Blue Collar, White Collar, No Collar: Stories of Work, edited by Richard Ford

Blue Collar, White Collar, No Collar: Stories of Work
Edited by Richard Ford
Harper Perennial
Five stars
Reviewed by Jessica Gribble

This collection of stories by very famous authors is about work. The stories are initially notable because all proceeds from the sale of the book go to fund 826michigan, a program that offers free youth writing, tutoring, and publishing programs in eight U.S. cities. They remain notable because there are so many varied jobs and characters represented, and the writing is so impressive across the board. I don’t have room here to write a little bit about every story—and that would shortchange all of them—so I’ll concentrate on my favorites and let readers discover their own favorites. Suffice it to say that this collection is full of imaginative and realistic stories that cover the gamut of types of jobs, emotions about work, and types of employees.

Deborah Eisenberg’s “The Flaw in the Design” perfectly captures the upper-middle-class life: a husband and wife who believe themselves open-minded, who pretend to have the perfect family, but who cordoned themselves off from the “natives” in the foreign places they lived while their son was growing up. Now their son is rebelling, and they treat each other gingerly, the guilt of having profited from unsavory conditions in the back of their minds. Eisenberg does such a good job with insinuation and tone that the reader keenly appreciates both the polite surface level of the story and the underlying tension.

“The Store,” by Edward P. Jones, is solid and heartbreaking, the story of a young man in a downtrodden neighborhood who learns to be a man by working for Mrs. Jenkins in her store. The protagonist is initially unreliable, but becomes reliable. We come to understand him and his world through the dialogue, both spoken and internal. We come to care about him, especially once something terrible happens. This story is a whole novel in a few pages.

Thomas McGuane’s “Cowboy” is remarkable primarily because of its incredible language. A great writer can use words you’ve never heard of and you figure out exactly what they mean: waller, cavvy, and sweenied. A cowboy goes to work for the old sumbitch and the old lady, and he narrates the experience like this: “I broke the catch colt, which I didn’t know was no colt as he was the biggest snide in the cavvy.” Slowly, we learn each character’s back story; it takes them years to tell the stories to each other. The cowboy is good at hard work, and he and the old folks become family.

“Minotaur,” by Jim Shepherd, tells you just enough about what “people in the industry call the black world, which is all about projects so far off the books that you’re not even allowed to put CLASSIFIED in the gap in your résumé afterwards.” Quickly we learn how black ops wrecks relationships, and quickly we become intent on learning just a little more of the secret. That curiosity drives us to the end of the story, where we never learn any more, but we somehow—delightfully—feel like part of a secret society.

There are so many different kinds of work included here: occupational therapist, thief, student, furniture deliverer, writer, typewriter repairman, tour guide, train waiter, and even a room full of immigrants who can’t find work. There’s no cohesive theme, like “work is soul-sucking” or “work imparts dignity.” Instead, sometimes you forget that the stories are about work, because you get so involved in the characters’ lives. These stories are expertly written and paced. Anyone who’s ever worked at any kind of job—and that’s basically everyone—will find something here to enjoy or to be impressed by.