The Kibitzer

Alain de Botton’s The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work has been very helpful. Takes a bit more realistic (ironic? Stoic?) view of work than Crawford, who falls a bit too much – though he tries to avoid it – for the idea of work as self-realization. John Gray has an excellent review of de Botton’s book here. That John Gray gives it a positive review should tell you something.

UPDATE: I want to clarify that I still think Crawford’s book is very useful. His critique of the mental/manual distinction in work is crucial. Also quite valuable is his exposing as misleading the characterization of office work as intellectual work. My only criticisms are those pointed out by others. First is the aforementioned tendency to seeing work as self-realization. Second, there is a reason that blue-collar dads, including my own, tell their children to go to college so they don’t end up as manual laborers. It can be argued that they had inaccurate perceptions of the “intellectual” work they were urging their children into. But we should also remember that they knew firsthand about the disadvantages of “manual” work.