All three are primary elements in my life, and they make an interesting trio because their interactions are full of contradictions-art is and is not work, work makes art possible and impossible, capitalism rewards work and not art, though art might be more rewarding than work, etc. There are also words you return to as the title of the pieces: primarily “art,” “work,” and “capitalism.” How did you settle on these words as the organizing principles of the book?Įula Biss: One of the problems or questions that this book emerged from was how to do my work as an artist within capitalism, so I wasn’t surprised to find myself circling back to those terms repeatedly. The Rumpus: You’ve divided the book into four sections-consumption, work, investment, and accounting-all of which you discuss throughout the book, not just within these sections, often parsing the words’ etymologies and observing them in practice in your own life.

I corresponded with Eula Biss via email about writing and work. Much like On Immunity (Graywolf Press, 2014), Having and Being Had is an ideal read for this political and cultural moment. She challenges the reader’s ideas of words once thought familiar-leisure, service, investment-and tests the tensions between work, art, and money. She writes about picking out paint colors, sitting on Restoration Hardware tomes that come in the mail, riding her bike, furniture shopping with her husband, buying a museum membership, and playing Monopoly with her son.īiss, who is a winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship, richly peoples Having and Being Had with friends, neighbors, and family, bringing into conversation scholars, theorists, economists, and writers ranging from Emily Dickinson to the late David Graeber.

In positioning herself as a novice, Biss draws readers through her growing understanding of capitalism and the thorny places where class, value, and race intersect by meditating on the quotidian.

Having and Being Had examines her life in a two-income household following the purchase of her first home and the birth of her son. Comprised of short pieces, Having and Being Had delights because of Biss’s frankness, which might be mistaken as crassness for just a moment-she has done something considered taboo by talking about money and class. In her latest book, Having and Being Had (Riverhead Books, September 2020) Eula Biss creates a diorama of what capitalism looks like in a privileged, middle-class life.

Having and being had eula biss