The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work: t/c (Vintage International) by Alain De Botton (PDF)

Description

We spend most of our waking lives at work—in occupations most often chosen by our inexperienced younger selves. And yet we rarely ask ourselves how we got there or what our jobs mean to us. The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work is an exploration of the joys and perils of the modern workplace, beautifully exploring what other people wake up to do each day—and night—to make our frenzied world function. With a philosophical eye and his signature combination of wit and wisdom, Alain de Botton leads us on a journey around an eclectic range of occupations, from rocket scientist to biscuit manufacturer, from accountant to artist—in search of what makes jobs either soul-destroying or fulfilling.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Unlike most people’s daily jobs, reading through The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work proved to be a consistently fun activity. Alaine de Botton is an A-list writer with a talent for noticing and elevating features of everyday life that others would dismiss as merely mundane.He (or his editors) made an ingenious selection of industries and occupations to cover in this volume, which is organized like a travel account. De Botton moves from watching cargo ships in a London harbor to observing logistics operations, which in turn stimulates him to travel to the Maldives to trace the path of the tunas that end up on English dinner tables. Subsequently he visits an English biscuit factory, drops in on a career counselor, journeys to French Guiana to watch a satellite launch, lingers with an English artist, takes a long hike with an electrical transmission engineer, calls on the London headquarters of the world’s largest accounting firm, stays in London to attend a trade show for entrepreneurs seeking investors, and then ventures to Paris for a major international exhibition for the aerospace industry. He concludes in Mojave, California in a graveyard for obsolete airliners. At each stop he drolly records myriad details about the work activities, products, and services of those he encounters.The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work is only tangentially about what the title suggests (more to be said about this below). More directly, it is about the specialization of labor, the production of superfluous goods, our removal from the sources of what we consume, the detachment of meaning from work, and the elusiveness of self-fulfillment. These are well-worn themes, but de Botton treats each entertainingly.The division of labor was the key that unlocked material fecundity and de Botton marvels at the diversity of specialized occupations that must interlock harmoniously to, for example, conceptualize, test, produce, package, market, and deliver an English biscuit. Yet he laments that our civilization is “inclined to accrue its wealth through the sale of some astonishingly small and only distantly meaningful things” and he believes that we are “torn and unable sensibly to adjudicate between the worthwhile ends which money might be put and the often morally trivial and destructive mechanisms of its generation.” He wonders, for instance, about the “unintended side effects” of a long career at United Biscuits, about the meaningfulness of the lives that result. He allows, however, that meaning may inhere in the aggregate across specializations, suggesting that it is not just doctors, nuns, artists, and the like who serve the collective good, that “making a perfectly formed stripey chocolate circle which helps fill an impatient stomach” may serve as well.De Botton reaches the somewhat surprising (or ironic) conclusion that one proven value of work is that it distracts us from competing aspects of life which we might otherwise dwell upon. Work, he writes, “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 the table. It will have kept us out of greater trouble.” It is not merely incidental that he comments on sexual sublimation in several of the business settings he visits.The writing is full of clever comparisons and turns of phrase. The Airbus that ferries the tuna, for instance, is compared to the fish itself; it has “gill-like air inlet flaps near its wheels and fins along its fuselage” (one is reminded of the tuna again when de Botton declares that the airliners he encounters in the Mojave graveyard were “gutted and filleted”). He takes away from his time with the career counselor the thought that for most of us our achievements will fall short of our promise, that “on either side of the summits of greatness are arrayed the endless foothills populated by the tortured celibates of achievement.” The business plans of the entrepreneurs represent a “subgenre of contemporary fiction,” he suggests.Almost half the pages in the book hold black and white photographs taken by Richard Baker (many more, in color, appear on de Botton’s web site). It is a credit to both the writer and the photographer that the prints generally support and complement the images conjured by the author’s words.My biggest disappointment in this book is that we hear very little (and not in their own words) about whether his subjects take pleasure or sorrow in their work, in what mix, and why. Pleasure and sorrow are subjective feelings, after all, and without such testimony any claim de Botton may make to an understanding of the inner lives of his workers lacks credibility. How is he able to tell us, for instance, that the accountants he met have no desire for a lasting legacy, that they have “made their peace with oblivion”? Did he ask?There are other grounds on which one might quibble. For instance, de Botton often injects light ridicule. It can be humorous when the objects are places (Mojave, for instance, is “like many small towns in the American west, it seemed to not have a centre where citizens could gather for fellowship, javelin contests and philosophical debate”). But when the object is another person, as it sometimes is, the tendency is more distasteful. To be fair, de Botton is often mildly self-mocking as well.De Botton writes that he was inspired to write this book by five cargo ship spotters he met on a pier, men who know an impressive amount of facts about the vessels they see and who are sufficiently curious and diligent to investigate and discover what they do not already know. It must have been apparent to him that these were men enjoying their leisure, not their work, although he doesn’t say this. Nevertheless, I am pleased that he followed through on his inspiration and that I had the leisure to read such delightful accounts about others’ work.

