The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work (Vintage International) [ペーパーバック]

De Botton is a gifted observer. His art is both to notice and meaningfully comment on facets of life too often glossed over; of beauty and elegance unappreciated. In prior works he has demonstrated the value of complex metaphysics, Proustian prose, architecture and travel--wonderful and engrossing works. However, this most recent volume strikes the tone of a mid-life crisis, of a focus on what is wrong rather than what is right; something not foreign to this frustrated attorney who would gladly trade places with a globe-trotting author. But perhaps that is the entire point of the work, we blithely judge the travails of another at our own peril.

As opposed to his prior books, Pleasures and Sorrows tends more to the discursive--it is more of a loosely related grouping of essays than a reasoned, methodical exploration of modern labors. I'm afraid that following a brilliant introduction and statement of thesis, the work lost its way in much the same manner as did the author when he attempted to travel from Bakersfield to Los Angeles yet manages to discover something noteworthy among the detritus of modern civilization. Nevertheless, even when he loses his way, his book retains the ability to force one to think about what makes effort rewarding, what makes life worth living; De Botton invites us to challenge our own assumptions.

Too often snarky and discourteous to his subjects, the author's evident frustration with modern life and reality needn't have been focused on the human subjects making their best navigation of a flawed world. There is a nobility in simply arriving home at the end of a day having secured the resources sufficient to meet one's needs. Somebody has to make the nasty biscuits and somebody has to count the silverware--I had hoped, rather, for De Botton to find more of the magic in the mundane, to use his gift of expression to elevate rather than to deride.

But by the time I finished the work, I sensed that the author has let his own despair seep into the work. In a modern world utterly unsuited for the kind of artistic expression that he loves and has so admirably set forth in his prior books, perhaps De Botton has unintentionally opened himself to his readers and has allowed us to feel some of the sorrow in the work of the author and philosopher who sees so much beauty in the world that goes unnoticed and unappreciated. Here's hoping that for his next book we can focus more on the pleasures and less upon the sorrows.

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.

Alain de Botton continues to charm in this exploration of questions related to work.

The book consists of ten chapters, in each of which the author explores a specific job type in depth. The text is augmented throughout with photographs by Richard Baker, about 15 per chapter. These serve as an excellent complement to de Botton's remarks and reinforce one of the book's major strengths, which is Alain de Botton's skill for anchoring his exploration of profound questions pertaining to work (what to do with one's life? how to combine earning money with attaining fulfilment? how to balance career and family obligations?) in intelligently chosen, concrete examples.

A listing of the ten chapters gives an idea of the wide-ranging and eclectic nature of his investigation:

1. Cargo Ship Spotting
2. Logistics (including a photo essay which follows the path of a tuna from its capture in a Maldives fishing boat to the supermarket shelf)
3. Biscuit Manufacture
4. Career Counselling
5. Rocket Science
6. Painting
7. Transmission Engineering
8. Accountancy
9. Entrepeneurship
10. Aviation

The list fails to convey the charm and subtlety of de Botton's writing - to appreciate those, you'll have to read the book yourself. In each chapter there is something to delight - the author's curiosity will make you think about commonplace things in a new way, and his thoughtfulness and erudition make him a charming tour guide. The chapter on "rocket science", centred around a trip to French Guiana to report on the launch of a French-made communications satellite commissioned by a Japanese TV station, is a tour de force of nonfiction writing. But de Botton's particular talent shines through most obviously in those chapters which appear superficially least promising. You think to yourself - how can anyone write about biscuit manufacturing, or accountancy, and be interesting? Then you read the chapters in question, and re-read them, and think - how the hell did he do that?

I found the book riveting. It's certainly among the top five non-fiction books I've read in the past ten years.