Sunday, May 13, 2007
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| Image courtesy of bn.com. |
STAFF WRITER
DISHWASHER, by Pete Jordan; HarperPerennial, 384 pages, $13.95.
If you're tired of running the rat race, Pete Jordan's glorification of supreme underachievement may be just what you need.
For 12 years, Jordan washed dishes, one of the lowliest minimum wage jobs in America. But the lifestyle was highly addictive: endless food from the "bus tub buffet," access to booze, and the freedom to walk away from any job with no consequences.
Jordan captured the imagination of a national audience during his reign as Dish Master with a zine appropriately called Dishwasher. His mission to wash dishes in all 50 states had former "suds busters" enthralled.
But even as Jordan writes about historical dishwashers like George Orwell and Gerald Ford, he can't answer one question: "What woman would choose to live with a dishwasher?"
That woman ends up being his wife, Amy Joy; but as Jordan discovers, husband and Dish Master are mutually exclusive.
In the end, the story reads like a drug addict's memoir: Jordan can't quit dishwashing until it's his time, and he can't quit until he finds something worth quitting for.
"In the city where most Americans go to indulge in their vices like pot-smoking and legalized prostitution," writes Jordan, happily married but unemployed in Amsterdam, "I found myself cut off from my own vice, cold turkey."
E-mail: shih@northjersey.com
Copyright © 2007 North Jersey Media Group Inc.
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