Setting-off a deliciously entertaining exchange between the infinitely pompous Alain de Botton and Nina of Infinite ThØught, in February 18 post, she wrote, with inspiration, before being forced to remove (and eventually re-publish) her post:
Occasionally I have to get people to review books like this. Now I don’t know about you, but I find the idea of someone who doesn’t have to work for a living (his father founded Global Asset Management – hopefully they’ve got about one left at this point) writing a book about work rather in, um, poor taste. And the blurb! Just listen to this:
‘Equally intrigued by work’s pleasures and its pains, Alain de Botton here heads out into the under-charted worlds of the office, the factory, the fishing fleet and the logistics centre, ears and eyes open to the beauty, interest and sheer strangeness of the modern workplace.’
The man is…intrigued?! What, like a captivity-raised squirrel suddenly let out in to the world for the first time, little sparkly opal eyes blinking at the overwhelming wonder and diversity of it all? Gasping at the, ahem, ‘sheer strangeness’ of the modern workplace?! I’m sure cleaners setting off on the 472 at 4am to get the first tube to Canary Wharf find their pitiful paycheck ‘strange’ and ‘beautiful’. De Botton has written, apparently, a ‘song for occupations’. Well that’s good of him. Perhaps next time he’ll write a waltz for torture or a sonata for wife-beating.
You can read Nina and de Botton’s full email exchange here, but suffice it to say, his love for labor appears to have quickly found its limit. Like any good Radfahrer, he knows you need a ‘blood orange’ to make bloody orange juice. As Benjamin put it in a review of Kracauer’s White-Collar Workers:
“Blutorangen (literally, ‘blood oranges’) are people who are yellow on the outside and red on the inside – in other words, people who hypocritically conceal their opinions in order to succeed in the workplace. Radfahrer (‘bicycle riders’) are people who bow to those above them while kicking down hard on those below. Schleimtrompeten (‘slime-trumpets’) are official company newsletters. And Prinzessinnen (‘princesses’) are office girls who regard themselves as superior to the [page] salesgirls behind the counter, although the outsider can discern no difference in status. Only the term ‘bicycle rider’ still survives in contemporary German.” (Walter Benjamin, “An Outsider Makes His Mark,” in Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Volume 2, part 1, 1927-1930 (Walter Benjamin). Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2005: 310–311n7)
