What in the hell …

That’s the real question behind John Laslett’s book about coal miners, Colliers Across The Sea. (more…)

A passage from Marx. (As in, “here is a passage from Marx,” not as in “What in the hell does tailoring produce? Tailoring produces a passage from Marx.”) (more…)

It’s the name of an article that Sebastian and I translated recently by the Colectivo Situaciones.

It’s a novel by Jack London. (more…)

It’s a play by Eugene O’Neill. (more…)

Please take a moment to read and fill out this petition in support of temp workers at the U of Michigan: http://www.petitiononline.com/temps/petition.html

More info here:

http://isupportthetemps.blogspot.com/

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Other than blog, that is. (more…)

It’s the original title of B. Traven’s novel which appeared in English as The Cotton Pickers. The back of the book compares Traven to Hemmingway, which is a fair comparison given the terse prose and combination of “who gives a fuck” tough guy attitude with an injured poignancy. The novel is set in Mexico. The protagonist, Gales, works as a cotton-picker, oil worker, baker, and cattle driver. He takes part in a work stoppage at the cotton farm, sparked in part by an agitational song he teaches his co-workers. Later he and a co-worker from this job end up working together as bakers. In the attached restaurant a waiters’ strike breaks out. After Gales leaves to drive cattle, he finds out the bakery he worked at went on strike, touching off a bakery industry strike throughout the city. During the cattle drive, he re-encoutners his co-worker from the cotton farm and bakery, now working as a cattle rustler.

Gales and his co-worker go to the red light district together, and there’s a long description of the solicitation practices of different prostitutes working different market segments/income brackets. It would be interesting to compare this section of the novel with Mac’s relationships (in Dos Passos’ 42nd Parallel) with prostitutes and his wife, and with the relationship between Bill Quint and Dinah Brand in Hammett’s Red Harvest.