The Pleasures And Sorrows Of Work;
By Alain de Botton; Hamish Hamilton;
Pages: 329; Price: Rs 499
BUY BORROW AVOID
How many of us go to work everyday, hit the work station and get soaked in the same schedule day in and day out? Meetings, calls, mails, gossip, coffee and work related travel — that’s work life for most of us! Some of our more expressive brethren even have a sticker on their desk screaming ‘Same old stuff…everyday!’
Now, all that’s going to change if you read Alain de Botton’s The Pleasures And Sorrows Of Work. You will start looking at your work as a journey to something more fruitful. Work will appear as a voyage that is more rewarding and all encompassing. How is that for impact? That is Alain de Botton for you. A philosopher, author, TV commentator and whose published works include titles such as Status Anxiety, The Consolations Of Philosophy and The Architecture Of Happiness among others.
For the book, Alain travelled across the world for almost two years observing people at work and trying to figure out why we do what we do. The book is an outcome of his philosophical inquiry on work and workplaces.
The author takes us on a journey investigating 10 occupations ranging from cargo-ship-watching to transmission engineering and from entrepreneurship to career counselling. He examines the joys in realm of ordinary workplaces and connects them to a higher, much bigger picture transcending the reader to a different world. Botton is a maverick and a genius combined in to one! He writes with loads of passion and his style oscillates from being essayistic to lyrical. His sentence construction may be complex at times as he is magnanimous in his use of adjectives but he connects pretty well.
For instance, the chapter on painting captures the labour of an artist who ends up making the equivalent the annual salary of an unsuccessful plumber, the one on entrepreneurship is laced with wit and subtle humour that will make you chuckle. The only thing that you are not sure about is the ‘sorrow’ that’s referred in the title as you tend to find more pleasure than grief across all professions under Botton’s scrutiny.
The book contains over a hundred original black and white images specially commissioned for this ‘project’. The highlight is the photo essay complementing the chapter on logistics that chronicles the journey of a tuna fish from Indian Ocean to suburban Bristol for consumption. If this happens to be your first Alain de Botton book, then be prepared to get hooked. There are six other books published earlier and more to come by as Alain is just forty!
A version of this review was published in the Businessworld issue dated 21-27 July 2009
Book Reviews 
The Pleasures And Sorrows Of Work;
