Reading this exceptional novel — first novel I’ve read in a long time that I felt the need to go buy a hardback copy upon completion — while I’m reading Guion McKee’s book, The Problem of Jobs, a survey of Philadelphia industrial policy in the 1960s and 1970s.

This exchange on page 274 of American Rust:

“Company looking after you?
“Yep. Got us on this profit-sharing plan, stock’s up a hundred percent. we just hired Benny Garnic’s son, matter of fact.”
“Thought he was a computer programmer.”
“Shipped his job off to India,” said Riley. “Kid goes to school so he wouldn’t get laid off like his dad did, but then…”

“It does make you feel better about things,” said Frank, ” in a purely cynical way. Those kinds of people didn’t have much sympathy for us twenty years ago, I can remember it was asshole after asshole going on TV and saying it was our faults for not going to college.”

“Benny Garnic’s son probably doesn’t feel better.”
“I got him started at nineteen-sixty and hour,” said Frank. “He won’t lose his house the way we all did.”