Scraping by in the Big Eighties by Natalia Singer
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. This work follows her tortuous path, that leads her to a duplex in Seattle, a Buddhist monastery in the Catskills, a beach hut in Mexico, and even a Left Bank convent.
Natalia Singer has captured the '80s perfectly--the real, tough '80s that serve as the prelude to our current rightward plungeBut more than that she tells two timeless stories: a hard one about what it means to have a crazy mother, and a sweet one about what it means to come to terms and to come of age. Her writing is blessedly funny, relaxed; her story is unexpectedly beautiful and resonant. A book not to miss. Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature With the authority of a prophet, the street smarts of a stand-up comic, and the compassion of a saint, Natalia Rachel Singer leads us into the fractious corners of an America she will not allow herself or us to ignore or forget. Writing with wit, elan, and rare insight, Singer captures the collisions of a splintered personal world in an equally splintered culture. Never didactic, she is simply a chronicler of the times of the highest literary order and an unflinching memoirist, someone who deserves the widest of audiences. Robin Hemley, author of Nola: A Memoir of Faith, Art, and Madness Singer's book is a memoir, but it is also social commentary, political critique, and a portrait of its times that, in its best moments, can stand beside something like Joan Didion's The White Album or Slouching Towards Bethlehem. Rosellen Brown, author of Before and After and Half a Heart A portrait of a time that doesn't jibe with so many of the official versions, in which the eighties were halcyon days filled with milk and honey, kindness and plenty, happiness and political harmony. Ms. Singer's work stands up to those lies and more. Bill Roorbach, author of Writing Life Stories The charmingly personal becomes the mightily political in a muscular, well-wrought series of essays that move chronologically through an appalling decade of public and private self-indulgence... Singer has certainly done her homework for this entertaining refresher course on the decade of big hair and small mercies: the acknowledgements alone offer an excellent bibliography of an era that many readers who lived through it would rather forget.
Natalia Rachel Singer is an associate professor of English at St. Lawrence University. She is the co-editor of Living North Country: Essays on Life and Landscapes in Northern New York.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780803243095 |
| ISBN 10 | 080324309X |
| Title | Scraping by in the Big Eighties |
| Author | Natalia Singer |
| Series | American Lives |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | University of Nebraska Press |
| Year published | 2004-07-28 |
| Number of pages | 227 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |