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    Dishwasher: One Man's Quest to Wash Dishes in All 50 States
    Dishwasher: One Man's Quest to Wash Dishes in All 50 States
    Dishwasher: One Man's Quest to Wash Dishes in All 50 States
    Ebook390 pages13 hours

    Dishwasher: One Man's Quest to Wash Dishes in All 50 States

    By Pete Jordan

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Dishwasher is Public Radio favorite and underground celebrity Pete Jordan’s amusing memoir of his dishwashing extravaganza. Part adventure, part parody, and part miraculous journey of self-discovery, it is the unforgettable account of Jordan's transformation from itinerant seeker into "Dishwasher Pete"—unlikely folk hero, writer, publisher of his own cult zine, and the ultimate professional dish dog—and how he gave it all up for love.

    “For 12 years, I was the most prolific dishlicker of them all. From 1989 to 2001, I dished my way around the country, unwittingly searching for direction. From a bagel joint in New Mexico to a Mexican joint in Brooklyn; from a dinner train in Rhode Island to the Lawrence Welk Resort in Branson, Missouri; from an upper-crust ladies’ club to a crusty hippie commune—I washed the nation’s dishes. Whether it was a gig so lousy that I walked out within an hour or one where I toiled 120 hours a week, I remained a man on a mission: to bust suds in every state in the union.”—Pete Jordan

    A smart, funny, and surprising look at life, Dishwasher is sure to appeal to fans of Nick Hornby and Tom Perotta.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateOct 13, 2009
    ISBN9780061743344
    Dishwasher: One Man's Quest to Wash Dishes in All 50 States
    Author

    Pete Jordan

    Pete Jordan is the author of the memoir Dishwasher: One Man's Quest to Wash Dishes in All Fifty States. Pete's work has been featured on public radio's This American Life and in the New York Times. He lives in Amsterdam.

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    Reviews for Dishwasher

    3.5/5

    121 ratings8 reviews

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    • 3/5
      A mediocre ode to chronic quitting. It's been reviewed favorably, I'm not familiar with the author's zine, and didn't find the humor in it.
    • 3/5
      An ode to quitting.
    • 5/5
      I loved this book, from beginning to end. Such an interesting journey and wonderfully funny and insightful.
    • 4/5
      A fun light read. Dishwasher Pete's tales of dishwashing across America are mixed with bits of history that most people would never hear about otherwise. Smarter than average vacation reading.
    • 4/5
      An interesting travelog where the premise is less so seeing as doing in the various places. I like the people he met, and those he didn't including Darryl who napped himself to death.
    • 4/5
      Dishwasher is an attempt to bring light to, if not glorify, the life of "dish dogs" or dishwashers. The protagonist gives us a brief life history and then through a series of blue collar jobs finally settles on washing dishes as a lifestyle. He decides to attempt to wash dishes in all 50 states and this book is his record of the adventures that went along with that. The book is obviously a pretty light hearted read and the reader will soon find themselves cheering for the narrator. The seedy underbelly of the food business is not so much as revealed as it is glorified. Jordan portrays himself as the slacker's ideal and shows no respect for any authority figure including cooks. This is an entertaining book for the stories of the characters but even these stories cannot overcome the other flaws in the book.
    • 4/5
      Just what the title says. A light read, very enjoyable, but without a great deal of character development or real insight into what made the author tick, or in this case wash. Pete (the dishwasher) seems to have friends all over the country, even manages to eventually find and marry a girl, but tells us nothing about his love-life, or lack of, and very little about any of his friendships. Other than things like "A guy I met in Sudsville had offered to let me sleep on his floor...," we learn almost nothing about the friend or how they met or how they got along when Pete was a guest. This is likely a reflection of Pete's personality, one that prompted him to seek out the dishpit partly as a way of avoiding having to interact with people. However, like the scum on the dishes and pots and pans, I wish that Pete had scrubbed deeper beneath the surface of his stories to reveal what might be beneath. On the other hand, the whole book is maybe more like the plates that Pete washed; well built and functional, sometimes beautiful, but just not a lot of food left on them.
    • 3/5
      A very inconsistent book. I just get the feeling that it was poorly edited. The only time I got any sense of his personality was from the few semi-researched historical bits. The few attempts of telling his own personal story ends up reading like stats from the back of a baseball card. There's more about his penchant for scavenging for loose change than his relationship with Amy Joy, his future wife. I wish I could take a look at his "Dishwasher 'zines" to compare writing styles. However, with the recent flood of chef-ographies, it is nice to see one from the other end of the kitchen.

    Book preview

    Dishwasher - Pete Jordan

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