Readings

When I’m not trying to orient myself to my new surroundings or talking with recruiters, I’ve been on a reading rampage. After all, I’ve got library cards for Santa Clara City, Santa Clara County (branches in Milpitas, Cupertino, Los Gatos and other municipalities) & San José. (San José, I have to say, has pathetic hours—none of their branches is open on Sunday. However, with a San José card you also have access to the San José State University library, which I’m looking forward to exploring.)

Because I’m finding this environmental adjustment process a bit challenging, I’m not going for books that strain my brain to any great degree. I have, in fact, ripped through about nine of Donna Leon’s Commissario Brunetti mysteries, with five more in my queue.

The Brunetti books (like other police procedurals set in real locations) are a window into the world of Venetian society. There’s nothing like a criminal investigation to get to the heart of political and social operations. And in Italy (I’ve read other procedurals set in different cities) the heart seems remarkably corrupt.

Which makes being what Raymond Chandler called an honorable man in pursuit of truth (because justice is frequently out of the question) an uphill climb.

So when you finish one of these novels, you sometimes need a bath.

But you read them for more than the crime—you read them for Venice, for the splattering of Italian words & phrases throughout, and for the meals.

I have to say, the Commissario may not always get his man, but his food and drink go a long way to compensate; they are straight out of heaven. Imagine a world where you go home for lunch, meeting your university professor wife and two children over three courses of dishes whose names roll off the tongue on delicious vowels and washed down with robust wines.

And then there’s dinner, with antipasti, pasta, main, salad and dessert, with wine and digestivo.

The thing about this is that you feel as though you should be accompanying the books with more than Trader Joe’s Asparagus Risotto and a few steamed shrimp. I’m even tempted to try grappa again, even though I think there’s a clause in the Geneva Convention that prohibits me ever swallowing it, as it blows the top of my head off.

You don’t feel like you need to pop down the pub for shepherd’s pie and a pint when you read English procedurals, but I assure you, you can’t read Leon (or any other writer of Italian crime fiction) without pining for penne pomodoro and a glass of Orvieto.

By way of breaking the chain of desire, I’m currently reading Hellraisers, The Life and Inebriated Times of Richard Burton, Richard Harris, Peter O’Toole and Oliver Reed.

I first heard about it from an NPR interview with the author. I’m so glad I didn’t buy the book—I’ve used my Santa Clara County library card to get it for free. It’s annoying the spit out of me, primarily because the author is no writer. The focus is completely blokey, reveling in what lads these guys are. There’s no discipline in the narrative, and this buffoon has not even a passing acquaintance with the rules of punctuation.

(I’m not naming him—if you want to know who it is, go Google it.)

Also—he doesn’t use footnotes to cite sources and appears to have relied mostly on secondary sources. Except for a list of alleged interviews he claims to have had…with 29 men. Evidently no women were worth speaking to about this quartet. Or not worth acknowledging.

Further, in his rush to be arch, in telling a particular tale of Reed being a lad in Madrid, he calls him "Signor [sic] Reed". And repeatedly refers to appearances on The Johnny Carson TV Show, instead of Tonight.

I'm not even going to try to understand why he quotes sums of money acquired in Britain in US dollars, &and those in the US in British pounds. (Or why he talks of The Who making a "world tour, traveling through the UK and US".) But I did get a kick out of his attempts to toss in phrases that neither he nor his editor (if he had one, which I doubt; if he did, St. Martin's Press should be ashamed of themselves) understands. The one that particularly sticks in my mind is his crediting Reed with a penchant for "cocking a snoop at the establishment".

I'm not sure what the establishment would make of having a snoop cocked at them, or if they'd even notice since they'd be expecting a snook. But evidently this dope couldn't be bothered to look up the word he wanted, figuring that if he was close, none of his readers would twig to his ignorance.

I've got to say, also, that the litany of amounts and types of liquor are kind of exhausting. Unlike the Leon works, I'm not tempted to line up my five bottles of vodka and start slamming them back in emulation of O'Toole or Reed, two actors I've adored for years.

