This is an interesting collection of personal essays about getting and losing money, put together by Elissa Schappell and Jenny Offill, who did a similar collection about defunct female friendships (The Friend That Got Away) which I enjoyed. Dan Handler (aka Lemony Snicket) writes about his sudden enormous wealth, Chris Offutt describes how his parents supported his family in the hills of Kentucky (his father wrote hardcore pornography and his mother typed it) and many others have contributed essays about inheriting money, making it forging art, or never having it at all.Most writers I know have a weird relationship with money and almost all of them talk about it a lot. A LOT. I guess that's what happens when you work for years, watching your savings melt away, and then suddenly, WHAM, you have two or three years' worth of cash all at once. The whole work-money relationship is thrown out of whack. Sometimes (most of the time) you're not paid at all, and sometimes (once in a great while) you're overpaid.
In any event, I borrowed this book from work and think I'll wait for the paperback before I actually buy it. Books about money have a way of making me feel even cheaper than usual.
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