Rough Sleepers
Tracy Kidder, Random House, £17.27

PULITZER Prize-winning writer Tracy Kidder has a new book out, Rough Sleepers, that is timely, poignant, and depressingly true as an indictment of the fracturing values of our time.

Kidder, who won his Pulitzer for describing the symbiotic relationship between humans and computers in The Soul of a New Machine (1981), here chronicles the soul-sucking conditions of everyday people living on the streets. 

As Kidder points out, “rough sleeping” is a 19th century British term to describe homelessness. That an old term is still fresh as a descriptor is the first depressing note about the book to swallow. One thinks of George Orwell’s slightly later memoir, Down and Out in Paris and London (1933), which paints a picture of the tramp’s life.

In Rough Sleepers, Kidder mostly provides a literary journalist’s picture of the homeless of Boston. He provides stark contrasts between the elite and the poor with a splash of colour. In one bit he writes of how a homeless person almost gets struck by a car crossing the street outside the luxury clothier, Brooks Brothers, in upscale Beacon Hill where Victorian brick row houses lit by antique lanterns passively boast of gentility.

“Go ahead and hit me! Like I really give a fuck!” cries the homeless man.

In writing the book, Kidder spent a lot of time driving around in a van with Dr Jim, a practitioner who cruises the late streets — “When everything else has gone away, and it’s just you and the people there” — bringing coffee, hot chocolate, sandwiches, blankets and basic medical supplies to those in need.

Dr Jim does not see himself as a hero, but as a fellow human with a mission to help stave off misery in some small way. He is reminiscent of the quiet pathos of John Steinbeck’s Doc in the Cannery Row novels.  

With Dr Jim we greet Sandy and her boyfriend, who lived for years deep in the tunnels under Copley Square, an upscale section of downtown, with pricey restaurants and sports bars, and lingerie at Victoria’s Secrets.

Kidder watches more than 100 homeless people get evicted from South Station, a central train depot that has come under new management and with a new policy of intolerance to the homeless. It’s an ironic vision to see a place where people board trains to a variety of destinations packed in the later hours, after trains have stopped, with other people with nowhere to go, no destination.

And, “near the Haymarket, a muscular young man in apparent good health sits at the door of an ATM parlor, his current bedroom, telling Jim how he lost his college career and fiancee to what he calls ‘OC’ — Oxycontin, that is.”

We see formless masses in fetal positions sleeping on sidewalk vents for the heat.

On and on it goes through the night. In the film Barfly (1987), Mickey Rourke’s character, based partly on the poet Charles Bukowski, says to his rich, fawning agent: “Nobody suffers like the poor. Nobody.” Tracy Kidder makes sure the reader understands — humanely, and with urgency — that people are suffering everywhere, and no Jesus is coming along anytime soon.

Rough Sleepers has eight parts that chronicle the whole mess we have made of civilisation when we are forced to bear witness to catastrophic homelessness. I was particularly impressed by Part 1: The Van, with Dr Jim’s drive-arounds, looking for them; Part 2: The Art of Healing; Part 5: Search for Meaning; and Part 6: A System of Friends. 

According to one count there were at least 5,200 street people in Boston in 2023. In London, the figure was 4,400 in 2023. Worldwide there may be as many as 1.6 billion people who experience homelessness each year, according to UN data, which includes migrants displaced from their home countries by war and political collapse.

Kidder does an excellent job painting a grim picture of humanity on the fringe, the loneliness and misery, but also the determination of a few fellow humans to buoy those spirits drowning in the consciousness of human failings. 

I highly recommend this book.