Rivethead: Tales from the Assembly Line

by Ben Hamper Narrated by Joe Don Baker

Overview

Ben Hamper vowed never to be an autoworker. Life had other plans. In the 1970s and '80s, the General Motors assembly plant in Flint, Michigan provided steady work for the town's citizens. But at what cost? The man the Detroit Free Press calls "a blue-collar Tom Wolfe" delivers a full-barreled blast of truth and gritty reality in Rivethead, a no-holds-barred journey through the belly of the American industrial beast. With the perspective of the blue-collar voice that is rarely heard, Hamper chronicles ten years spent in the drudgery of factory labor and its mind-numbing working conditions.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

In a voice often as powerful as the riveting gun he wielded in the 1970s and '80s in a Flint, Mich., General Motors assembly plant, Hamper nails down the excruciating boredom of a shoprat's life on the line. These roughly chronological essays, many published in the local press, bare the rage and humor that, with booze and drugs, friendships and enmities, served to speed along the timeclock's ``suffocating minute hand.'' A fourth-generation factory worker, raised on hard music, hard liquor and soft drugs, given a parochial school education, Hamper was the eldest of eight children deserted by their father, supported by their mother. He was determined not to be an auto worker but soon after high school, married and a father, he needed the steady work GM offered. With free-ranging intelligence and a sharply anarchic sensibility, he tries to figure out and establish some control over his place in GM's massive corporate system. While these essays might best satisfy in small doses, Hamper, no longer a GM employee, writes with unrelenting energy. BOMC and QPB selections; film rights to Warner Bros. (Aug.)

Library Journal

Hamper, a son, a grandson, and a great-grandson of General Motors' ``shoprats,'' chronicles ten years spent in an abusive marriage with GM in Flint, Michigan. Despite exploitative management policies, arrogant and/or incompetent supervisors, and mind-numbing working conditions, Hamper, like the abused spouse who keeps returning to the abuser, becomes de pressed during layoffs and revives when recalled to the assembly line. Hamper copes with his perceived limited options by consuming impressive quantities of alcohol and writing an irreverent, cynically humorous column about shoprat life for an alternative newspaper. How much of Hamper's alienation and later panic disorder are the result of his ten years at GM and how much are due to genetics and choices is unexplored. Another weakness is Hamper's graceless style and his overuse of four-letter words. Despite these shortcomings, blue-collar voices are rarely heard, and therefore this is recommended for public libraries.-- Andrea C. Dragon, Coll. of St. Elizabeth, Convent Station, N.J.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940175877558
Publisher:	Phoenix Books, Inc.
Publication date:	12/01/1991
Edition description:	Unabridged

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