A Working Stiff's Manifesto by Iain Levison

I've just finished this somewhat disenchanted autobiographical book about the human condition - if the human condition can be reduced to the strange life led by "poor workers", shifting between bad jobs, which seems to be the life of more and more people...

Iain Levison tells us about a world where young people like himself can face de-humanising conditions, indifference, and the challenges of a brutal working environment, where physical fitness become the defining attribute of a person and where acceptance of fate seems to be the only career plan... Whether it is in a restaurant or on board a floating factory boat in Alaska, Levison describes the worker as a hamster in a wheel that turns faster and faster. This is a far cry from more serene works like the " Travaux" of Georges Navel, for instance.

To stay afloat has become the motto of all those precarious american youths who can see, roaming around them, perilously close, the hordes of the homeless, inhabitants of a zombified universe from which you cannot return ...

The author casts a benevolent but illusion-free portrait of the ambitious types, and of his co-workers at large, but he cannot refrain from tagging the greed of the employers. His odyssey reeks of cynicism, but isn't devoid of humanity and one laughs very often at the witty descriptions. The writing is of a very high quality.

I really enjoyed enjoyed this little book and recommend it to you !