Earl Shorris (1936–2012)

1966. I just finished this fabulous book. A white kid with a brief recollection of being nursed by a black nanny when he was five, becomes convinced that black people's lives are more real, have more depth, life, immediacy to them, than his white suburban life could ever have.

He moves from Chicago to East St. Louis and gets a job heaving sacks of mail onto trains. Eventually he meets a black man at work who takes him to a hotel where whores and heroin are what it's all about. The white kid show more falls in love with a black social worker, smokes a lot of pot and sleeps with some hookers, but the girl won't marry him and he ends up going back to Chicago eventually. The ghetto gets too ugly for him.

This book was written with great honesty and sensitivity I thought. The kid really wants to understand the racial divide, but even when he understands it, he can't bridge it and he can't escape his own privileged position in society.

It was sad, moving, gripping, idealistic, and perhaps a bit too sincere. I'd say Shorris was young at the time and if he had to do it over now, he could probably leave out some of the sentimentality.

Incidentally ofay, black slang for white people like honky, is here said to be foe in pig latin. show less

The most accurate description of what life is like in corporate America. Shorris' comparison of it to totalitarianism, while not perfect, provides many good insights. The 45 or so vignettes that make up the second half of the book are chilling and haunting for anyone who has been a member of a bureaucratic organization, especially a corporation. Many others have written about corporate life but none as well as Shorris.

I actually like how he weaves historical information with his own experiences, but yeah, sometimes he waxes poetic and I start snoozing. It's also long and dense, so I have to keep renewing it at the library.

Otherwise, an excellent overview of Mexican history and culture.

I did not finish reading this collection of reports from the author's experiences of teaching humanities to the poor. It was a moving story but not compelling enough for me to want to finish. His use of the phrase "Surround of Force" was new to me in describing the setting that keeps the poor in their place. The plain lesson is that a basic humanities education is can be used to overcome poverty. There are poor people that will educate themselves if the opportunity is provided.