Journey is the destination

The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work by Alain De Botton. Photo / Supplied

"Death is hard to keep in mind when there is work to be done," writes Alain de Botton.

Having read through 324 pages to reach this statement, you might feel gypped. But only if you were silly enough to think that without work, thoughts of mortality would engulf us.

Given the opportunity, how many of us would rather improve our tennis serve or watch Anna Paquin? De Botton has mapped out a career as a pop philosopher and the emphasis here is on the pop.

After tackling happiness and status, travel and architecture, de Botton is joined in his latest foray into the human condition by photographer Richard Baker, whose moody, bleakish images adorn every second page.

The duo embark on an elliptic journey that takes them from tuna boats off the Maldives to a jumbo jet graveyard outside Bakersfield, California. In his quest, de Botton spends time with career advisers, accountants and entrepreneurs, office girls and logistics specialists, satellite engineers and biscuit makers.

None of those he meets seem especially troubled by the question of what work delivers or even what it should deliver. He meets a painter who produces the same landscape over and over. He joins a member of the pylon appreciation society for a hike over unremarkable landscape to admire a line of towers.

Neither the painter nor the pylon fan is bored or unfulfilled. Instead, each is satisfied and focused. Each man is happy. It is de Botton who succumbs to a low depression about the futility of what he does and at one point stays in bed for several days. Thankfully de Botton gets the joke. He writes with a dry humour that verges on a snicker. But he is smart enough to see the irony in his own situation: insecure writer.

A career aptitude questionnaire reveals he has average abilities best suited for mid-ranked administrative or commercial posts. Further he is told that his future lies in medical diagnostics, oil and gas exploration or the leisure industry.

So the joke is on de Botton, but maybe also readers dragged on a journey with only the vaguest destination in mind.

The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work
By Alain de Botton (Hamish Hamilton $50)

* Gilbert Wong is an Auckland reviewer.