⭐This is an enjoyable book that accurately captures the day-to-day aspects of everyday working life that most of us ignore as we go along our daily grind. Each chapter focuses on a different occupation from accountant to artist to cargo ship spotter and takes the reader through a day in the life of each profession all the while examining the pleasures and frustrations that each job entails. This book’s greatest strengh (and at the same time the source of its biggest weakness) is that it’s written from the perspective of a tourist who briefly visits a new occupation for a day and then moves on.This tourist’s eye view is a great strength because unlike the subjects he examines under his microscope De Botton is able to look at each occupation and see it with fresh eyes as a choice made by each person who picked that career from the countless other possibilities. Most of us entered our chosen field by way of decisions made when we were unthinking undergrads or teenagers looking for something to earn us a buck without really giving it much thought. Our careers chose us by paying well or being conveniently located to our homes, we didn’t choose our careers. This pathology (and it is a pathology that stems from laziness) is wonderfully illustrated in the chapter devoted to accountancy by showcasing fresh faced recruits straight from college who bury themselves in the busy work of his job rather than examine why they are doing what they do for a living. This is that rare book that forces us to think about why we are devoting so much of our waking lives to do our jobs while we never invested nearly as much time into deciding which job to choose.The tourist perspective is also a weakness for De Botton because he never sticks around long enough to examine the motivations of his subjects. De Botton has done the impossible, he has written a book about work without discussing money. That’s like writing a book about dating without ever mentioning the topic of sex. The tourist that he is visits an occupation as if it were some foreign city, he notices and appreciates the details of the landscape in a way that the locals ignore. However, his insights are superficial and shallow in the same way that a tourist’s understanding of a new land is limited to what can be observed immediately. He doesn’t explore the motivations for people to stay in jobs that may have been poorly chosen. He doesn’t really investigate the ‘why’ and instead chooses to simply describe the ‘what’.Overall, this was a very enjoyable read. Especially as I found the author’s description of my profession to be spot on. If your profession is the focus of one of the chapters in this book then you will enjoy this book immensely. If you don’t toil in one of the occupations described in this book you may still find it enjoyable but you probably won’t appreciate it as much as I did.

⭐This is now the 5th book of his I’ve read and although I wouldn’t say it’s his best (The Consolations Of Philosophy is incredible!), I still really enjoyed this book. His writing style is so enjoyable to read, and I love the pictures scattered throughout.His ability to paint a beautiful picture from the most mundane and ordinary of settings is an ability few other authors possess. He delves into the most obscure of professions (he visits a biscuit manufacturer for example!) but is able to relate it back to the feelings of every day life. It’s as if the professions he’s chosen to investigate really don’t matter: it’s more about the bigger picture of what work means to us as a society, how simple things can have such a large impact, and how work effects the people inside.

