Novelist, journalist, lecturer, Hollywood columnist of the 1920s and 30s, road kid, chainmaker, boxer, circus handyman, tree surgeon; an inheritor of the tradition of the literary wanderer, and father of another, the school of hardboiled writing.

Charles Willeford on Tully An essay which provides an excellent social and literary context for Tully's work, as well as Willeford's appreciation of a kindred spirit,  another compassionate nihilist.

A California Holiday is a remarkable piece on the hanging of a young man at San Quentin, which Tully witnessed in 1927 and reported on for H. L. Mencken.

"If Tully were a Russian, read in translation, all the Professors would be hymning him. He has all of Gorky’s capacity for making vivid the miseries of poor and helpless men, and in addition he has a humor that no Russian could conceivably have."

-- H.L. Mencken

"If there is a writer in America today who can lay hold of mean people and mean lives and tear their mean hearts out with more appalling realism, his work is unknown to me."

-- George Jean Nathan

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