Bad Jobs and Poor Decisions: Dispatches from the Working Class [Hardcover]

Helton writes with an honest, gritty, straightforward style about ugly things and somehow manages to make them beautiful&A great book.Both funny and sad, this book illuminates the hard work and unrelenting tenacity of people who scratch a living with manual labor.Somewhere between literary tinctures reminiscent of Charles Bukowski and Harvey Pekar, Helton conjures an intoxicating voice that mines mordant memories of abject and downtrodden moments to reveal hilarious, gobsmacking, and often haunting, epiphanies. When it doesnt break your heart, this book might bust your gut from laughing.J. R. Helton is my favorite contemporary American writer. He has a gift for writing well in plain language, and he cant seem to help but write with total honesty. I eagerly devouredI cant help but fall for the way the rough and the poetic combine&Heltons language will eat you up. His characters are wonderful and they are awful. They are so human, just like the rest of us.These pages contain a cutting, insightful, and addictively readable slice of sociological rabble-rousinga literary feat that takes a rare talent to pull off. Luckily for us, J. R. Helton has that talent in spades. He fires on all cylinders, speaking truth after truth, and taking no prisoners.Weaving the brackish humor of Chuck Palahniuks