Natalia Singer's plan, when she headed for Seattle in 1979, was to get laid off, go on unemployment, and become laid back. Meanwhile she would train herself to become a writer. Rejecting the avid materialism of her generation and the violence of American culture, she vowed to surround herself with natural beauty, steer clear of her mentally ill mother, and contribute nothing to the fluorescent-lit, acronym-ridden, anesthetizing military-industrial complex. Her quest, which she hoped would bring her peace, safety, and creative fulfillment, actually put her increasingly in harm's way. It has, however, paid enormous dividends for readers who here have the perverse yet exquisite pleasure of following Singer's low-budget search for a bohemian haven during the last gasp of the cold war.
Singer's tortuous path, chronicled with self-deprecating wit and disconcerting candor, leads her to a duplex in Seattle, a Buddhist monastery in the Catskills, a ghost town on the Olympic Peninsula, a beach hut in Mexico, graduate school in western Massachusetts, and even a Left Bank convent, but it never frees her from her identity and obligations as an American, either at home or abroad. Singer blends memoir with cultural history to critique Reaganomics, military buildups in the face of eroding social programs and growing national debt, the hypocrisy of so-called family values, and her own complicity in all of it. Scraping By in the Big Eighties is, more than anything, about taking politics personally. Lyrical, meditative, occasionally heartbreaking, and often darkly comic, this book about mistakes blithely made in decades past is nonetheless still timely today.
"Natalia Singer has captured the '80s perfectly—the real, tough '80s that serve as the prelude to our current rightward plunge. But more than that she tells two timeless stories: a hard one about what it means to have a crazy mother, and a sweet one about what it means to come to terms and to come of age. Her writing is blessedly funny, relaxed; her story is unexpectedly beautiful and resonant. A book not to miss."—Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature
"With the authority of a prophet, the street smarts of a stand-up comic, and the compassion of a saint, Natalia Rachel Singer leads us into the fractious corners of an America she will not allow herself or us to ignore or forget. Writing with wit, élan, and rare insight, Singer captures the collisions of a splintered personal world in an equally splintered culture. Never didactic, she is simply a chronicler of the times of the highest literary order and an unflinching memoirist, someone who deserves the widest of audiences."—Robin Hemley, author of Nola: A Memoir of Faith, Art, and Madnes
"Singer's book is a memoir, but it is also social commentary, political critique, and a portrait of its times that, in its best moments, can stand beside something like Joan Didion's The White Album or Slouching Towards Bethlehem."—Rosellen Brown, author of Before and After and Half a Heart
"A portrait of a time that doesn't jibe with so many of the official versions, in which the eighties were halcyon days filled with milk and honey, kindness and plenty, happiness and political harmony. Ms. Singer's work stands up to those lies and more."—Bill Roorbach, author of Writing Life Stories
"The charmingly personal becomes the mightily political in a muscular, well-wrought series of essays that move chronologically through an appalling decade of public and private self-indulgence. . . . Singer has certainly done her homework for this entertaining refresher course on the decade of big hair and small mercies: the acknowledgements alone offer an excellent bibliography of an era that many readers who lived through it would rather forget."—Kirkus Reviews
“Singer. . . . chronicles her progress as she flees west from conventionality, materialism, conservatism, and her disintegrating relationship with her schizophrenic mother, while exploring the bohemian seduction of nonconformity and recording her experiences in a sultry brew of politics and personal experience.”—Caitlin Grogan, Play: The Daily Northwestern Entertainment Magazine
“Singer reminds us that, like the late 1990’s, the early 80’s were considered a boom time for some Americans. But many others faced inflation-tattered incomes, stagnant careers and. . . . a sense of collective defeat.”—Seattle Times
“A tumultuous yet life-affirming quest for truth, beauty, and creativity in the self-absorbed 80’s…. Straightforward and engaging.”—Cheryl Burke, Bust
“Emanates quiet authority, canny street smarts, and lots of open-eyed, broad-hearted compassion.”—Christian Martin, Bellingham Weekly
“Insight. . . . makes Scraping By in the Big Eighties worth reading. . . . Singer shows that there is more than one way of doing things. And perhaps more importantly, more than one type of person to get them done.”—The Colgate-Maroon News
“Here is a memoir with bite. . . . It is much more than her personal story—though that would make for a very interesting book all by itself. It is also a scathing critique of the Reagan years. This will be a controversial book, but. . . . a page turner.”—The Michigan Historical Review