Work

by Bud Smith

WORK is a portrait of Bud Smith's years working construction. It's about his hilarious blue-collar family. It's about growing up in a campground in NJ, skipping college, and moving to NYC on a drunken whim. It's about making art even if that means writing a novel during 1000 consecutive lunch breaks.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Literature, Biography Memoir

216 pages, Paperback

First published September 18, 2017

About the author

Bud Smith is the author of Teenager (Tyrant Book), Double Bird (Maudlin House), WORK (CCM), Dust Bunny City (Disorder Press), among others. He works heavy construction, and lives in Jersey City, NJ.

Reviews

[Bud Smith]

can relate.

[Peter Derk · Rating 5 out of 5]

This held my interest on an airplane, and I could have been watching Gymkata (the movie that combines the thrill of gymnastics with the kill of karate, 4.3 IMDB score). It also mostly held my interest when I was the only person in a restaurant, seated at the bar, and the servers were having a very loud discussion about the practice of wearing a pair of underwear and then sending those underwear to perverts for $40. It should be noted that this conversation was EXTRA distracting because they were talking about someone else with my same first name in the course of this conversation and repeating it a lot. So I was partially distracted, but as distracting situations go, that's gotta be near the top.

The other thing I liked about this book is that it's a different kind of literary.

I went to a reading last week, and...how do I say this...the things I heard felt a little unrooted. Not concrete enough for me.

And some of it was worse. Some of it was writer-y bullshit that gets a pass because people who are into that sort of thing go to readings. It's like that thing where the snake is biting its own crank. That's how snakes work, right? They're just long, backwards penises with a head on one end?

This is totally different, way more satisfying, and it was such a switch from that sort of self-congratulatory, look what important work we're doing feeling, to something more tangible and real-feeling to me. I'm happy that books like this are out there.

[Juliet Escoria · Rating 5 out of 5]

I usually only read books by people with a PhD in either creative writing or English literature but I’ll make an exception for this guy any day! I didn’t even see any typos or misspellings. Hard to find these days, with all the kids and their junky phones! GET A LIFE KIDS. But not you, Bud. You’ve got a life. It was full of work, and also LOVE. You stay on that phone, Budder Cup, and keep on making more GREAT WORK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Ben Loory · Rating 5 out of 5]

Art isn’t something you should protect from yourself. Just run towards it full sprint and embrace how ridiculous your ideas are, how unguarded, how close to something a child might think up, lying on their back in a field overgrown with weeds.

[Joseph · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bud Smith is my friend, but even if Bud Smith was my worst enemy I'd give this book five stars, it's that good.

[Robert Vaughan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book on a Mexican beach, and in the plane back to America. It was perfect, a sort of saga like Andy Kaufman meets Jean Genet meets a Sufi master meets Sarah Silverman. Bud Smith is a friend and more. He grinds out books on the job; all the while loving life in its smallest grandeur. He's a tuba and a sunrise just out of sight. He's a Jersey guy with nothing to prove but love.

[Kelby Losack · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'll try my best to articulate why I loved this book more than most "literary" efforts. I saw a lot of myself in it, sure--the sibling fights and the blue collar, cash-strapped parents and the various construction jobs--but even more than the relatability of the content, what makes Work, um... work... is the down-to-earth delivery. The book reads like stories being told over beers by your friend who just finished a long shift and is fired up for the weekend. I read it out loud so my wife could enjoy it at the same time and we laughed a lot. Bud Smith rules.

[Meg Tuite · Rating 5 out of 5]

Many times I forget the good things about being on this planet. Bud Smith reminds me to take in every minute. Thank you, Bud! What a gift you are!

[Scott_McClanahan41 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Most book things now (with a few exceptions) are just built around nice, safe books written for nice and safe book club readers. These are usually the books you see on display at Barnes and Noble. These internet writers are, like, literally terrorists to me. They’re training as we speak. They’re getting ready to invade. They’re building an army. (Scott Mcclanahan)

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

I know I’m late to the game but I’m so happy to have finally gotten around to reading Bud Smith. This book was a pleasure to read—not like work at all.

