Title Bad jobs and poor decisions : dispatches from the working class / J.R. Helton.

Publication Info.

New York : Liveright Publishing Corporation, a division of W.W. Norton & Company, [2018]

Copies

Location	Call No.	Status
Manchester, Main Library - Non Fiction	B HELTON, JOHN R.	Check Shelf
New Britain, Main Library - Non Fiction	305.3823 HEL	Check Shelf

Edition	First edition.
Description	259 pages ; 22 cm
Contents	Prologue: 1989 -- Other people -- Halloween -- Kansas -- Sweetheart of the rodeo -- Finding the cure for cancer -- Epilogue: 1989.
Summary	"The unattainable quest for middle-class stability is hauntingly captured in this biting portrayal of forgotten America Weaving the brackish humor of Chuck Palahniuk with the empathy of Barbara Ehrenreich, JR Helton brings to life an obscured underside of the American psyche in this unflinching account of life inside the working class of Texas in the 1980s. We first meet Helton as a struggling writer succumbing to the bleak reality of what it means to support himself and a troubled wife. That despair is transformed into resilience as Helton insightfully narrates his wayward years, enduring hateful employers and mind-numbing manual labor. Along the way, he introduces us to the real people toiling beneath the saccharine veneer of wealth that was the Reagan years: the ambitious and the lazy, the potheads and racists, as well as Vietnam vets too shaken to hold a paint brush, dead-beat fathers straining to pay child support, and the casual murderer. Raw and moving, Bad Jobs and Poor Decisions captures a microcosm of tattered America that straddles that dangerous line between ruin and redemption."--Provided by publisher.
Subject	Helton, J. R. (John R.)
	Working class men -- Texas -- Biography.
	Man-woman relationships -- Texas.
	Texas -- Social life and customs -- 20th century.
	Working class -- United States -- Social conditions -- 20th century.
	Helton, J. R. (John R.) (OCoLC)fst00394502
	Man-woman relationships. (OCoLC)fst01007080
	Manners and customs. (OCoLC)fst01007815
	Working class men. (OCoLC)fst01738253
	Working class -- Social conditions. (OCoLC)fst01180525
	Texas. (OCoLC)fst01210336
	United States. (OCoLC)fst01204155
Chronological Term	1900-1999
Genre/Form	Biography. (OCoLC)fst01423686
Added Title	Dispatches from the working class
ISBN	9781631492877 (hardcover)
	163149287X (hardcover)

-->

Permanent Link

Add a Review

Title Bad jobs and poor decisions : dispatches from the working class / J.R. Helton.

Copies

Library Links

Search Tools

Language Settings