I do not know if I am prepared to live in a world without Barbara Ehrenreich's insight and scholarship. Ehrenreich, much like Gore Vidal, was a paradigm shatterer. See her NYT obit here and LAT obit here.
I tell a personal story of my meeting Ehrenreich twenty years ago, and her kindness--but with a still strange to me ending.
In or about June 2002, I met Ehrenreich through my uncle, then president-elect of the American Library Association. We met in Atlanta, Georgia at the annual ALA Convention, where my uncle had invited her to speak. I had been a major fan of her work since the 1980s, when I read Hearts of Men and thereafter read nearly anything and everything she published, from articles to books. It was strange, but for awhile, Time magazine had her as a columnist, which always struck me as amazing. It was Ehrenreich who coined the phrase "Professional Managerial Class" in the late 1970s, but she was far more hopeful about that intellectual work class in the original essay she co-wrote with her then-husband. Catherine Liu has nailed what has happened to that class since the 1990s especially, and why PMC is a phrase of utter derision among a certain segment of the economic left in our era.
Anyway, of all the people I met along the way who tried to help me reach a publisher, Ehrenreich was, ironically, the most helpful--along with the late, great Kevin Starr, dean of California historians. While Starr was almost a second editor, reading the manuscript as it was being written after the first third was completed, Ehrenreich gave me names of at least three different agents to contact with her recommendation from her for me to them. She really wanted to help me get to a publisher. As each agent gave me a thumbs down (two of the three agents had ties to the Kennedys, and were fearful of being involved in the publication of the novel), she provided another name. We had mostly email communication, but a couple of oral conversations along the way.
I eventually found a local SoCal publisher through a friend who, only after his top editor loved the book, decided to take on the book for publication. I informed her of this development and she said she was so happy. She said, too, she would be happy to provide a blurb for the book. As the time for publication in May 2003 grew closer, he and I stopped hearing back from Ehrenreich for a blurb, and then finally, she informed my publisher--not me personally--it would not be forthcoming. She never provided a reason, despite my publisher directly asking. I have always believed it was because of her concern about that sub-plot, as I can't think of any other reason not to have endorsed the book--especially after she was so helpful to me.
The reason I say this is that, while she had been so excited about the overall manuscript, she was initially concerned over a sub-plot involving the split in the largely white feminist movement over RFK's presidency. She asked me point-blank while we were still in Atlanta at the ALA Convention, "Why have Gloria Steinem and Pat Schroeder become Republicans endorse Reagan in 1972?" I said, first, Reagan was still pro-choice in 1972 (he had signed the nation's most liberal abortion law in 1967 as California governor), and the Republican response to an RFK presidency was to push for a libertarian minded politics in the white suburbs where the working class had become more middle class, ironically, as a result of New Deal policies now beginning to fade in the nation's consciousness.
I then said to Ehrenreich there is a major difference between, say, her, Ellen Willis, and Ruth Rosen, who stayed with RFK in the alternative timeline, and Steinem and Schroeder. I said it has to do with what drove their respective feminisms. Steinem and Schroeder were essentially political and economic conservatives who became radicalized by bad personal (but still systemically) sexist treatment, and their feminism was primarily one for personal autonomy and dignity (for those who don't know, Schroeder was in the insurance industry before getting into politics, and was decidedly an economic conservative in those days--much like, ahem, Hillary Clinton). Whereas, Ehrenreich's and Willis' feminism was part of a larger economic and political left perspective that of course involves personal autonomy and dignity, but recognizes how capitalist oriented society devalues women's labor as a class, and how racism and class issues affect white women and women of color differently.
I distinctly recall Ehrenreich winced, but then said, "Hmmm.....I can see that." I then said to her, "If we look at what happened in the presidential election of 2000, we saw how you and Ellen Willis were for Nader, while Steinem and sadly Katha Pollitt of The Nation were tearing into any men who supported Nader as sexist." Ehrenreich nodded, and said she definitely remembered how awful a time that was for her with various women friends, including especially Steinem and Pollitt (I would add, in this context, that Steinem's conduct particularly with respect to Bernie Sanders' two presidential campaigns bore out my analysis. See here for one of the most egregious comments she made during Sanders' first presidential campaign. Also, who can forget Steinem's CIA association as a younger woman, and her later dating Henry War Criminal Kissinger, who, like Keith Richards, seems to live forever?).
I go into this because, in the original hardcover book's acknowledgements section, I specifically spoke of her help. Had I known she would not endorse the book after all, I would not have included it, and in fact I removed it from the paperback edition. The last thing I wanted to do was embarrass her, as I continue to consider her one of the greatest commentators of the past nearly fifty years. I never friended her on FB, I admit, but I did communicate with her when she had a blog in the latter part of this century's first decade. She was always kind and respectful to and with me. Ehrenreich was, overall, a kind and warm person in my own dealings with her, and I never heard from anyone who knew her she was anything other than kind and warm.
I would say, Rest In Peace, Barbara. However, Barbara was a confirmed atheist, and saw religion as something we should all overcome as part of a developing human communion. My respect for her remains profound, and so, I simply say, I will miss her insight and wisdom, and offer my deepest condolences to her family, loved ones, and personal friends.
