Are there any good writers within the past century who worked blue-collar jobs - particularly in the trades?
David Foster Wallace
>>7824067
he was a professor
>>7824063
Stephen King
>>7824079
Not always
>>7824063
belaño
H8 aside, Charles Bukowski held plenty of low-skill labor jobs before he started writing poetry or fiction novels. He even describes a few moments of these jobs in plenty of his works, I think its the 2nd part of his short story, Confessions of a Man Crazy Enough to Live With Beasts, he narrates a single night in a slaughterhouse, a meathouse.
Raymond Carver
Kafka is well known to have worked
Steinbeck
Jack Vance did shitwork-level jobs in the mining indiustry.
>>7824063
mccarthy, as a mechanic
My man Donald Ray Pollock. Worked at a paper mill for like 30 years and didn't start writing until he was in his fifties.
Hłasko, Stachura, Bukowski (not that good but not very bad either),
I think Faulkner
>>7824208
Factotum and Post Office by Buk are basically portraits of his life while blue collar.
>>7824063
Have a look at this list, OP. It's a list of people who worked in a foundry at some point in their lives, though most (being notable subjects of a wiki entry) went on to do more interesting things with their lives.
Much of the list are simply tradesmen who became leaders in their industry, but there's at least one man of letters, and some founding fathers, possibly more:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Foundrymen
