- Paperback: 208 pages
- Publisher: Plume (April 30 1999)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0452280818
- ISBN-13: 978-0452280816
- Product Dimensions: 13.6 x 1.5 x 20.5 cm
- Shipping Weight: 181 g
- Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #658,710 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
Housecleaner extraordinaire Louise Rafkin reads her own work as efficiently as she cleans bathtubs and snoops through the letter pile. Rafkin's voice is pleasantly modulated and well suited to her dry humor in Other People's Dirt, a parallel tale of her cleaning habits and socio-spiritual explorations. Vacuum-cleaner sound effects demarcate chapters in this nearly unabridged version, whose brief chapters are punchy and well suited to audio. (Running time: three hours, two cassettes) --Barrie Trinkle
--This text refers to the
Audio Cassette
edition.
From Kirkus Reviews
Into this life a chance for liberating creativity fell, when Rafkin narrowly escaped a straight-on march into the literary world of academia and headed into the trenches of ``other people's dirt.'' This book documents her experiences as seen from the underbelly of day-to-day life through anecdote and wry observation: dust balls and food stains, what laundry reveals and conceals, the nature of the need to clean, and the strange idiosyncrasies of those who will pay others to put order in their disorderly lives. Brief chapters cover stints in the homes of hoarders, the simply overworked, the impersonal nit-pickers, perverts, and even a suicide. In a final chapter, Rafkin travels to Japan to live with the Ittoen community, a group of homeless individuals committed to cleaning up the immediate world. Her thoughts on the need for order hint at the author's underlying belief: She would like to share the Ittoen ``nonattachment to worldly goods.'' But her comments on Japan are banal, and her search for any philosophy in what a house cleaner knows remains lifeless as long as she poses questions such as, If a forest is swept and no one sees it, was it ever really swept? . . . would I ever stop trying to achieve Home-Ec Student of the Year?'' Rafkin's breezy matter-of-factness only barely obscures a lot of cynical ranting about people, places, and things. Only at the very end does she confide her personal take on what her meanderings have meant in a final homeward gaze, the long-lost San Francisco girl at last getting real: ``It was time to clean house.'' More adventure than memoir, this book is odd and not all that entertaining. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most helpful customer reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
Do I want to have a maid?,
By A Customer
This review is from: Other Peoples Dirt (Paperback)
I thought it was very interesting how the author's described what she witnessed, and what evidence she saw of people's lives. The insight she gave into her own life and the lives of other house cleaners was also interesting and insightful. I thought the book ended a little strangely but I have learned that these types of books and their authors often end strangely.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Entertaining, and Hard to Put Down.,
By
This review is from: Other Peoples Dirt (Paperback)
I read this book in one day because it was just too hard to put down. The material confirms my theory, which is that many who are attracted to the service professions are addicted to feeling resentful. Unconsciously, many who take service jobs are drawn to the pay-off: all of those opportunities to feel resentful at their employers! Also, many come into housekeeping work because they hate being told what to do and so enjoy a certain amount of independence if they clean while their employers are out of the house. So, while I would not want Rifkin as a housekeeper in my own home, my hat is off to her as writer. She is talented and has come up with a funny, breezy book that was a joy to read. I laughed a lot!
4.0 out of 5 stars
The mean queen of clean,
By ensiform (Dallas, TX USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Other People's Dirt: A Housecleaner's Curious Adventures (Hardcover)
A collection of essays from an ex-academic and writer who cleans houses. Why does she clean houses? Well, therein lies the tale. She uses cleaning as an excuse to snoop, living out her faded CIA dreams; she cleans because it helps her organize the mental and emotional clutter of her own life; and she cleans, at least once, simply to serve (in Japan, where a cleaning sect called Ittoen does precisely this). Other pieces investigate how others clean: the aforementioned Japanese cleaning commune, ascetic and humble; her childhood Mexican maid, whom she interviews with minor success; the maid to nobility and American moguls; naked house cleaners; even a woman who cleans up after homicides and suicides. At one point, Rafkin joins Merry Maids, a corporate cleaning service, partly due to desperation and partly as a kind of experiment (the horrifying abuse of labor she encounters there echoes Barbara Ehrenreich's findings from her own similar experiment in Nickel And Dimed). Rafkin certainly has her downside: she gossips about her employers (in stark contrast to the proud, confidential maid to the ultra-rich she interviews), treats their possessions with indifference, to say the least (she doesn't even apologize for breaking one client's knick-knack), looks through their things, tries on their clothes, even makes love on one clent's bed. But her prose is crisp and clear, and she has an unusual power to be disarmingly funny about a mundane subject like dirt, or zeroing in on the tragedy of a life without wallowing in sentimentality. She's at her best when talking about her interview subjects rather than herself, but she's open about everything. It's a quick, edgy read, and everyone who's ever hired a maid should read it.
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