Wildcat - Paperback

by William Trent Pancoast (Author)

Wildcat has been banned by the United Auto Workers International Union: General Motors and the United Auto Workers lock horns in this tale of a go-for-broke wildcat strike. Wildcat is set in Vietnam-era, 1970 Ohio at a General Motors stamping plant--lots of laughs and labor history, and a not-nostalgic look at what Vietnam cost us all.---------- In most of the recent books, articles, and analyses of General Motors, few armchair critics have bothered to write about the company's attitude toward the rank-and-file workers who build its cars. Fortunately, we now have Bill Pancoast, a front-line autoworker in one of GM's key factories for many years, to thank for filling that void. For those trying to understand why the auto industry is where it is today, Wildcat will provide some of the answers. --Dave Elsila, editor, Solidarity magazine, 1976-1998 and former editor, American Teacher and Changing Education----------Bill Pancoast's Wildcat is a funny, sad, and thoroughly convincing portrait of autoworkers--many damaged by war, broken dreams, or substance abuse--dependent on a General Motors plant in fictional Cranston, Ohio, during the Sixties and Seventies. After reading this moving story, I once again asked myself: why is the subject of work so often neglected by today's fiction writers? Fortunately, we have Pancoast to fill in some of the blanks. --Donald Ray Pollock, author of Knockemstiff---------- Most novelists haven't been anywhere near an auto plant, let alone worked in one, but Bill Pancoast has. Wildcat takes us inside a spontaneous strike at an Ohio stamping plant in the Vietnam era, showing how righteous anger, insane hijinks, and bloodshed can break out when workers decide to do something--anything--about brutal and boring working conditions.--Christopher Phelps, Associate professor, American Studies, University of Nottingham

Author Biography

William Trent Pancoast 1949- "Blue collar writer" is how the Wall Street Journal referred to William Trent Pancoast in a 1986 front page article. By that time, his working-class-flavored short stories and essays had appeared in many Midwestern and international magazines and newspapers. Pancoast's novel Crashing had been published in 1983. In 1986, his United Auto Worker's union history was published. Pancoast would spend the next twenty years as the editor of a monthly union newspaper-the Union Forum-while continuing to publish his fiction, essays, and editorials not only in the Union Forum but also in Solidarity magazine, the 1.2 million circulation United Auto Workers International publication. The term "blue collar writer" suits Pancoast just fine. As he said in the WSJ interview, "The reason I write about work is that that's just about damn near all I've ever done." The dust jacket of Crashing notes, "He has worked as a construction laborer, gas station attendant, railroad section hand and brakeman, factory laborer, commercial laundry foreman, and machinist. He has been an English teacher and is a journeyman die maker." Pancoast supplements his blue collar writing credentials with a B.A. in English from the Ohio State University. William Trent Pancoast is now retired from the auto industry after 30 years as a die maker and union newspaper editor. Born in Galion, Ohio, in 1949, Pancoast now lives in Ontario, Ohio.