Posted at 5:00 p.m.
Buying a home is a financial and emotional adventure. Once owner, a series of decisions are imposed on us, decisions often insignificant, sometimes profound, which can go so far as to confront our personal values.
Renovations, decoration, overconsumption, choices, privileges… This is what the American essayist and poet Eula Biss thinks about when she buys her first house in Chicago.
For her, nothing is trivial. A visit to IKEA or a game of Monopoly with his son become the spark plugs for a reflection on capitalism, the exploitation of workers or the class system.
Aware of her privileges — she and her husband, also a writer, come from very modest backgrounds — Biss navigates this new financial ease with caution and lucidity. And a bit of guilt too, especially when she hires workers to repair the chimney, or a cleaning lady to clean her house.
This house, it must be said, also gives him a sense of security. And with it, the fear that this security will become a given. For Biss, comfort is a concept that can become uncomfortable…
It is so as not to forget where she comes from, to record each impression and each reflection that Biss keeps a logbook. She records her arrival in the new home, the exploration of a neighborhood that is gentrifying, the discovery of what it means to be a landlord.
Short and powerful texts, inspired by an encounter, an anecdote or an exchange. And which draws on the writings of authors as varied as the economist John Kenneth Galbraith, the writer Virginia Woolf or the anthropologist David Graeber (author of the brilliant Bullshit Jobs) to fuel a rich reflection on the workings of capitalism, exploitation and patriarchy.
Between the lines, Eula Biss delivers a sensitive reflection on literary creation, on the productivity of those who devote their life to writing (Emily Dickinson in support!), and on the place of the writer in our system. capitalist. A very small place, it must be remembered. The writer is a solitary being who “produces” nothing.
These literary references, which give a lot of depth to Biss’s prose, are interspersed with exchanges with her husband and her friends or small moments of daily life which lighten the text.
The result: a simply brilliant essay, while remaining very accessible. Imagine a book that would be written with eight hands by Deborah Levy, Rebecca Solnit, Rachel Cusk and Maggie Nelson! A book above which floats the soul of Joan Didion, a reference for Eula Biss who read and taught it since she was a professor of literary creation for 15 years at Northwestern University.
This stimulating and joyful essay is shot through with an existential question: what is an ethical life?
A question that we think about for a long time after having closed this book that we will reread, that’s for sure.
Extract
“I discovered a brand of paint that I can’t afford. […] I can’t decently admit that a can of paint costs $110. But I find this painting intolerably luminous, undeniably more beautiful than the others. […] I study the swatches I picked up at the DIY store and I play with the Farrow & Ball color chart, running my fingers over the little squares of color, matte finish, lightly embossed. Even the names are more beautiful: match stick, String, skimming Stone. They are not white people who aspire to anyone — they can afford to be modest. There’s even one called Blackened. »
Who is Eula Biss?
Eula Biss is an American essayist, author of four critically acclaimed and award-winning books. She also taught creative writing for 15 years at Northwestern University.
To have and to be had
Eula Biss, translated from English (United States) by Justine Augier
Shorelines
280 pages