Fight for your Long Day (Review)

Fight for your Long Day (Review)

picked this one up on the fly from a used bookstore just around the corner, a tiny epic about an adjunct instructor teaching in Philadelphia who is living an ironic life – being a collage-educated professional making less that a bartender, with no health insurance or safety net thanks to the income inequities so common everywhere in America (and the globalized world) these days.

I’m kinda torn on this. Parts of it I just loved (one of them I quoted in a recent DOG EAR). At it’s best, Fight for your Long Day  spoke to me as Snow Crash and Generation X did, pointing out what is bloody wrong with the world, where our Tragedy-of-the-commons economy will lead us, a hopeless existence this no end in side except homelessness and racking death in a dumpster. So in that, it’s funny and depressing all at once.

But at times (and this is a minor complaint) the main character was a little too hopeless, blowing every chance he has to make his difference and change the world. When given choices, he inevitably picks the wrong one, in essence making his lousy life deserved. While I liked our hapless hero, I did get annoyed with him (though, in truth, I certainly have friends very much like this).

So as for my copy, I think I’m going to send it to a friend’s wife who teaches, a little gift. It will be her choice to read or recycle. As for the rest of you, if you are looking for a telling book about America’s failures, check out this odd little work (it’s by Alex Kudera). And a little warning – if you are right-of-center in your politics, you’ll probably not enjoy it as much as we frustrated lefties would.

That’s my take, anyway.

>>>AND HERE’S MY BOOKS, ANYWAY. DOWN THIS LINK<<<