My favorite books on work—the existential violence of it, and its potential to enlarge or diminish us as human beings

Firefighter, receptionist, janitor. Bank teller, jazz saxophonist, piano tuner. Meter reader, shipping clerk, washroom attendant, stockbroker, realtor, football coach. Accountant, stewardess, bag boy. Glue renderer, strip miner, priest. Most (but not all) of these jobs are still around, and while the way of work has undergone vast technological and economic change in the fifty years (!) since this book of interviews was published, the why of work has not. “The Job,” writes Terkel, “is about a search for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash, for astonishment rather than torpor; in short, for a sort of life rather than a Monday through Friday sort of dying.” Terkel simply lets these people talk about what they do, and there is dignity and poetry in what they say.

This is the drama of a twenty-second escalator ride, during which the narrator, returning to the office from lunch, ponders his morning at work and his just-ended lunch hour, and reflects upon just about everything that he has observed or handled on this day (sunlight, shoelaces, staplers, doorknobs, carpet, rubber stamps, popcorn, and yes, escalators), and on every seemingly insignificant and fleeting human activity he has engaged in (tying his shoelace, signing a co-worker’s get-well card, replacing a wastepaper basket bag, avoiding another co-worker, ending a conversation). Though an office drone with a boring job, he remains undefeated, and engages the mundane and the routine around him with joy and renewal and wonder. A very funny and heartfelt book.

One early summer afternoon, the body of a young woman is dredged from the mud of Lake Vättern, and Detective Inspector Martin Beck of the Swedish National Police is assigned to the case. Who was she? Who killed her? These questions remain unanswered for months and months (and months). Catching a killer, it seems, is a slog, and the routines of police work are captured here in all their tedium. And this is exactly why I love this book, as it compellingly dramatizes (to quote from Henning Mankell’s introduction) “the fundamental virtue of the police: patience.” There’s a heroism to these steadfast and rumpled men, and something thrilling about their dogged, often frustrating, yet ultimately successful pursuit of the truth.

During Italy’s post-WWII economic boom of the ‘50s, in an anonymous northern Italian city, an unskilled laborer named Marcovaldo struggles to support his wife and five children (or seven, or four—the number changes). In twenty tightly-plotted tales, we observe him stealing a trout, stealing a rabbit, getting lost in the fog, shoveling sidewalks, trying to fall asleep, trying to stay warm in the winter. Each “adventure” complicates absurdly, and some are more dire than others. Though on the brink of poverty, Marcovaldo hangs on, strives and fails, and strives anew, never losing his naive sense that things will turn out fine. The best comic writing is always tinged with the tragic, making you laugh and making you feel, and Calvino is a master.

All jobs are awful, all bosses are cruel, and all employees are crushed by the corporate machine. Some of them, the ones that narrate these stories, try to fight back, to maintain some semblance of dignity. Saunders’ vision of the workplace is satirical and unsparing—a fantastical nightmare of free-market capitalism. The humor is sharp and savage, and the compassion for these underdogs is deep and affecting.