On the one hand, this article about getting a job at Wal-Mart is highly readable, and is the type of imaginative assignment I wouldn’t hesitate to take if I could get it. On the other hand, it’s by Charles Platt. On the gripping hand, Platt once wrote a letter of comment to File 770, which could never have happened if he confined himself to the loftiest imaginable literary ambitions.

[Thanks to Andrew Porter for the link.]