Perhaps this wasn’t the intent of the book, but it detracts from it nonetheless. While opining of her sympathies with the poor and working classes, how she lived so frugally in her early years, how her husband considers his own background as “trash”, etc., her overtures ultimately fall flat in conveying any genuine connection to the poor.
She references multiple prominent intellectual authors (including Pikkety) with whom I assume most readers are already familiar. Her narrative is that of what Thomas Pikkety calls “the Brahmin left”- those who are highly educated and invested in cultural/artistic pursuits, and who may or may not hold significant capital (she does, even if it’s not explicitly monetary). She waxes on about her daily life and relationships and how she feels disconnected from the capital she owns. The author is a self-described artist who often seems to go to great lengths to stress how uncomfortable with money she is, despite having a fair amount of it in New York. Ranging from IKEA to Beyoncé to Pokemon, Biss asks, of both herself and her class, “In what have we invested?” Described by the New York Times as a writer who “advances from all sides, like a chess player,” Biss offers an uncommonly immersive and deeply revealing new portrait of work and luxury, of accumulation and consumption, of the value of time and how we spend it. Through a series of engaging exchanges - in libraries and laundromats, over barstools and backyard fences - she examines our assumptions about class and property and the ways we internalize the demands of capitalism. “My adult life can be divided into two distinct parts”, Eula Biss writes, “the time before I owned a washing machine and the time after.” Having just purchased her first home, the poet and essayist now embarks on a provocative exploration of the value system she has bought into. "A timely and arresting new look at affluence by the New York Times best-selling author, “one of the leading lights of the modern American essay." ( Financial Times ) The results are enthralling." (Associated Press)
"A sensational new book tries to figure out whether it’s possible to live an ethical life in a capitalist society. Named a Best Book of The Year by Time, NPR, InStyle, and Good Housekeeping
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