FLINT, Michigan

--When Ben Hamper's memoir of working on the General Motors assembly line was published in 1991, he only hoped enough copies would sell so that the Flint Public Library would stock it on its shelves.

That was more than 20 years ago, but people are still buying "Rivethead," enough for the Flint Township Barnes & Noble to invite him for a

.

"It still sells, which is heartwarming to know after 20 years," Hamper said.

"This will be the first book signing I’ve done in at least a decade, but somebody from Barnes and Noble contacted me about a month ago and said they always receive a lot of inquiries about the book and orders for the book and wondered if I might come down and sign some, so I said yeah, it made sense."

Hamper is also giving a

.

"Rivethead" recounts Hamper's experiences and observations as a factory worker for General Motors. The book is known for being as sarcastic and funny as it is honest as he writes about all the ways he and others dealt with the monotony of working on an assembly line.

Hamper's fans have praised him for giving people a look inside the factory and for not being afraid to say exactly what he thought about some of his supervisors or higher-ups within the company -- or what he saw them doing. Others have criticized him for giving a negative view of GM and the United Auto Workers union.

After "Rivethead" was published, it became a quick success and Hamper soon was interviewed on

and by David Letterman. He was on the cover of publications like the Wall Street Journal.

A lot of the sales now come from colleges and universities, Hamper said.

"I’ve always felt it’s kind of ironic that I never made it to college, but my book did. I get a lot of emails from students who want me to help them out on their answers or get extra credit by talking to the author. Yeah, they use it all over the place. Usually in labor studies, or bizarre cults or terrifying religion," Hamper said.

Before he wrote the book, Hamper wrote a regular column about factory life for the Flint Voice and later the Michigan Voice, both publications started by Michael Moore. The column became so popular he was published in magazines such as Harper's and Mother Jones. Those columns provided much of content for the book.

Hamper now lives about 20 miles outside of Traverse City, where he hosts two radio shows for WNMC. On both shows --

, the other old-time country western -- Hamper tries to expose his listeners to "obscure" music that isn't often found in the mainstream.

Hamper recently spoke with the Flint Journal about music, Flint and some of the things he hopes he got across in "Rivethead:"

In "Rivethead" you talk about how you and a friend want to grow up to be DJs. Now you're hosting two radio shows.

I guess it’s sort of an extension of that. I mean, that’s what we did back then a lot, just sit in our bedrooms and listen to music, take the bus down to Hatfield's Records, look through their selections down there. I probably got my start in writing then. The first thing I ever wrote that got published were record reviews at the old Flint Voice, with Michael Moore. And then I did a radio show in Flint for 10 years.

Do you consider yourself more a music enthusiast or a writer?

Probably more of a music enthusiast more than a writer, certainly a lot more prolific as a music enthusiast.

You said you're back in Flint about every six weeks or so. It seems like there are two attitudes about the city: that it's rebounding or deteriorating. What do you think?

Well, I can see both sides. There still seems to be a continuing deterioration overall but downtown has become a lot more vibrant since I lived there. So that’s good for them. But the overall is still sort of a dismal deterioration.

Is it a different Flint than what you were writing about in "Rivethead"?

I suppose so, because when I wrote "Rivethead" a lot more people were employed. Due to those circumstances there was probably a lot less crime and a lot less, you know, general chaos, desperation. But I mean, some of the intrinsic fabric of Flint was probably the same.

Do you still talk to anyone in the shops?

Most of the guys that I worked with are either retired or long ago took buyouts. I do have some family members who are still there, like sisters-in-law and cousins, but not many, no.

Do you still identify with the Rivethead persona?

I’m not averse to being identified as Rivethead, you know, though I would have to put a qualification on it. I mean, I’m no longer any kind of expert on General Motors or auto workers. Certainly, I think I was for the dozen years I spent there. I sort of resist commenting on it as an expert because to me it’s borderline fraudulent to try to answer questions about current-day auto workers. I get a lot of phone calls from newspapers who want me to comment on recent happenings with GM or the UAW and I sort of refrain from doing that. I’m comfortable speaking about what I knew when I worked there.

Maybe you'll want to refrain from this one, but what were your thoughts on the GM bailouts?

Well, I don’t know if I really had any, you know? Obviously, my initial sentiment was to see GM somehow pull through and succeed, and I’m glad that they were being thrown a lifeline. And as it turned out that it was wise. They managed to hit their stride again, as opposed to the Wall Street bailout.

