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Working It Out: a novel
Set in the industrial Midwest, this novel tells an essential story of people struggling through economic and personal adversity. It captures the working class capacity for endurance and working it out together. Featured here are the winning characters and setting of Smith's acclaimed novella Beyond Rust.
"I like Beyond Rust and find it very affecting--Good strong language, and a big heart shining through."
--Sy Safransky, editor, The Sun.
On Working It Out:
"Working It Out is a rich, moving story of one man's attempts to work out what we all have to work out, regardless of our personal histories--the precarious balance between where we've come from and where we're going, between the demands of work and family, between who we are, and who we want to be."
--Jim Daniels, author of Blessing the House, and Punching Out.
"Larry Smith's novel, Working It Out, like Studs Terkle's interviews and Kenneth Patchen's poetry, gives us stirring insight into the troubled souls of America's working class. as we watch these men and women of diverse ethnic richness and heritage struggle valiantly with poverty, disappearing jobs and discrimination, we see deeply into the nature of their despair. Yet the fierce, enduring love between Marco and wife Maria, the supportive caring and loyalty of their families as the birth of their first child draws near, gives us, against all odds, blessed hope for the future of humanity. This is the novel of a poet and seer. Mark it well. In such works lie the salvation of our nation."
--Annabel Thomas, author of Knucklebones and The Phototropic Woman.
"I like Beyond Rust and find it very affecting--Good strong language, and a big heart shining through."
--Sy Safransky, editor, The Sun.
On Working It Out:
"Working It Out is a rich, moving story of one man's attempts to work out what we all have to work out, regardless of our personal histories--the precarious balance between where we've come from and where we're going, between the demands of work and family, between who we are, and who we want to be."
--Jim Daniels, author of Blessing the House, and Punching Out.
"Larry Smith's novel, Working It Out, like Studs Terkle's interviews and Kenneth Patchen's poetry, gives us stirring insight into the troubled souls of America's working class. as we watch these men and women of diverse ethnic richness and heritage struggle valiantly with poverty, disappearing jobs and discrimination, we see deeply into the nature of their despair. Yet the fierce, enduring love between Marco and wife Maria, the supportive caring and loyalty of their families as the birth of their first child draws near, gives us, against all odds, blessed hope for the future of humanity. This is the novel of a poet and seer. Mark it well. In such works lie the salvation of our nation."
--Annabel Thomas, author of Knucklebones and The Phototropic Woman.
104 pages, Paperback
First published February 2, 1998
1 person want to read
About the author
Larry Smith
30 books27 followersSmith is the author of 9 books of poetry and 6 books of fiction as well as two memoirs and two literary biographies of Kenneth Patchen and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. He is married to Ann Smith, a professor of nursing, with 3 adult children and 8 grandchildren. He taught at BGSU Firelands College in Ohio for 38 years. His most recent work includes The Thick of Thin: Memoirs of a Working-Class Writer (2017) and Thoreau's Lost Journal: Poems (2018, new enlarged edition).
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