My last book report is Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell Is This? This is just depressing, not only because she led such a life of pushing people away from her, found it so hard to write, and was so bloody good. Like the hellraisers she was an alcoholic, but she never seemed to grab life by the throat the way they did.

But her exquisite poetry and prose is an impossible standard to measure what I produce.

I think I’ll have another glass of Pinot Grigio.

Labor Day 2010 (Part 1)

I have a few thoughts appropriate to Labor Day—which is actually supposed to represent more than the official end of summer, barbecues and wearing white shoes. Actually, the thoughts are more on the nature of the employer-employee relationship in the 21st Century.

I’ve had occasion to consider this over the past few years—ever since I was laid off in the Dot Bomb of 2001. Every time I’ve gone through the exercise of finding a new job I’ve seen that relationship become less and less of a quid-pro-quo partnership that I viewed it up until this century.

By this I mean that it’s incumbent on the job seeker to demonstrate complete enthusiasm for the opportunity (it’s not a job, it’s an opportunity) to “add value” to the employer. As I examine this, the “value” seems to me to be rather like that of a farm animal—you show breeding points that enable you to pull the plough all day long without complaint, leaving straight rows no matter what the terrain.

Then there’s “multitasking”. In this analogy, multitasking would be the willingness to work in the fields & then accept the inevitable slaughter to remove an unproductive mouth and bring in one final bit of revenue.

The company doesn’t have to even pretend to offer anything to the prospect, other than demanding complete devotion to whatever cockeyed “mission statement” exists around the product line, paying the absolute minimum they can get away with in a market that favors them being stingy in the extreme & cutting the workforce whenever they need a quick fix for the analysts & stockholders.

It’s a short-term one-sided arrangement, in every sense of those expressions.

The seeker must present him/herself as absolutely enthralled at the prospect of giving all the hours God sends to the furtherance of the corporation’s goals, even with full knowledge that the real, unstated, goals revolve around making top management obscenely rich in the shortest amount of time; everything else is ancillary. This includes being available and responsive around the clock, so that when a colleague or manager feels like bunging out an email at 2245 on a Saturday, you must reply before 0900 on Monday or be considered a slacker, less than 120% focused on the problem(s) at hand.

(I’ve heard colleagues complain of seeing emails flying past late into the night, wondering what “these people” are doing, thinking about work at those hours. My response is always, “But what are YOU doing—you’re reading them at those hours.”)

At no time during 96% of the interview process can the prospect inquire—or even be seen to think that this is a consideration at all—what s/he might expect in return for this utter devotion. You can’t ask about pay, benefits, career path; all such inquiries would indicate that you’re not really willing to give everything you have to fill this one function simply because you believe it is your True Calling.

And yet, any more, what could the modern laborer want from an employer-employee relationship BUT financial compensation, which includes the whole “package”—if there is one—of salary, bonus, paid time off, health coverage? Not to mention things like education reimbursement, retirement plan? It’s the rare employer that doesn’t engage in employment-at-will, meaning they can fire staff at any time for any reason (or no reason), without explanation. That being the case, all employment is basically short-term and at-risk all the time. Executive management have demonstrated consistently that they’re in it for the immediate gain; why should workers imagine that when they take a job it’s a long range investment in the future, either theirs or the company’s?

For most businesses these days, “long-range” means “end of this quarter”. What matters is profit now, not what it might be next year, much less five years from now.

And employees are nothing more than a category of disposable assets to achieve that profit.

Of course, we’re not supposed to know that, much less appear to know it during the interviews. No, we all put on our masks and act our parts in this play (don’t know whether it’s Noh drama or sit-com)—Hire me because my passion (for whatever it is you need) brings value-add to your mission-critical goals. This is a fabulous place to work because we hire only fabulous people. (And it’s better to be said to be fabulous than to be actually valued.)

There’s more to this line of thought; but I’ll leave it at this for now so you can turn the kabobs on the grill and tuck those white T-straps in the back of your closet.