In the 01960s, lived in a $20-a-month apartment in North Beach in San Francisco without a job. In discussion with and , Stewart notes the advantages unemployment brought him.
Conversation
"Our generations really got the best of post-war capitalism (which, I realise, could equally well have been called postwar socialism) - that little stretch pre-Reagan and Thatcher where social mobility was made possible by the generosity of thought of earlier generations....
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...In your case it was the Army and your Mum; in mine, free education and social welfare. And in both cases a social situation where sharing and competition were in a more equal balance." So I replied to him...
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"Maybe now the way to stay light of foot when young is 'Don’t get a job you can’t leave instantly when something intriguing beckons. Jobs that confer skills are best. The more kinds of skills, the better.'”...
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The summer I was a logger in Oregon, a choker-setter, was like that.
(Among other things, it made me the fittest I have ever been in my life. At the end of the summer I beat my athlete older brother in a foot race.)...
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(Of course he had been an Oregon logger first. That's how I got the job. And he did it for three years, in even tougher conditions than mine.)
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(Logging was in our family. The reason we had cousins logging in Oregon who could hire us was because their grandparents' generation had run out of trees in Michigan. They had clear-cut the whole state.)...
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And THAT story is best told in Jim Harrison's astringent novel TRUE NORTH.
smile.amazon.com/True-North-Jim