Customer Reviews

On the Line

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

i wouldnt ordinarily give this book five stars. i think five star book reviews belong to items like "la bas" by husymans or "the trial" by kafka or "the sheltering sky" by paul bowles or, to me @least, "play it as it lays" by joan didion. five star books, i think, are rare.

this book, otoh, is fine. it is certainly a well enough written book. it's dismal, true, but its dismal feel relates directly not just to its subject matter but to the time in which the author addressed that subject matter &, of course, interwoven w/ that would be the author's political perspective.

i am, how you say, upping the stars because the only other review hereupon amazon was written by someone whose political perspective clearly has no room, or at least warm room, to encompass that of the author's----even @a half century's remove.

if one's bias colors one's experience to an extreme, it's fine, but an opposing soldier in the verbal battle of objectivity might help keep the pot from boiling until its single-perspective runneth over.

okay done.

Multiple fictional short stories based on composite real life people written by a known communist. All characters are on a Ford production line in the 50's, hate their job, have no real friends at work or off, have dysfunctional marriages,no joy in life. A really gray depressing existence. The author's use of hyperbole to show what a terrible life it is to be "On the Line" comes across as communist propaganda. I had to read this for a masters history course. If you don't have to buy this don't, unless you like being depressed by your reading.