Bait and Switch

July 11, 2005
A wild bestseller in the field of poverty writing, Ehrenreich's 2001 exposé of working-class hardship, Nickel and Dimed
, sold over a million copies in hardcover and paper. If even half that number of people buy this follow-up, which purports "to do for America's ailing middle class what did for the working poor," it too will shoot up the bestseller lists. But PW
suspects that many of those buyers will be disappointed. Ehrenreich can't deliver the promised story because she never managed to get employed in the "midlevel corporate world" she wanted to analyze. Instead, the book mixes detailed descriptions of her job search with indignant asides about the "relentlessly cheerful" attitude favored by white-collar managers. The tone throughout is classic Ehrenreich: passionate, sarcastic, self-righteous and funny. Everywhere she goes she plots a revolution. A swift read, the book does contain many trenchant observations about the parasitic "transition industry," which aims to separate the recently fired from their few remaining dollars. And her chapter on faith-based networking is revelatory and disturbing. But Ehrenreich's central story fails to generate much sympathy—is it really so terrible that a dabbling journalist can't fake her way into an industry where she has no previous experience?—and the profiles of her fellow searchers are too insubstantial to fill the gap. Ehrenreich rightly points out how corporate culture's focus on "the power of the individual will" deters its employees from organizing against the market trends that are disenfranchising them, but her presentation of such arguments would have been a lot more convincing if she could have spent some time in a cubicle herself.

Tony-nominated actress Anne Twomey has the perfect voice for Ehrenreich's prose. Funny, sarcastic, even angry, she's also feminine, charming. Published in 2001, Ehrenreich's bestseller NICKEL AND DIMED chronicled her adventures at the bottom of the pay scale. Here she changes her name and tries to get a middle-class job, but fails. "Hi, I'm Barbara Alexander," she learns to say, "and I'm a crackerjack PR person." No soap, although there are a great many people eager to sell her soap of their own. Those she encounters guide retail techniques, contacts, and perhaps most pernicious--attitude. They recommend a stance so cheerful and so slavish as to constitute a defeat much graver than unemployment. B.H.C. (c) AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine