It's a Living A surprisingly sprightly history of the glum designs behind the world of modern work Jerry Stahl
The genius of Cubed is that Saval recognizes the mood of barely controlled panic that suffuses most American offices, and tracks it through every element of the overmanaged, time-sucking, and keystroke-counting world of work. And what’s interesting, once the reader becomes used to Saval’s treatment of office life as a lens through which to view American Civilization (if you’ll pardon the expression), is how the mythology of Horatio Alger–esque merit-based advancement continues, in open defiance of a managerial ethos devoted to controlling, designing, and depersonalizing the work experience to within an inch of its life. Of course, in Alger’s day, folks actually believed an office boy with pluck could make something of himself, and maybe end up with his own going concern. Today, by contrast, there is barely a pretense of belief in upward mobility—regardless of how often politicians and business leaders continue to march out the idea—so the old meritocratic myth now functions a bit like the experience that recent amputees report of seeming to possess a phantom limb. full: http://www.bookforum.com/inprint/021_01/12990 _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
