corrupt that during the course of the Chevy restoration, the FBI was preparing to indict Arney for bank fraud. Meanwhile, Arney, while not as crazy violent as he once was, still abused his friends, was cheating on his wife throughout their thirty year marriage, neglected his kids when they were children, and when they were adults, got them to co-sign fraudulent bank loans.Really, I couldn't look away from this car wreck of a man. If you're a fan of classic cars, you'll also enjoy the details of how the '57 Chevy was restored. I especially liked the chapter in which Swift describes how he went about tracking down the previous owners of the car -- a real feat of detection and journalism.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful. Big, Bold, Brash, and Well-Researched By JPfromOH Earl Swift's Auto Biography is a great example of primary source reporting in action. It also happens to be a fascinating interweaving of the story of Tommy Arney, the "outlaw motorhead" of the books subtitle and the story of a 1957 Chevrolet, one of the most iconic American automobiles in history. Swift traces Arney's rough and tumble life over the same 57-year period as that of one particular '57 Chevy wagon. Although the life of a school dropout turned classic car dealer, strip club owner, restaurant owner, and cancer survivor might not seem to have much to do with the automobile, the two stories are beautifully interwoven. This book expands upon newspaper articles that Swift researched and wrote over the course of several years. Swift presents the story of each owner of the '57 Chevy. Ultimately, what emerges is the story of life in America over the past 57 years, the ups and downs, the struggles, the heartbreak, as well as a peek into the psychology of classic car ownership. Highly recommended!
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful. How to tell the Life Story of an Inanimate Object By Mark Graham Most of us think about telling our own life stories, but we rarely consider relaying the tale of an inanimate object. In Auto Biography: A Classic Car, an Outlaw Motorhead, and 57 Years, Earl Swift does exactly that. This book lies somewhere between a shop class demonstration and a memoir as it follows Tommy Arney in his quest to save a '57 Chevy that has been owned by 12 people before him.This is one book that delves into a world most of us would never consider (at least I sure didn't!) Readers learn about the many challenges of owning a piece of American history, especially when it falls into the hands of a felon with a lengthy record of crimes that would shock even the toughest characters. As readers continue on, they find that there is more to this story than a character who is a bit rough around the edges. This book is about more than Arney's "biceps big as most men's thighs", "calloused mitts" and "belly nourished by beer." It is a story about the human condition.Swift gets into the details of the story right away, revealing the kind of relationship one can have with a car, as well as how becoming a champion often means doing something as simple as rescuing an inanimate object. It effectively captures America's relationship with auto culture, like so many other fantastic books on car lovers' shelves. (It sits beside my copy of How to Restore the Model A Ford... someday, someday)
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