The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work; Interview with Alain de Botton

Alain de Botton is a writer of essayistic books that have been described as a 'philosophy of everyday life.' He's written on love, travel, architecture and literature. His books have been bestsellers in 30 countries. Alain also started and helps to run a school in London called The School of Life, dedicated to a new vision of education. Alain's newest book is published in April 2009 and is titled The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work.

1) You published your first book (Essays in Love, titled On Love in the US) at the age of twenty-three - how did you make the transition from student academic to published author?

Like many people with a taste for writing and ideas, I was initially very drawn to the idea of being an academic. The job seemed to promise both security and the time to write. But as I looked closer at the reality, I realised that I might never reach a tenured position and would - in order to work my way up the ladder - have to write books full of distortions and stylistic quirks (footnotes etc) demanded by the academic system. In other words, I realised that academia might - at worst - offer me neither security nor the chance to write what I wanted. So I decided to risk everything on the open commercial market, thinking that if things didn't work out, I would go into business. I was fortunate that my first book did work out and that my writing has gone well commercially ever since. This said, I would love a wealthy American university, preferably somewhere relatively sunny, to call me up and offer me a professorship in the art of the essay...

2) The ‘essay' was once viewed as a non-commercial format yet your 'essayistic' books have been bestsellers in 30 countries. What is it about this structure that works so well with your content?

I feel the essay is incredibly flexible as a form and in a way far more suited to our times than the novel, or the standard history or biography. It enables one to delve deep into a topic, and yet always retain relevance and a personal voice. The great essayists for me are Virginia Woolf, Montaigne, Emerson, Roland Barthes... these are my great inspirations.

3) In the summer of 2008 you set up The School of Life with some of your colleagues, could you tell us a little about the School and explain how the approach to learning differs from that of a university or college?

The idea was to offer instruction in the great questions of life in a way that would be intelligent, imaginative, revolutionary and playful. At the school, you can sign up for courses in politics, work, family, love - or indeed, talk to a therapist, learn how to garden in the city or go on a communal meal for strangers. The spirit of the place is anarchic and yet serious at heart. We're throwing down a gauntlet to traditional education, trying to reinvent how learning gets done. There are similarities with what I have tried to do in some of my books, though here we're attempting to demonstrate, rather than simply describe, the advantages of the examined life. Not to advertise, but you can find more at www.theschooloflife.com

4) 'Popularisation' is seen by many academics as a damning indictment, but you have an avowed interest in "putting learning and ideas back towhere they should always have been - right in the middle of our lives." How do you navigate the path between simplification and clarification when re-presenting great ideas?

It definitely is a path or a slippery slope - but then again, most valuable things are precariously poised between two rather unappealling poles. The key thing is to tell your reader what is important rather than what you think it's important to show the teacher that you know. Once one leaves academia, there is no more responsibility to the teacher. The responsibility is to the reader and their interest. So there may be no need for footnotes and endless hedging of bets. Of course, academics will always say, ' you have simplified things', but I fundamentally don't agree with the level of footnoting and fence-sitting that much academic writing seems to go in for.

5) Your latest book is titled 'The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work' - what are the pleasures and sorrows of working as a writer?

To be alive in the modern world, during a boom or a bust, means never being far from a career crisis - in other words, never far from questioning one's value and purpose (from personal experience, Sunday evening, as the light begins to fade, is a particularly appropriate time to sink into reflections about what might have been).

For me, the great pleasure of being a writer is knowing that i have been able to define an idea or a feeling which was previously murky for me and perhaps for others too. The great sorrow lies in how hard it is to do this - and the many sacrifices that go with the writer's life, including a sense of isolation, paranoia (because of critics) and a very insecure income stream.

6) You discussed in this book the concept of using your discontent with your surrounding situation (physical or otherwise) to fuel your writing, using it as a means to create something better. This suggests that writing is an escape, a path away from real life. Is this how you see writing, or do you feel that you use writing in a different way?

I don't see my writing as an escape so much as an illumination of real life. I use my writing to shine a light on often painful areas of my life - work, family, love, friendship... Happiness is good for individuals, but it's sorrow that brings people into bookstores.

7) Many graduates emerging from universities are facing extended transition between study and work. Are there any writers or philosophers whose work you feel would be relevant to this
contemporary malady?

Very few, in all honesty. This is why I wrote my book, to be used as a tool with which to meditate on one's choices. It seems amazing to me how little people are encouraged to think about what job to do, given the centrality of work in our culture. People will dive into things and it is extremely hard to get out of a certain line of work once one has started down it. My recommendation would be to stop and think for many months before starting to work in a given field.

8) You rightly question the myth that each of us can achieve without limit (becoming pop stars or best selling authors on strength of desire alone) but go on to suggest that Career Counsellors (or
Advisors) contribute to this pressure. Could it not be argued that Career Counsellors actually have the unenviable task of attempting to realign their client's aspirations and abilities / opportunities?

Yes, the best career counsellors do realign expectations and even more importantly, try to suggest that work is not the only source of meaning in life. The strangest thing I found about the world of work isn't the long hours we put in or the fancy machines we use to get it done; take a step back and perhaps the most extraordinary aspect of the work scene is in the end psychological rather than economic or industrial. It has to do with our attitudes to work, more specifically the widespread expectation that our work should make us happy, that it should be at the centre of our lives and our expectations of fulfilment.

The first question we tend to ask of new acquaintances is not where they come from or who their parents were, but what they do. Here is the key to someone's identity and esteem. It seems hard to imagine being able to feel good about yourself or knowing who you were without having work to get on with.

It wasn't always like this. For thousands of years, work was viewed as an unavoidable drudge and nothing more, something to be done with as rapidly as possible and escaped in the imagination through alcohol or religious intoxication.

I guess there are now broadly speaking two philosophies of work out there. The first you could call the working-class view of work, which sees the point of work as being primarily financial. You work to feed yourself and your loved ones. You don't live for your work. You work for the sake of the weekend and spare time - and your colleages are not your friends necessarily. The other view of work, very different, is the middle class view, which sees work as absolutely essential to a fulfilled life and lying at the heart of our self-creation and self-fulfilment. These two philosophies always co-exist but in a recession, the working class view is getting a new lease of life. More and more one hears the refrain, 'it's not perfect, but at least it's a job...'

For more information visit: www.alaindebotton.com