⭐Alain De Botton is a talented author. His main characteristics are erudition and philosophical disposition. His writing is simple, elegant, lucid, light in touch and witty.The book, however, is as much the product of talent as of meticulous and systematic research on the topics he discusses and of extensive travel both in England and far away lands to obtain first hand information. He vividly relates his experiences and impressions to the reader. Suffice it to mention in this regard that he travelled to the Maldives in the Indian Ocean for the project in ‘Logistics’ to observe inter alia Tuna fishing and to French Guiana in Latin America to witness the launching of an Ariane TV satellite in relation to the project ‘Rocket Science’. In all his travels he was accompanied by a photographer and the eclectic black and white photographs complement beautifully the fascination of the text. But it would be wrong to relegate this sophisticated, rich and multifaceted book to the mere category of an illustrated documentary.The book comprise ten chapters namely ‘Cargo Ship Spotting’, ‘Logistics’, ‘Biscuit Manufacture’, ‘Career Counselling’, ‘Rocket Science’, ‘Painting’, ‘Transmission Engineering’, ‘Accountancy’, Entrepreneurship’, and ‘Aviation’.The reader obtains an insight into the myriad activities, specializations and division of labour unbeknownst to him which in our contemporary world collectively contribute to an end product or service while the reader or consumer is familiar only with this end product or service. But the book is not restricted to merely providing this insight. The book also provides the milieu and describes the atmosphere in which this multitude of activities take place, the feelings and attitudes of people within and outside their working environment and a wide spectrum of reflections by the author which comprise the more interesting aspect of the book.The quality of individual chapters is generally excellent but not invariably so. I found for example the chapter on ‘Transmission Engineering’ poor almost prosaic while that of ‘Accountancy’ exceptionally good.The conclusion of the book is masterly.In the final pages of the book in the chapter ‘Aviation’, the author while visiting an aeroplane cemetery in the Mojave desert in California reflects that possibly the most redeeming value of work, any work is that it detracts our minds from contemplating death.

⭐Alain de Botton’s writing are like the cool hand of a mother passing comfortingly across a fevered brow. The pleasures of his prose exist at several levels: there is the obvious erudite insight into many of the common problems afflicting our modern world – travel-weariness, anxiety about status, work; and there is also the simple beauty of the words themselves. Many of his sentences take me back for a second and a third reading – often out loud – to savour their sparse beauty.His latest work is, in my opinion, one of the best. It is both humorous and compassionate. de Botton never talks down to us: he shares our sorrows and frustrations and locates himself clearly within the issues and difficulties he tackles. And although he promises – and delivers – no easy solutions or ‘quick-fix’ cure-alls, he instead offers something much more valuable and enduring. An appreciation of the beauty and vulnerability of human life, an awareness of the moments of joy and bliss that we may encounter from time to time, and a compassionate understanding that the reality of life for us all has more than its hoped for share of pain and sorrow.Thank you, Alain. I look forward to many more strokes of your hand across the brow in years to come.

⭐Alain de Botton has decided to take up an extremelly large and daunting project – nothing less than attempting to assign meaning to the daily grind faced by the modern worker. Despite failing to do this (I don’t think any philosopher, living or dead, can lay claim to this impossible feat) the book is not without worth.What I personally enjoyed was being given a detailed and often photographic insight into a myriad of professions, whose workings I never could have pictured. It was very interesting to be told the story of the painter, who had spent years and years painting the same tree; there are certainly some inspiring stories of human endeavour and self-sacrifice to be had. If you read the free extract on amazon, you cannot help being drawn in by de Botton’s beautiful and observent writing style – I found myself touched when he comments on the lack of interest between two workers in their exchage at the shipping port; why do we so often miss out on so much potential information through a habitual lack of interest?After having said what I enjoyed about the book, I am finding it difficult to state in words why I cannot rate it higher than three stars. Perhaps I expected something different, more concrete (I myself am just starting out on the career ladder.) I wanted to gain something from this book that I don’t think it can offer; it functions more as a work of creative writing than a guide to the world of work. Maybe it is because of his style; de Botton can embellish even the most boring and mundane subject. This is a book that requires much engagement on a personal level and, for me, his philosophical failure tarnishes the whole experience.The Art of Travel I found to be much more stimulating

⭐I’ve enjoyed most of the works written by de Botton but this one, The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, I felt lacked the quality of his other works, which is why I have dropped a star.I hope you find my review helpful.

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