The pleasures and sorrows of work

The Economist: The pleasures and sorrows of work

The oddities of the daily grind

ALAIN DE BOTTON is a British essayist, novelist and, if one uses the term somewhat expansively, philosopher. Over the past decade or so he has cast a world-weary eye over travel, status and architecture, as well as writing a fine book about philosophers and an excellent meditation on Proust. His new book, “The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work”, takes on that odd thing that most of us do for so many of our waking hours on Earth. …

… First of all, Mr de Botton is rather witty. Here, for instance, is what he has to say about the swimming pool at his Mojave desert hotel (where he has repaired in the course of a visit to a scrapyard for aeroplanes): “Unfortunately, most of the budget for the pool had apparently been squandered on proclaiming, in an enormous illuminated display by the roadside, that it existed, leaving few resources for it actually to do so.”

Secondly, Mr de Botton is surely right when he reminds us that we rarely if ever think about where our Moments and our fluffy slippers, our 16-gigabyte iPhones and our Thai red chicken curry ready-meals come from, or what an immense concatenation of individual efforts is required to ensure that a fish swimming in the Indian Ocean off the Maldives can be converted, in a couple of days, into individually packaged tuna steaks in the refrigerated-foods aisle of a supermarket in the Bristol suburbs. It is, of course, a marvel, and Mr de Botton rightly marvels at it.

And finally, the author has plenty of thought-provoking things to say about work itself, the most absurd examples of what he scathingly calls “the culmination of a long history of the division of labour, which began in Ancient Egypt three millennia ago”. Unlike other animals, we need not struggle to find our next meal. But instead of using the time to master Swedish or calculus, we often choose to devote it to the utterly banal.

Yet even the most soulless of offices has its vital part to play. The “start of work means an end to freedom, but also to doubt, intensity and wayward desires… How satisfying it is to be held in check by the assumptions of colleagues, instead of being forced to contemplate, in the loneliness of the early hours, all that one might have been, and now never will be.” This last observation seems so heartfelt, so poignantly rendered, that one can only advise Mr de Botton himself to cease his solitary endeavours and take the plunge into the pleasures of office life.