Rivethead - Ben Hamper [0]
and Mother Jones.
Copyright © 1986, 1987, 1988, 1991 by Ben Hamper
All rights reserved.
Warner Books
Hachette Book Group
237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Visit our Web site at www.HachetteBookGroup.com
First eBook Edition: July 1992
ISBN: 978-0-446-55403-9
The “Warner Books” name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
Book design by H Roberts
Cover design by Karen Katz
Cover photograph by James Haefner
Contents
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
FOREWORD
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
EPILOGUE
PRAISE FOR BEN HAMPER AND RIVETHEAD
“Brutally honest…high-octane irreverent prose…Hamper bares his teeth and howls with glee.”
—Philadelphia Inquirer
“Flint's second Dante…Mr. Hamper's prose flourishes.”
—New York Times Book Review
“The auto worker's authentic voice, excesses and all…does what Roger & Me was unable to do—get into the plant and show, in perceptive often side-splitting, sometimes appalling fashion, what it was like to build trucks for GM.”
—Chicago Sun-Times
“Very funny—and smart.”
—Newsweek
“An authoritative voice, rarely heard, but with a compelling urgent message about industrial America.”
—Dallas Morning News
“Iconoclastic…irreverent eloquence.…Hamper wields distinctive, entertaining prose like a latter-day Lord Byron with a rivet gun in one hand and a six-pack in the other.”
—Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Shocking, hilarious, unbelievable, hilarious, dismaying, hilarious, frightening and hilarious. You don't know whether to laugh or cry.”
—Milwaukee Journal
“Compelling.…A powerful book that often reads like the biting poetry of Charles Bukowski…Rivethead is far more than one man's musings on life in an auto plant. It is about class, the working class, and the lives led by the American men and women who manufacture the things we buy.”
—Business Week
“This ‘shoprat’ writes with the pedal to the metal…a keen, floor-level eye for the absurdities of an American industrial giant.”
—Miami Herald
“Tough and knowing…a powerful writer; his eye misses nothing.”
—Christian Science Monitor
“In-your-face invective.…Hamper's writing is strong, lively, and as corrosively funny as a whoopee cushion filled with acid.”
—Fortune
“An auto executive's worst dream—an automotive worker turned writer who puts down what really happens on the assembly line.…A funny yet striking look at American blue collar life.”
—Newark Star Ledger
“Great stuff—wild but driven home solid.”
—Roy Blount, Jr.
“An eye-opening, bitterly humorous account of one man's life on the factory floor.…Highly entertaining.…Savagely funny.”
—Grand Rapids Press
“Crude, sophomoric and rough. It's also educational, hilarious and probably 97 percent true.”
—Providence Sunday Journal
“Hamper writes with unrelenting energy.…A voice as powerful as the riveting gun he wielded.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A hell of a book.…Just may be the best insider's view ever written about factory work in America.”
—Flint Journal
“Ben Hamper is a modern worker writer, proletarian journalist and one of the best writers I know about.”
—R. J. Smith, Village Voice
“An American original.…A new writing talent has come from the ranks of blue collar.”
—Book Page
“A blue collar Tom Wolfe.…Hamper's book is the best description of who American autoworkers were, and what they thought, in the 1980s. People who never thought about where their cars come from will find out—and enjoy doing it.”
—Detroit Free Press
“Right out there on the cutting edge…Hamper is a marvelous writer.”
—Jim Harrison, author of Legends of the Fall
“Hamper recounts his experiences with true comic flair. His humor covers the whole gamut of comedy, from sarcasm to farce to the surreal.”
—Philadelphia News
SHOP RAT THROTTLES THE SENSES:
The Rivethead on Rivethead
“Let's talk Rivethead, arguably the greatest book released in our lifetime. I found the book to be an enormously amusing