Having and Being Had

Starred review from May 15, 2020
The poet and essayist considers her affluence and what--and who--has been sacrificed for it. "My adult life, I decide, can be divided into two distinct parts--the time before I owned a washing machine and the time after," writes Biss. She means it: Acquiring a home and its attendant creature comforts has radically changed her relationships to money, labor, and domesticity. In the same way her previous books explored the hidden social contracts around racism (Notes From No Man's Land) and vaccination (On Immunity), her latest interrogates capitalism's relationship to upper-middle-class living, particularly hers. Most of the brief, potent essays consider particular objects and actions and the questions they spark about value: a piano ("Dada da dum--middle class! Let the lessons begin"), redlining, investments, lines at amusement parks, the game of Monopoly, and poetry. Biss marvels at the uncertainty and discomfort people display when assigning costs and value to their work--and the way these discussions are further burdened by problems of race and gender, particularly in terms of how slavery and marriage turned people into property. Calling on her own experience and past writers (Emily Dickinson, Joan Didion, Virginia Woolf) and economists (John Kenneth Galbraith) who have addressed these matters, the author comes to recognize that income inequality runs deeper than matters of dollars and cents. Some are truly members of the precariat, on the edge of poverty, while others merely think they are, but everyone is compelled to scramble for more. Biss prescribes no solutions except perhaps to encourage more candor about the problem. When she told a friend she was unsure how to end this book, the friend responded: "The only way to end it would be to burn your house down." Spoiler: She doesn't. But what to do instead? A typically thoughtful set of Biss essays: searching, serious, and determined to go beyond the surface.

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June 15, 2020
Biss (On Immunity) delivers a stylish, meditative inquiry into the function and meaning of 21st-century capitalism, inspired by becoming a homeowner for the first time. In essay-length ruminations divided into four sections (“Consumption,” “Work,” “Investment,” and “Accounting”), Biss draws from incidents in her own life as an upper-middle-class Chicagoan and engages with works of literature, history, sociology, economics, and psychology. Disillusionment with items in a furniture store prompts a consideration of cultural critic Lewis Hyde and “the strange unspecific desire” of consumerism. Biss also reflects on her young son’s education in the difference between cost and value as he earns the money to purchase and trade Pokémon cards with his friends. She examines women’s labor through the works of Marxist social scientist Silvia Federici, novelist Virginia Woolf, and authors Joan Didion and Gertrude Stein, and analyzes popular culture, including the contract dispute behind Donna Summer’s song “She Works Hard for the Money” and the anti-capitalist messages of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? Biss doesn’t shy away from acknowledging her own privilege, and laces her reflections with unexpected insights and a sharp yet ingratiating sense of humor, though she doesn’t push too hard for change, either in her own life or her readers’. Still, this eloquent, well-informed account recasts the everyday world in a sharp new light.

August 1, 2020

Biss (No Man's Land; On Immunity), an artist-in-residence at Northwestern University, combines personal narrative with well-researched nonfiction in a thematic collection of essays. Purchasing her first house led to this work, which questions the degree to which she has bought into a capitalist system that, in many ways, causes her psychic discomfort. Aspects of home ownership lead her to examinations of debt (starting with her mortgage); consumption (buying new furniture and dishes); neighborhoods (thinking about old and new neighbors); and maintenance (choosing paint, lawn care, and laundry). These topics engender musings on affluence, class, and social mobility. Biss reads varied economists' work and evaluates how their ideas characterize the ways our society functions. From buying a piano on Craisgslist to her son's collection of Pokemon cards, Biss illustrates how economic ideas play out in our culture, causing precariousness for so many. She balances the comforts of her new home against the hours of work required to pay for them, hours that steal from her time to write. VERDICT An engaging and accessible read for those interested in social justice and in better understanding our economy.--Caren Nichter, Univ. of Tennessee at Martin

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