[Claire Schneider · Rating 4 out of 5]

really enjoyed the voice and the view of the world from bud. felt very calm reading this. like there is no rush in life. just life as it comes. nice

[Kathy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of those books that feels like the writer is talking to you and you never want them to stop. This is also one of those books you keep close after you've read it. You flip open to a random page and read for a few minutes and feel better about life and writing and being human. Bud Smith is an interesting person with smart things to say and is emerging as a singular voice in the lit world and one you'll want to listen to. He writes like a book a day, so you'll have plenty to choose from. Lucky readers.

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book. THIS BOOK is pure and honest and without pretense and flawed (as in: human) and generous as heck and bursting with heart and beauty and brilliance. And joy. I want to make out with this book and give it to my friends and plant it under my pillow to sprout all the dreams.

"Energy gives energy if you are paying attention to it."

Thank you, Bud. For the gift of your energy. For your poetry and sweat.

For reminding us we don't need permission for anything of this bullshit.

For telling us: "Do your beautiful thing."

[David Catney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bud fucking Smith wrote a great fucking book.

[Alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book made me incredibly sad.

[Kane Bergstrom · Rating 5 out of 5]

I left my copy in the bathroom of a coin laundry

[Downward · Rating 5 out of 5]

this is a nonlinear nonfiction novel that uses bud smith's labor in heavy construction to telescope in on the ways that we shape our lives from stolen moment to moment. it's a working class, regional book about New Jersey and the ways that we might let all sorts of things dictate how our lives go but how it doesn't have to be that way and even if it does then we can find beauty in it anyway. beauty in magazines shoved in a toilet. beauty in a leaking gas tank. beauty in mud puddles so deep they're a threat. but also: beauty in sunsets. beauty in love. beauty in labor. there's a covert self-help aspect to this book; an undercurrent of electricity that will charge your batteries and make you feel a connection to humanity.

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

FIVE FUCKING STARS ON GOODREADS

[Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Funny and sincere about work, of all things. Could inspire a lazy person to work hard.

[Daniel Eastman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Here is my review:

I think Bud would be a fun person to hang out around. However, I don’t think that I am the sort of person Bud would like to hang out around. I do think Bud’s parents and my parents would probably enjoy hanging out around each other.

I’m pretty good at picking up heavy things. Sometimes I feel like I wasted or I am wasting my prime physical years by not working some grueling manual labor job. This book sort of reinforced that. I often think about changing course and learning a trade or something. Maybe.

Sometimes it made me feel better about the work I did in my life and sometimes it made me feel conflicted.

I like that Bud is a writer who never went to college. That’s inspiring to me.

Right now I am taking college classes though. Fuck it. Why not? Not getting any younger. I’m writing about my hometown and my family there because it’s something that I’ve always tried writing about and crashed and burned doing it. Couldn’t make it in a way that conveyed the charm I felt for this grimy little corner of the world so that other people might find it charming too. Would anyone really want to read that stuff? Is this structured in a way that would make a professor blush? There’s a part of the book where Bud more or less says that ain’t the point.

On page 188, he writes, “Today, go make something beautiful. Send it to me. I want to see. I’ve got all the time in the world for that.”

Work is the kind of book that makes you want to do it just to do it without a care in the world for how it’ll be received. Just do it because you can.

“Send it to me. I want to see.” Who knows? When this story is all finished, maybe I will.

Anyway, it’s a good book. Read it. Let’s hang out and chat about it. Or let’s hang out and chat about whatever else you’ve read.

[Scott Benoit · Rating 4 out of 5]

Astute and funny. Had me recalling strange memories about my time on the tools, where the choice of what to put in a sandwich involved whether I would be eating it outside in Alberta winter or whether I would be able to take my gloves off and chew easier. Outside eating requires softer cheese (Swiss), and moist bread (white), in order to not hate the work of chewing through a frozen brick. Icy lettuce no thanks. Working with the guy who pulled the trailer meant I could snake his small fetid microwave that he had permanently fastened to the side of the trailer. Sitting on an upturned plastic bucket (there are always dozens of buckets) is less hemorrhoid inducing than say a cold metal wheelbarrow. Shedding my clothes at the front door to avoid fouling the house with the smell of form oil. Resigning myself to the reality that if you get Acoustic sealant on your clothes or hair the only rationale thing to do is rub sawdust on it until it’s crusted over enough to not spread. So many memories.

