In this superb and subversive collection, the finest fiction writers capture the full experience of showing up, clocking in, and working it. Denis Johnson's "Emergency" is set in a Vietnam-era emergency room, where stoned orderlies deal matter-of-factly with a guy who has a knife stuck in his head. In Raymond Carver's "Fat," a waitress recounts how attending to an overweight customer inspired her life-altering speculations on consumption, deprivation, pleasure, and neglect. Excerpts from longer works-Richard Ford's ...
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In this superb and subversive collection, the finest fiction writers capture the full experience of showing up, clocking in, and working it. Denis Johnson's "Emergency" is set in a Vietnam-era emergency room, where stoned orderlies deal matter-of-factly with a guy who has a knife stuck in his head. In Raymond Carver's "Fat," a waitress recounts how attending to an overweight customer inspired her life-altering speculations on consumption, deprivation, pleasure, and neglect. Excerpts from longer works-Richard Ford's "Independence Day, "whose hero, real estate agent Frank Bascombe, is a case study in suburban angst; Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man "and its earnest considerations of race and unionism-and short stories such as "Pastoralia," George Saunders's manic tale of a prehistoric theme park in which actors don pelts and grunt for disaffected spectators, all express what can be absurd, touching, and traumatic about any occupation. Edited by Pulitzer Prize finalist David Gates, "Labor Days" is more edifying than cruising the Web on the company's dime or making personal phone calls. Whether you slave in a cubicle or put your feet up in a corner office, it is the perfect antidote for the grind and the glances at the clock, where the second hand sweeps slowly toward quitting time.
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Add this copy of Labor Days: an Anthology of Fiction About Work to cart. $6.93, fair condition, Sold by ThriftBooks-Baltimore rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Halethorpe, MD, UNITED STATES, published 2004 by Random House Trade.
Add this copy of Labor Days: an Anthology of Fiction About Work to cart. $11.09, very good condition, Sold by Books From California rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Simi Valley, CA, UNITED STATES, published 2004 by Random House Trade Paperbacks.
Add this copy of Labor Days: an Anthology of Fiction About Work to cart. $44.02, good condition, Sold by Bonita rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Newport Coast, CA, UNITED STATES, published 2004 by Random House Trade Paperbacks.
I write about work and have always had a very difficult time finding anyone else who wrote about this rich subject.
But David Gates has put together an anthology of writings by William Burroughs, Raymond Carver, John Cheever, Joseph Heller, and other greats and not so greats. The workers in these stories are a drug dealer's bodyguard, an elevator operator (when we still had them), an executive, a couch manufacturer. The stories are human interest?they're about the people more than the work. Excellent collection.
The copy I got is "an advance uncorrected proof," but although the TOC has no page numbers, the actual pages of the book are numbered and I didn't discern any errors in it.
