Joe Bageant

Recalling Joe's eagerness to help others

By Justin E. H. Smith
www.jehsmith.com 

Joe Bageant died Saturday. He was my father's very close friend over the past several years, and was an encouraging presence for me as well. This clip from the 2010 documentary, The Kingdom of Survival, shows him, I think, at his defiant best:

 

I was first introduced to Joe, through my father's mediation, right around the time I was giving up on overtly progressive-cause-based writing, and moving into the role of the apolitical curiosus in which I still find myself (and for which I hope to provide an adequate defense soon). I had taken to using the biggest words I could find, and affecting a know-it-all tone on whatever obscure topic captured my interest. But Joe's straight, lucid language provided for me a counter-model of articulacy: he says what he thinks so clearly in this clip, there can be no doubt as to what he represents and why he feels the need to speak and to write about it.

Bageant Moves On

We don't last, and there's no warranty

Joe Bageant and Fred Reed in Ajijic, Mexico, 2008

By Fred Reed
www.fredoneverything.net

Jocotepec, Mexico -- Joe lived awhile down the lake. We would visit him of an afternoon, Vi and I, and find him, a bear of a man, bearded mountain Buddha, writing on the porch of his one-room place in Ajijic. Always he wore his old fishing vest, in which I suspect he was born, and sometimes he carried a small laptop in one of its pockets. Usually we adjourned to the living room, which was also the bedroom, dining room, and salon. He would fetch bottles of local red, or make the jalapeño martinis he invented -- there was a bit of mad chemist in him -- and we would talk for hours of art, music, the news, politics, and people. Especially people. Sometimes he grabbed one of the guitars from the wall and sang blues, at which he was good. I guess growing up dirt poor in West Virginia puts that kind of music in you.

Joe could fool you. He talked slow and Southern, lacked pretensions, and you could talk to him for weeks without realizing how very damned smart he was.
 One day we dropped in and he said he had just found that he had cancer. It went fast. He died Saturday.

Joe Bageant, 1946-2011

After a vibrant life, Joe Bageant died yesterday following a four-month struggle with cancer. He was 64. Joe is survived by his wife, Barbara, his three children, Timothy, Patrick and Elizabeth, and thousands of friends and admirers. He is also survived by his work and ideas.

According to Joe's wishes, he will be cremated. His family will hold a private memorial service.

 

Some Fight Back

A Review of Joe Bageant's Rainbow Pie: A Redneck Memoir

By Michael Donnelly

Q: How do you know if you are rich, middle class or poor in America?

A: When you go to work, if your name is on the building -- you’re rich; if your name is on an office door -- you’re middle class; if your name is on your shirt -- you're poor…and, if someone else’s name is on your hand-me-down work shirt.

You always hear about natural-born musicians, artists, teachers, nurses, even businessmen. But what happened to the natural-born farmer and extended farm family when the rural-to-urban migration saw us go from 92% of Americans making their living (and dying) on the land in 1900 to around 2% today? What happened to the natural sense of community that engendered -- that "we're all in it together," culture we now long for? And, what about America's supposedly classless society? How's that working out for ya?

Here’s a new book that answers these questions and more.

Rainbow Pie listed on Amazon-US

Posted by Ken Smith (Joe's web grunt)
 

Joe Bageant was pleased to learn this morning that his second book, Rainbow Pie: A Redneck Memoir, has finally been listed for advance orders on Amazon-US. The book is listed as "temporarily out of stock" even though it has never been "in stock" for US readers. A shipment of Rainbow Pie has been sent to Amazon-US and deliveries to US buyers should begin within the next week or two.

Rainbow Pie was first published six months ago by Scribe Publications in Australia where it quickly made the best-seller list. Scribe is also the publisher for the US edition. In the UK, Rainbow Pie was published by Portobello/Granta.

Set between 1950 and 1963, Rainbow Pie is a coming-of-age memoir discussing one of America’s most taboo subjects -- social class. Combining recollection, accounts, and analysis, the book leans on Maw, Pap, Ony Mae, and other members of this rambunctious Scots-Irish Bageant family to chronicle the often-heartbreaking post-war journey of 22 million rural Americans into the cities, where they became the foundation of a permanent white underclass. Telling the stories of the gun-owning, uninsured, underemployed white tribes inhabiting America’s heartlands, Rainbow Pie offers an intimate look at what was lost in the orchestrated post-war shift from an agricultural to an urban consumer society.