Genre theory and practice in narrative journalism: The dark picaresque in Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed (2001)

By centering on the category known as the picaresque—a label commonly applied to an episodic, satirical narrative depicting the misadventures of a rogue or vagabond—this essay investigates the cross-disciplinary concept of genre in the study of longform journalism. Differing approaches to this genre are examined, with a focus on scholarship in journalism studies and literary criticism regarding the pragmatic anticipation of readerly expectations that genre forms entail. These models are applied to Barbara Ehrenreich’s best-selling Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America (2001), a book most frequently categorized as a muckraking exposé. Drawing on public reviews and classroom experiences, the essay concludes by assessing the compatibility of the picaresque with Ehrenreich’s muckraking goals. In journalistic as in literary hands, picaresque writers often assemble a comic social panorama. But there is also often a darker edge to this genre: a mood of social precariousness that, in Ehrenreich’s case, extends beyond its account of contemporary service labor.