Austin to Tucson: hitting the road -- Tucson to La Puente: the desert rat -- Los Angeles: pounding the pavement -- San Gabriels and Hollywood -- To Austin -- Temporary arrangements -- On dumpster diving -- Summer in Austin: dog days on the street -- Phlebitis: at the public hospital -- Alcohol, drugs, and insanity -- On institutional parasitism -- Eviction -- Daniel -- Lizbeth on death row -- To Hollywood again -- In the bamboo -- A roof over our heads
"When I began writing this account I was living under a shower curtain in a stand of bamboo in a public park. I did not undertake to write about homelessness, but wrote what I knew, as an artist paints a still life, not because he is especially fond of fruit, but because the subject is readily at hand." A beautifully written account of one man's experience of homelessness, Travels with Lizbeth is a story of physical survival and the triumph of the artistic spirit in the face of enormous adversity. In his unique voice - dry, disciplined, poignant, comic - Eighner celebrates the companionship of his dog, Lizbeth, and recounts their ongoing struggle to survive on the streets of Austin, Texas, and hitchhiking along the highways to Southern California and back