Insomniac read. The lack of trains and dreams was notable.

I probably have missed something - it tells an ordinary life. The man built meaning with fragments collected here and there, and with time, meaning goes round in circles, still picking up pieces, and acquires weight and familiarity (yet his life remained quite floating).

His way of accruing meaning was a bit oneiric, but it doesn't excuse the minor role played by trains. I expected very technical descriptions of locomotives and railway systems, and because there were not, I finished the book rather than go back to sleep. A pleasant night read anyway, not the one I hoped.

There's a list somewhere of books that have not been written but whose title is already in use. This is the list of readers' disappointed expectations (if not a list of writers' and publishers' deceptions). That other Train Dreams is about an outsider nerd like there are outsider artists whose life would have been spent in steam and coal, going through American history without getting driven by it, as it would have been reduced to a nice view from the window of his locomotive.