Lapham's Quarterly - Lines of Work: Volume IV, Number 2, Spring 2011

A mostly interesting collection of excerpts, anecdotes, images, and charts on the themes of work and idleness, from Egypt circa 1160 BCE to 1844 Paris and 21st c. Minnesota. The writers and artists represented include Pliny the Elder, Charles Mingus, Machiavelli, Chekhov, Rabelais, Gloria Steinem, Mark Twain, Roberta Victor, Ôyama Shirô, Olaudah Equiano, Pieter Bruegel, Miguel Rio Banco, & Doris Ulman. The range of voices, vocations, and localities reveals the multiplicity of values and meanings ascribed to human labor and leisure since ancient times, with something for everyone.

I also had personal reasons to be suspicious of tool collecting. Although I come from a family of insufferably handy men—men able to wire a house, rebuild a show more transmission, frame a wall without calling an expert or consulting a book—I am profoundly unhandy. By the traditional measures of American manhood, I am, essentially, a Frenchwoman. (Donovan Hohn, “Lost Symbols”)

Lagunitas Censored Copper Ale
Tröegs Sunshine Pils show less

I enjoyed Lines of Work. The editors pick of excerpts and quotes contrast the universal themes of the need for work and labor, versus the desire for leisure and idleness. The pictures were very good too, Jean-Francois Millet's The Sower is my favorite.

Favorite excerpts include: Norman MacLean's experiences as a lumberjack before the era of chainsaws, he was on the other end of a 2-person saw with a sadistic jack whose "pace was set to kill me off." An excerpt of Homer's seven year tryst with Calypso in The Odyssey, "they lost themselves with love," but Homer leaves to return home to his wife. Nebmare-nakht in 1160 BC Egypt gives advice for young men, "Love writing, shun dancing." Roberta Victor in a piece from Studs Terkel's Working show more (1974) tells her experiences as a high-price call girl in Manhattan, "You leave and go back.. to what? To an emptiness. You got all this money in your pocket and nobody to care about."

Susan Orlean writes about the King of the African Ashanti tribe who lives in a small Bronx apartment with a throne, "Everyone always has a problem for the King." Edwin Lefevre's Reminiscences of a Stock Operator (1923) is "a font of investing wisdom" according to Alan Greenspan and considered a classic about stock trading. Paula Speck's essay "Six Seconds" is about families who sue for damages when their loved ones experience foreknowledge before dieing, such as in a plane accident or falling off a building; court precedent values each second of "I'm about to die" horror at about $3,000/sec, on average. "Where a medieval man might have been grateful for a chance to pray, we sue." Leslie Chang's excerpt from Factory Girls (2008) is about a Chinese factory that makes most of the worlds running shoes is a fascinating glimpse of mass industry and the social life within its walls. Woodie Guthrie's lyrics "Lulow Massacre" is a moving tribute to a real event in 1914, the deadliest strike in the history of the United States.

--Review by Stephen Balbach, via CoolReading (c) 2011 cc-by-nd show less