etc.

There’s something vaguely disingenuous to me about an independently wealthy person experimenting in living the hardscrabble life all for the purpose of journalistic integrity. The gist of it is that during a conversation with Lewis Lapham, her sometimes editor, Ehrenreich recalls the days when writers used to do real, old-fashioned journalist-type stuff. When they wanted a story on America’s working class, they would roll up their sleeves and step into the role themselves, do a little first-person investigation. So this is what she does.

I actually consider Ehrenreich to be a writer with some integrity; even in this book, she makes valid points that are carefully footnoted and sourced throughout. But apart from pissing of people who refuse to buy that she’s doing any sort of real socio/anthropological work, Ehrenreich also misses the boat in not going far enough with her little experiment. It’s not enough to write a book whose only real statement is that capitalism thrives on the back of an underprivileged working class. We already know that. What she should have done is personalised this statement a bit more, taken advantage of being amongst real frontline unskilled workers who don’t have the luxury of setting rules for themselves (like no shared accommodation) and made it about how they cope, instead of how she manages to do a bang-up job on cleaning houses faster than her co-workers.