It’s been almost a quarter century since David Brooks wrote his seminal article on the differences between red and blue America. “On my journeys to Franklin County,” a red county in Pennsylvania, he wrote, “I set a goal: I was going to spend $20 on a restaurant meal. But although I ordered the most expensive thing on the menu — steak au jus, ‘slippery beef pot pie,’ or whatever — I always failed.”
“No wonder,” Brooks concluded, “people in Franklin County have no class resentment or class consciousness; where they live, they can afford just about anything that is for sale.”
By contrast, in blue Montgomery County, Maryland, “almost nobody can say that,” he wrote. “In Blue America, unless you are very, very rich, there is always, all around you, stuff for sale that you cannot afford.” Once you see this distinction, you cannot unsee it.
Which is why, all these years later, I keep thinking of modern American fiction and nonfiction through this lens. In Rumaan Alam’s recent novel “Entitlement,” the protagonist, Brooke Orr, leaves her job as a New York City teacher to go work for a philanthropic foundation. As her relationship with the billionaire founder becomes closer, she becomes ever more convinced that she deserves at least a little bit of his money for herself. She struggles to afford rent on her apartment and dreams of buying a small one, even as she visits his giant penthouse overlooking Central Park, one of a number of residences he owns. She frames her desires in terms of deserving a place of her own — even a need for “freedom”— but really what she suffers from is nothing more and nothing less than envy. Surrounded by so much she can’t afford, she slowly unravels.
The same theme is present in the recent novel “Colored Television” by Danzy Senna, in which Jane, a married mother of two, is struggling to find success as a writer in Los Angeles. A writing professor who finally completes her doorstop of a novel — only to have it rejected by her publisher — Jane is desperate to make money. She and her family bounce around to homes they borrow from their wealthier friends. Most recently, they live in the home of a friend of Jane’s from her writing program who has made a lot of money in Hollywood. She dreams of having a life like his, with nice furniture and expensive wine and better clothes. Like Brooke in “Entitlement,” Jane wants to own a home, but they are out of her price range. She feels entitled, too — drinking all of her host’s wine supply while he is away in Australia.
But it is not just a sense that these two women want more money. They also want more money while working in certain kinds of professions that typically are not very remunerative. Neither one of them worked their way up through the ranks at Walmart. Neither one went into finance. Both women want to be successful at the things that they like doing, regardless of whether the market finds their products worth anything.
It was interesting then to start a new book, “Cabin: Off the Grid Adventures With a Clueless Craftsman,” by Patrick Hutchinson. A memoir by an aspiring writer who is forced to spend his days copy-editing to pay the bills, Hutchinson also finds himself broke and a little disgusted by the life to which he has become accustomed, just sitting on the couch after work, playing on his phone. Hutchinson, who lives in Seattle (another area where things have become unaffordable), also wants more. But his “more” is different.
Rather than try to earn more money or mooch off of friends or take a little extra from his employers, Hutchinson buys a shack in the woods for $7,500. He doesn’t even have that much money and has to borrow it from his mother. The cabin has no heat or electricity, let alone internet service. He teaches himself how to use various tools to make it habitable, coming out every weekend, mostly by himself but sometimes with a friend. The work is backbreaking, but he loves it. He fantasizes while he is at his office about the projects he can do, the feelings of accomplishment he will have even after just cleaning the cabin or splitting wood for the stove, about the silence of the woods.
He does not give up writing, but the joy he takes from working with his hands from solving tangible problems seems to far outshine any fulfillment he could get from a white-collar job. He wonders whether he should have chosen some other line of work and is glad that he decided to buy the cabin, giving in to the “quiet, persistent voice that nags us into wondering what else might be possible.”
“Wondering what else might be possible” can lead to happiness or misery. For some it is an invitation to pursue life in a whole new environment. For others, it only brings resentment of those around us.