I’ve just finished The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work – the latest book by Alain de Botton (pictured) which he calls ‘a hymn to the intelligence, peculiarity, beauty and horror of the modern workplace’. I found it a pretty interesting book. ‘Interesting’ because he devotes each of his ten chapters to an occupation. (They’re listed here.) For all ten occupations he ventures on-site, resulting in a mixture of description and pontification which I found absorbing and stimulating. And the book is ‘pretty’ because its 326 pages contain 124 photographs – 102 full-page and 22 half-page. All 124 are superb. But the book’s last words moved me most:
Our work will at least have distracted us, it will have provided a perfect bubble in which to invest our hopes for perfection, it will have focused our immeasurable anxieties on a few relatively small-scale and achievable goals, it will have given us a sense of mastery, it will have made us respectably tired, it will have put food on our table. It will have kept us out of greater trouble.
Pundits are ambivalent about de Botton [1, 2] who chooses to earn his living independently of his late father’s immense wealth. Good on him for that. Me? If art’s in the eye of the beholder then I like his work: he sure can write, and his writing and ideas make me think. So I couldn’t care less about the man – not least if he’s genuine or a charlatan. Keep ‘em coming, Al.
1 comment:
I saw this man on compass and he was brilliant. When you see him you wonder, what would he know? But then he starts talking and boy oh boy was he good to listen to. I could have sat for hours. A very astute man!!
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