[Frank · Rating 4 out of 5]

WORK is written by Bud Smith. It's an honest look at life through the eyes of a lunch-break writer slogging through back-breaking blue collar jobs. If there's not a lot to learn here, then there's sure enough to commiserate with.

This is the third Bud Smith book I've read. The more I read his work, the less I'm able to classify his writing style. Blue collar fiction seems the best way to frame it. Yet this is more poetic than F150. Not as weird as Tollbooth. It's somewhere in between and stunting else entirely.

If you've enjoyed anything by Bud Smith before, you'll want to read WORK also. Also, a great starting point from this author. To understand where he's coming from, you have to understand his WORK.

[Cavin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the book that shifted my entire perspective of literature. It showed me that the stories we tell ourselves and tell our friends are equally impactful on the page, that a heavy-machine operator or construction worker can also be a philosopher admired by the masses. Bud Smith writes for you and me, he writes for your mail man and he writes for your doctor. A writer for the people with anecdotes and lessons that will stick around long after you finish the book. A must read for any aspiring writer, something that will kick you into gear and get you tapping on your phone between bites of egg salad sandwiches during your work break.

[Seth Sawyers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bud Smith is the master of the kind of storytelling in a genre that ought to be called Here's a Pretty Good Story about Being Alive But I'm Not Going to Take Any of It Too Seriously. He's very easy to read and he's pretty smart and savvy, too, but he's not precious about it. We have one go at all of this, and here's how it was for me, and if you don't like it, who cares. Work is an honest, likeable memoir about working with your hands and the kind of people you work with while welding at a power plant and also the kind of food you eat and problems you run into. Bud Smith seems like your smart buddy who didn't go to college, and his writing's that way, too, and for that we're thankful.

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Literally brilliant. Like, luminescent. Existential in the best realest sort of way. I read it last month and already want to read it again.

[Amar Pai · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short and sweet

[Noah Roth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Humbled this battery boy, I tell ya hwhat. And increased his aversions to Jersey.

[Tyler Dempsey · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great book.

Gave me the feel that working in your teens/early 20s did.

Too much time. Sweating through summer caked in grass clippings. Joking with the 50 year old with 6 kids.

And, I had ideas.

But, didn't write any down.

Instead, I slurped McDonalds. And, got drunk and didn't make out with the girl I liked.

It all felt so happy.

And, terrible.

Like a waste of time.

Bud, made me proud of it. Showed me value in my own life.

Like a brother.

Thanks, Bud.

[Graham P · Rating 4 out of 5]

God bless, Bud Smith, for detailing the 'everyday' with a heartfelt minimalistic prose that shows us punching in and out of our daily lives. Smith doesn't take the road of bemoaning existence like a trust-fund kid who has to get a 9 to 5. He writes from his experience, and that's random jobs, friendships that come and go, calling out a blue-collar motherfucker as much as a white-collar motherfucker, and seeing that a dark day can still have some light in it.

To the working-class heroes, the vagabonds, the souls confined to the static of their lives. And then to those who embellish a simple good time, whether ribbing your co-workers, or having a laugh at some sucker who is still able to offer a smile in return.

(btw, contains one of the best descriptions of a food truck ever put to the page)

An oil-stained love letter to New Jersey.

[Bob Raymonda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bud Smith wrote about working heavy construction and his brother's teeth getting fixed and how his mom beat Legend of Zelda before his dad and how his dad fell down the stairs in the winter because he didn’t want to salt the steps and have to rebuild them in the spring. He wrote about making art in an unpretentious way and reading Kurt Vonnegut novels and building waterfalls and his wife, Rae, and so many other things. I devoured it in a day and I am so happy to have stumbled upon this wonderful artist. Wow.