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Title: The Mole People: Life in the Tunnels Beneath New York City by Jennifer Toth, Margaret Morton, Chris Pape ISBN: 1-55652-241-X Publisher: Chicago Review Press Pub. Date: October, 1995 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.06 (72 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: an informative and a fun read
Comment: The Mole People by Jennifer Toth was a wonderful novel that gave its readers incredible information about the underground. The book was written like a documentary, aimed to inform more than to entertain. The description that Toth used all throughout the book was excellent. "In the recess of the tunnel, Mac does not need a trap with stale food or a feces-soaked rag to catch 'track rabbits,' as rats are known to the underground homeless. They come because the garbage is as dense as its stench." Descirbing the scene she was witnessing, Toth gives her audience a clear picture of what underground life is really like. I think that Toth did an excellant job incorporating the facts along with the stories; making the book a very fun read. Some chapters were committed completely to statistics and opinions of the aboveground variety, while other chapters told the real life stories of inhabitants of the tunnels. The Mole People was fascinating in the sense that it introduced me to a way of life that I never even knew existed. The tunnels underground New York City are filled with thousands of homeless people; some living as far as seven stories beneath the street. With separate communities, some even including doctors, teachers and mayors, the people who live in the tunnels are all unique. Some of the mole people, as they are referred to by those uneducated about the underground, are very independent of each other, while others rely heavily on their tunnel neighbors. "The surprising wonder of Bernard's tunnel is less that people can survive in such an environment than that they can work together and even care, sometimes intensely, for each other." One of the many communites descirbed in the book, Bernard's tunnel is a prime example of a different society underneath the streets. Separate from the rest of the world, but with the same qualities as all great cities. I was greatly impressed with the research tactics that Toth used to get information for her book. Risking her life hundreds of times, she traveled deep into the tunnels to speak with all kinds of the underground population. She made the tunnels part of her life, making visits there every day, and gaining many friends along the way. I would recommend this book to anyone. It's an incredibley interesting book that will definitely open up any eyes to the importance of the mole people.
Rating: 5
Summary: An Eyewitness Description of Homelessness
Comment: As a New York bureau intern for "The Los Angeles Times", Jennifer Toth wrote an article describing homeless life in the tunnels beneath New York City. While researching the article she met "mole people" (homeless tunnel dwellers) and also met advocates for the homeless. After her article appeared on the newspaper's front page Ms. Toth spent a year researching inside the tunnels and interviewing tunnel dwellers. Her book is an excellent example of investigative journalism.
Ms. Toth initially met tunnel dwellers on the Columbia University campus, through the NYC Metropolitan Transit Police, and through soup kitchens. As her contact network grew she met tunnel dwellers willing to be interviewed and to guide her through the tunnels. Examples include Bernard, self-proclaimed "Lord of the Tunnels"; Frederick, a fourteen-year-old runaway turned prostitute who only relates to the homeless ("People who got homes, I don't know what they want."); J.C., a member of a 200-person tunnel community where the children are held in common (initially he refuses to guide Ms. Toth unless she will "promise to remain underground for a week and to wear my hair in braids." -- she refuses); Sam, an ex-social worker who leads another 200-person tunnel community (no one can leave without his permission); and Blade, a tunnel dweller who first befriends and guides Ms. Toth but ultimately attempts to dominate and control her life.
Ms. Toth's recollections and interviews are very objective (occasionally over-objective), and they illustrate the realities of homelessness: chemical dependency, danger, disease, and poverty. Her recollections and interviews also illustrate the homeless's greatest weapons: discomfort and fear. (E.g., panic because the hypodermic needles homeless young girls use to attack pedestrians might be AIDS-contaminated.) Ms. Toth observed these realities during her investigations. Her book is an excellent description of NYC tunnel life, the suffering of the homeless, and the societal challenge that the homeless represent.
Rating: 5
Summary: brilliant, charming, breathtaking and timeless!
Comment: Underneath its shlocky, People-Magazine-inspired title, "Mole People" is a thoroughly eloquent and charming and upbeat page-turning, laugh-a-minute comedic masterpiece of the highest order. Miss Toth pulls no punches in this witty account of the hapless and lazy hobo society thriving in the underbelly of Manhattan's sagging bridges and murky abandoned tunnels. The mole people are shown to be quite civilized, huddling round campfires, proudly showing off their latest skid marks whilst sipping cocktails, gossiping, trading stock tips, inhaling model airplane glue, combing for lice, and even swapping erotic massages. They are neatness freaks too, as Toth meticulously documents: like clockwork, designated mole-drones wearing immaculate white linens are sent on 24-hour nonstop skid-row sweep-patrol missions, behaving like hypnotized zombies when they are not dutifully attending seminars on dianetic dumpster diving, taking free (!) personality tests, and undergoing electroshock e-meter therapy. As the inspiration for a fantastically shallow television show known simply as "the Mole," the mole people have triumphantly if shamelessly burrowed their way into pop culture, indelibly burning their fashionably grunge image into our collective unconscious. Dostoyevky, watch your back: Toth takes even better notes from the underground. Thank you for churning out this book! See you in line at the food stamp counter!
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Title: The Tunnel: The Underground Homeless of New York City (Architecture of Despair) by Margaret Morton ISBN: 0300065590 Publisher: Yale Univ Pr Pub. Date: May, 1996 List Price(USD): $26.00 |
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Title: Invisible Frontier: Exploring the Tunnels, Ruins, and Rooftops of Hidden New York by L.B. Deyo, David Leibowitz ISBN: 0609809318 Publisher: Three Rivers Press Pub. Date: 22 July, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Living at the Edge of the World: A Teenager's Survival in the Tunnels of Grand Central Station by Tina S. Jamie Pastor Bolnick ISBN: 0312200471 Publisher: St. Martin's Press Pub. Date: 06 October, 2000 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title:In Search of the Mole People ASIN: B000050933 Pub. Date: 31 July, 2000 List Price(USD): $29.95 Comparison N/A, buy it from Amazon for $29.95 |
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Title:Dark Days ASIN: B0000A1HRS Publisher: Lions Gate Home Ente Pub. Date: 26 August, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.98 Comparison N/A, buy it from Amazon for $13.48 |
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