In "Rivethead" you talk about being at Flint Voice meetings where people are always talking about world issues and things...

That bored the hell out of me?

Yeah. So have you followed things recently like the Occupy Wall Street movement?

Not necessarily. I mean, I don’t know why, but through some mysterious context of the book, people assume I’m an activist of some sort. I mean, basically I was just like a private reporter. I was just trying to make sense out of my own world in the factory. I didn’t have any wide-scope agenda writing that book. It was just sort of something that came with the job description.

How did the book come to be?

Once again, with my underwhelming sense of motivation it wasn’t anything I put into action. What happened is, the popularity of the columns in the Flint and Michigan Voice sort of just led to other opportunities. They started getting reprinted in various magazines, like Harper’s ran one. I guess that was a big one. The Detroit Free Press started rerunning some of them, so there was more visibility.

Then, when (Michael) Moore went to Mother Jones and the Voice stopped, the Free Press offered to have me continue my columns in their Sunday magazine. So this visibility led to a young agent in New York named David Black who must have had his antenna out for people he could maybe call together.

So he called me and said, I think you have a book inside you, and I still remember my exact reply was, "apparently you’re holding someone else’s X-rays up to the light."

So I never thought about it, but he sort of sold me on it. He said, "the book’s half-written with all these columns you have, and you could add beginnings and ends and all of that, and I think I can pitch this." And he did. Within a week we had a book contract with Warner Books.

And then it just took off?

It was a large shock to me, especially. I mean, it came right out and Warner put me on a book tour and I ended up on Letterman and Today show and stuff like that. Just every week something would occur and I would just shake my head. I was like, boy that’s somewhat amazing, and then we sold the movie rights. Sold the movie rights a couple times. But the first time was the large rights option to Warner Brothers.

Why didn't it ever happen?

We had a lot of close calls and frustrating turns, but it’s never been made as of yet. At one point it was sold to Castle Rock and

wrote the screenplay and was heavily involved, and he and

Matt Dillon

came to Flint. Dillon was going to play me. And they hung around in Flint for two or three days and we went basically on a 48-hour bar crawl, and achieved nothing but three massive hangovers.

People seem to either love or hate your book.

“No wonder there’s a rattle in the back of my Suburban.” (laughs) Personally, the feedback I’ve gotten has been much more positive than negative. But you’re always going to have your negative people.

And that’s one thing, the assumption is probably my own fault, because of the sort of sarcastic nature that I would write in. I didn’t want to write a phony account of what I experienced in the shop, so it was pretty unblemished, all the drinking and the short-cuts and schemes, but perhaps I didn’t hammer it home hard enough, the fact that me and the guys I’m talking about, we did a hell of a good job. I mean, we couldn’t have pulled these stunts off if we were drunk on our asses all the time and/or missing work. We would have been reprimanded, fired, and I had a clean record and I think every supervisor I ever had would say I was an excellent worker. We weren’t at war with GM, we were at war and having an ongoing battle daily with the time clock, the clock on the wall.

That's an interesting distinction.

My own personal take on it was that it was up to the individual worker to connive some way to cleave through the monotony, and I certainly did that. And that was my biggest foe, working on an assembly line, was I knew what I had to do when my job came, I had to install eight rivets and install a dual exhaust muffler. That was pretty much the easy part. The hard part was what do I do with these minutes between jobs? So that’s where a lot of the shenanigans and pastimes that would kill the clock.

So here's a question you're probably sick of: Where's the next book?

(Laughs) No comment. I mean I don’t want to go into the whole nuts and bolts and disappointment and travails of the follow-up book but, suffice to say, it didn’t work out. I don’t know, I guess I just haven’t found anything that’s reignited the passion as much as sort of the battle reporting I did on the assembly line. I mean, I lead a pretty drab life by choice and there’s just not a lot going on. And that’s not to say I won’t write again. I’ve got some things tucked away and stuff, but nothing on the burner, so to speak.

So...you were planning a sequel?

Yeah, there was some minor discussion about it. There might be a return of the Rivethead in the cards, you know, obviously if there’s a publication house or editor that’s reading this and is available.

And you'll call me first when that happens, right?

(Laughs) Yeah.

Do you still feel lucky or something like it?

Well, I think what I mean at the time was lucky to escape there with my sanity, which was sort of in tatters at the end. But yeah. I guess I do feel fortunate.