大象传媒

Joe Queenan on working for a summer in a bubble gum factory. The first of five talks by writers on the temporary jobs they took before writing full time. Tedium or raw material? Is the summer job an enemy of promise or the best experience for a would be writer otherwise chained to their desk?

The American critic Joe Queenan begins the series with a memorable account of his time at a bubble gum factory in Philadelphia. "This was not the way I had expected to spend what had come to be known as The Summer of Love," he writes.

Joe worked the graveyard shift at Fleer's Bubble Gum, inventors of the Dubble Bubble, and most of his time was spent compacting trash. "I loved telling my friends, especially girlfriends, that I was working the graveyard shift. Using terminology like that made me feel like a man. I was not a man. I was not even close to being a man, but after that first summer in the factory, I felt at least that I could masquerade as one.".