Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Rust on Rust
The Cleveland Plain Dealer put Stayin' Alive on the cover of its book section, calling it "an engrossing new book" by someone with "an ear for the power and poetry of vernacular speech." That's nice. The reviewer gets a couple of details about the book wrong, but nails the spirit of the thing right on the head. The introduction quotes Dwight Yoakam ("And after all those years of payin' union dues / It sure didn't seem to count for much when we got our layoff news") and the cover image is of Born in the USA, which together make everything OK. The text is here: 'Stayin' Alive' by Jefferson Cowie charts how it all went wrong for the U.S. working class.
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Saw you on a C-Span book talk thing (book store in Cornell). I was intrigued by your lecture. Have to say, "Saturday Night Fever" remains a favorite (if only because I aspire to Bay Ridge disco greatness myself) and growing up with a truck driver father on the Jersey shore in the 70's, much of your talk resonated. Have you done much study of the DRUM movement (Detroit Revolutionary Union Movement) in the 70's? There is an excellent book, "Detroit I Do Mind Dying" written about it. Anyway, thanks for the interesting insights. One thing though. Being overly idealistic, I would say that Carol O'Connor was actually much more morally in step with the original idea of union solidarity than any of his co-stars. Take Care. Paul
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