A couple of years ago I came across an essay by a writer named William McPherson, former editor of the Washington Post's "Book World" who won a Pulitzer in 1977 for literary criticism, in the online edition of the Hedgehog Review. In that essay, "Falling," McPherson confessed his poverty.
I say confessed because McPherson, like most people who find themselves with the luxury of a Sunday morning newspaper, is of the class that finds being poor embarrassing. In his case, it was entirely avoidable. He understands the advantages he enjoyed, he no doubt made certain assumptions about the way he was supposed to live that in retrospect seem foolish but don't feel alien to me. Who hasn't told themselves there will always be "enough" money?
"Like a lot of other people, I started life comfortably middle-class, maybe upper-middle class;" he writes. "Now, like a lot of other people walking the streets of America today, I am poor. To put it directly, I have no money."
It's not difficult to understand why McPherson went broke; he worked on and off for the Post for 25 years, took early retirement at 53 to write, moved to Europe and spent all his money. Now 81, he lives in subsidized housing and gets monthly checks from Social Security check and his "miserable" Post pension. He's ashamed.
"I am glad that none of my friends has ever found himself sitting on a bench in a park with a quarter in his pocket, as I once did, and nothing in the bank; in fact, no bank account," he writes. "It's a very lonely feeling. It gives new meaning to the sense of loneliness and despair."
In his essay, McPherson doesn't ask for anything, especially not for pity. And that's good, because I don't know what if anything should be done for him. Because there is always a bottom, there will always be relative poverty. As McPherson admits, he is not among the world's wretched. He has his dignity; his clothes and mien do not mark him as one of the poor.
Neal Gabler, the critic and author who in this month's issue of the Atlantic describes his own financial troubles in a long piece called "The Secret Shame of Middle-Class Americans," is probably better off than McPherson though he has no money either. Gabler lives in a house in the Hamptons that would probably sell for more than $1 million, but he owes so much that selling it doesn't really make sense.
"I know what it is like to have to juggle creditors to make it through a week," Gabler writes. "I know what it is like to have to swallow my pride and constantly dun people to pay me so that I can pay others. I know what it is like to have liens slapped on me and to have my bank account levied by creditors. I know what it is like to be down to my last $5--literally--while I wait for a paycheck to arrive ... I know what it is like to dread going to the mailbox, because there will always be new bills ..."
Gabler repeats the startling statistic that 47 percent of Americans couldn't come up with $400 for a sudden emergency without borrowing or selling something. He admits he couldn't.
A lot of people have been critical of Gabler's piece because the details of his catastrophe don't seem relatable to people who actually work for a living. Gabler had the means to live an upper middle-class lifestyle, but he insisted on living above those means. He exposed his financial ignorance for the sake of a check, because there is a market for financial schadenfreude. I doubt Gabler will ever know real hunger or material deprivation; he's made himself fair game for mean tweets.
But somewhat obscured by his story is his larger point, which is that an awful lot of us who aren't in this country's 1 percent aren't doing so well. Even a lot of us who, from all outward appearances seem to be doing just fine, may be just a missed paycheck or two away from financial disaster.
In my disrupted business it's not unusual to hear bad news. I know journalists who have resorted to crowd-funding sites to try to subsidize their work; recently an essayist whose work I've admired for more than 30 years announced on his Facebook page that he was looking for "a real job--not a writing gig."
But we shouldn't conflate the problems of people inclined to write about their financial problems with the authentic crisis that faces the American working classes. A third of us have no savings whatsoever, and more than half of us are living from paycheck to paycheck, sliding deeper into debt every month.
When I was a kid there was a general feeling that to succeed in America all you really had to do was put your head down and work hard. You might not get rich but you'd be able to afford a house, a car and a family. A factory worker could have a cabin at the lake, a boat. In that pre-enlightened era, mothers had the option of working.
These days it's difficult to find a reasonably paying job without amassing a crippling debt from student loans. And few people can count on staying with a single company for most of their working lives anymore; in the new "gig economy" most of us will either be independent contractors or change employers every three or four years. (And it's hard for a freelancer; I have invoices that have been outstanding for more than 20 years. Sometimes people can't pay. And sometimes those who can pay won't.)
It's not fair, but then life never has been, and enough of us believe in our own exceptionalism to prevent any meaningful reform. Most of us vote against our own financial self-interest because we prefer to believe that we'll someday be recognized for our talent and industry. America is full of what Steinbeck (may have) called "temporarily embarrassed millionaires"--people unwilling to acknowledge that the world does not exist to make them rich.
Failing a combination of luck and talent, no one rises to the top of the economic system. The world's not designed that way. It's difficult enough to achieve solvency. And that (dear rugged individualist, Mr. Galt) is on you.
pmartin@arkansasonline.com
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Editorial on 05/15/2016