The Roanoker - July/August 2014 - 10

R THE 360
"Factory Man": Meeting JBIII
Beth Macy's first book is a triumph of the things that made her a star at the paper:
superlative reporting, a conscience on steroids, fine writing and a great sense of fun.
IF YOU'RE LUCKY ENOUGH to have spent
several kinds of time - as neighbor, softball
coach, interviewee, f 'rinstance - with The
Roanoke Times' former star reporter/writer/
columnist Beth Macy, then you know that
interaction in any context will automatically
and thoroughly explode into contexts well
beyond the immediate one.
Which makes it not the least surprising
that her first book is just exactly like that.
"Factory Man: How One Furniture Maker
Battled Offshoring, Stayed Local - and
Helped Save an American Town" (even Little, Brown has fallen to the need to try to tell
half the story in the subtitle), is ostensibly
- and primarily - a book about the hotbed,
heyday and headlong fall of the American
furniture industry, centered as it was just
down the road in the likes of Bassett and
Martinsville.
But Beth Macy's curiosity, intensity, passion and intelligence don't let a story of some
factories come anywhere close to being just
a big fat story about some factories. Her
immersion here, as in the newspaper writing over 25 years (my wife still occasionally
recollects pieces from the life-with-family
column far back into that quarter century),
is not only vertical - I now know the Bassett family's history, quirks, pecadillos and
predilections perhaps better than I know my
own family's, for just one instance - but also
broadly and delightfully horizontal as well.
As in, say, giving us a little snapshot, within
the first three paragraphs of Chapter 1, of
life at home for the author: "Right now as
I type, I'm sitting in a paisley recliner that
my husband and I still fight over because
it's the comfiest seat in our 1926 American
foursquare."
And it's not just to (delightful) snippets of
her own life that Macy diverts on occasion,

10 JULY/AUGUST 2014

but also to pieces of the themes that defined
her newspaper career. As we get to know
the Bassett family, we digress for an early
chapter to listen to Roanoke historian John
Kern talk about discrimination and segregation, and of the relative progressiveness of
Bassett to allow blacks and whites to work
together. In gentle, stinging commentary,
Macy tells the story of a black man who used
the whites-only restroom because the "colored" one was occupied, and was chastised
by his foreman.
"The last time I checked, shit was shit, and
I was not gonna go on myself," Macy quotes
the man, before telling us that the foreman
then had no choice but to walk away.
Still, the overwhelming power and force
of the book is upon one John Bassett III, the
irascible, determined, profane, patriotic and
powerful scion whose real gift is "making
you believe you're an idiot if you don't see
things the way he does" and who, in most
realms of life, "loved to play hardball."
And did so most gloriously in the context
of relentlessly and pervasively fighting the
Chinese furniture industry, an entity that
copied American designs to the tee, built
them on the cheap, sent them to the U.S. by
the boatload and in the process transformed
the Martinsville-Bassett area from a pocket
of American success and prosperity to the
highest-unemployment-area-of-the-state
that we know today.
The exception is a 700-employee furniture factory in Galax: "Not only is VaughnBassett the last girl left standing on the island, she just happens to be good-looking
too," is JBIII's characterization, adding that
she "can put a wrinkle in a blouse."
Beth Macy's meticulous recounting of that
business story is also a tale of this part of the
state, of political intrigue, of international

"Factory Man" is due from Little, Brown in July.

travel, of people who had their lifetime jobs
cut from under them, of a reporter so deep
and steeped in her subject as to become part
of it: "Mostly [JBIII] called me on the phone,
never once saying hello when I picked up.
Sometimes he yelled at me; other times he
made me laugh . . . He called whenever he
felt like it. Weeknights and weekends. During
the last day of my Christmas vacation ('Well,
if I'm talkin' to you, then I'm workin' too!').
During early-evening hikes up Mill Mountain with my husband and my dog. ('Why
you breathin' so hard?')."
If you've been in this town for any length
of time and pay any degree of attention to it,
you've read Beth Macy's award-winning work
in the newspaper. Think about the best pieces
you remember, multiply that by 400 pages,
get "Factory Man" and take your time with
it. It's a big ol' delicious toasted sandwich of
a book.
-KURT RHEINHEIMER
THE

R OANOKER.COM

http://www.THEROANOKER.COM

The Roanoker - July/August 2014

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Roanoker - July/August 2014