Barbara Ehrenreich’s dirt-dealing on life amongst America’s working poor, Nickel & Dimed: On (not) Getting By in America is riveting. Her aim is to test the theory that if the unemployed just got a job, any job, life would improve. The book details her undercover mission to live on the minimum wage as an unskilled worker, attempting to eke out a living, rent a home, find sustenance in whatever job or jobs she can get …without the use of her education or learned skills.
The book has also drawn criticism.
The authenticity of Ehrenreich’s experience has been questioned in some quarters, given her ‘rules’ and minimum standards posed. Attacked too for the deception, a bourgeois game. Too much a fanciful story, and less of a gum-shoe-in-door exposé.
However, it’s difficult not to suspect the motivation of those dismissing her findings (such as employer agencies, franchise-owners, corporate interests); mostly those significantly vested in corralling this baseline workforce.
The insight for the reader is extraordinary. Employee drug-testing, pitiful minimum wages, under-employment, harsh working conditions, fear, loneliness, archaic regulation and tyranny over workers. Hunger, desperation, trailer park desolation.
It’s powerful first-person stuff, peppered with real life statistics; similar struggle scenarios as posed by Paige Williams in her more traditional piece, Let us be Dissatisfied…
In Williams’ expose, the numbers are the hero of the story. Dollars, statistics, percentages frame her feature, a stark portrayal.
Ehrenreich uses numbers too – they are too damning to ignore – but she employs them as annotations to her eye-witness accounts, interactions with real people, with names, histories and sadly-vague futures. Gonzo-with-footnotes.
She cites statistics from the National Coalition for the Homeless, the Fair Labour Standards Act, and various text on unionisation, workers’ rights and federal governance of workplace standards.
The numbers don’t detract from the ripping read that is Ehrenreich’s book, which despite the knockers, has drawn overwhelming acclaim.
Without doubt, the Gonzo approach has its dangers. Even its foremost proponent, the late Hunter S Thomson, admitted to the occasional departure into fiction. This style of journalism suits a more creative lilt; a subjective sketching of the story. So discipline is a must.
As a story telling vehicle, the Gonzo style can reveal myriad inner tales as it drives along its big picture portrayal. The minutiae of life undercover – relevant to the story’s theme or otherwise – depict additional layers and add valuable colour and context.
Ehrenreich’s anonymity allows her, ironically, freedom. Freedom to live a life completely foreign to her own. Understand it, feel it, and strive in it, to survive and connect with her peers. Or not connect as the case may be. It can be harrowing, depressing, frightening. But throughout the experiment, we’re always cognizant: this is not really her life. She can escape it, eventually.
The Gonzo journo has a brief passport into another world that is understandably alluring and fraught at the same time.
I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours.
Hunter S. Thompson
