By nature a wanderer, Mr. Christy roamed the world as a young man supporting himself by whatever expedient he could find: Travelin Light is a diary that highlights both his roaming and a dozen significant encounters he made while on the road from the Amazon to the Yukon, including his own way of life, his habitual involvement with drugs, booze, prostitution, poverty, and violence. His talent for disturbingly presenting descriptive detail led him to evoke pervasively through-’out his writings the sights, sounds, and smells of the milieux he frequented. This practice provides his readers with crudely stark but powerful glimpses into the seamier sides of street-wise life. His characters are sometimes moving, sometimes revolting; however, they are always very earthly human.

Always in search of original characters and experiences, Jim Christy is a literary vagabond with few peers. He was once described by George Woodcock as “one of the last unpurged North American anarchistic romantics.” His publisher has called him a hip Indiana Jones; one reviewer credited him with a “Gary Cooper-like presence.” His buddies have included hobos, jazz musicians, boxers, and non-academic writers such as Charles Bukowski, Peter Trower and Joe Ferone. “I never dismiss another’s story out of hand,” he writes, “no matter what it’s about or how outrageous it may seem.” Christy’s often wry reminiscences of his travels, trysts and trials are fuelled by a hard-won pride. A gardener, a sculptor and a spoken word performer with a jazz/blues ensemble, Christy has been seen in film and television productions, usually in non-speaking roles as a thug or a gangster.

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