Natalia Singer's plan, when she headed for Seattle in 1979, was to get laid off, go on unemployment, and become laid back. Meanwhile she would train herself to become a writer. Rejecting the avid materialism of her generation and the violence of American culture, she vowed to surround herself with natural beauty, steer clear of her mentally ill mother, and contribute nothing to the fluorescent-lit, acronym-ridden, anesthetizing military-industrial complex. Her quest, which she hoped would bring her peace, safety, and ...
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Natalia Singer's plan, when she headed for Seattle in 1979, was to get laid off, go on unemployment, and become laid back. Meanwhile she would train herself to become a writer. Rejecting the avid materialism of her generation and the violence of American culture, she vowed to surround herself with natural beauty, steer clear of her mentally ill mother, and contribute nothing to the fluorescent-lit, acronym-ridden, anesthetizing military-industrial complex. Her quest, which she hoped would bring her peace, safety, and creative fulfillment, actually put her increasingly in harm's way. It has, however, paid enormous dividends for readers who here have the perverse yet exquisite pleasure of following Singer's low-budget search for a bohemian haven during the last gasp of the cold war. disconcerting candor, leads her to a duplex in Seattle, a Buddhist monastery in the Catskills, a ghost town on the Olympic Peninsula, a beach hut in Mexico, graduate school in western Massachusetts, and even a Left Bank convent, but it never frees her from her identity and obligations as an American, either at home or abroad. Singer blends memoir with cultural history to critique Reaganomics, military buildups in the face of eroding social programs and growing national debt, the hypocrisy of so-called family values, and her own complicity in all of it. Scraping By in the Big Eighties is, more than anything, about taking politics personally. Lyrical, meditative, occasionally heartbreaking, and often darkly comic, this book about mistakes blithely made in decades past is nonetheless still timely today.
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Add this copy of Scraping By in the Big Eighties to cart. $8.95, like new condition, Sold by Longhouse, Pub. & Bookseller rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from West Brattleboro, VT, UNITED STATES, published by Nebraska, 2004.
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Seller's Description:
Near Fine in near fine jacket. Inscribed to a fellow writer by Singer on the front flyleaf and also signed by her on the titlepage. First edition, 2004. Cloth-backed boards in dust jacket, 225 pp., clean unmarked text, Near Fine copy in Near Fine dust jacket, a bit of bumping to the tips of the book's covers, light soiling or age-toning to the dust jacket. Dust jacket housed in archival dust jacket protector.
Add this copy of Scraping By in the Big Eighties (American Lives) to cart. $21.00, like new condition, Sold by Gene The Book Peddler rated 3.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Winchester, NH, UNITED STATES, published 2004 by University of Nebraska Press.
Add this copy of Scraping By in the Big Eighties (American Lives Series) to cart. $43.26, good condition, Sold by Bonita rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Newport Coast, CA, UNITED STATES, published 2004 by University of Nebraska Press.
