Punch the clock—in the face

Levi Stahl has written more on Westlake/Stark's Parker novels as "work" books:

In each of the novels, Stark (who is one of Donald Westlake's many identities) concerns himself with such seemingly mundane details as finding a good job, getting to know the other workers, and doing the work. He doesn't stint on detail, and he doesn't touch on much outside of the job.

Check out Stark's The Outfit—guaranteed to hold you up!

Finest worksong!

A logo by Brian McMullen — click on it for the PD theme song (also by McMülls)!

Knockemstiff

Question: Parker’s work often seems unglamorous—he spends lots of time alone, driving, thinking, planning, waiting around, making phone calls, negotiating, checking numbers. He seems to value the bourgeois virtues of self-control, discipline, consistency, and focus. Do you agree Parker might make a great accountant?

Westlake: I’m not sure he has the patience for accountancy, but I’ve always believed the books are really about a workman at work, doing the work to the best of his ability. However, I see him more as working stiff than professional class.

—From an interview with Donald Westlake, about his Parker novels (written under the name Richard Stark)

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Web Diversions! Including the PD-blog fave "Read at Work."

(From Becky.)

Contagious!

"This absence of novelized work makes a book that restricts itself to the 9-to-5, like Ed Park's cubicle opera Personal Days (Random House), shine all the more. Park points out that those dead, stressed hours make up a separate reality....The final section, a bravura paranoid single-sentence stream-of-consciousness outpouring, shows more skill and contagious joy than any document that also uses 'impact' as a verb should."

—Justin Bauer, Philadelphia City Paper

12 sheets to the wind

"It says on this Airmail pad that 12 sheets and an envelope weighs less than half an ounce, but I doubt if I can go on at that length. Also I am writing this in the office in the morning, which seems frightfully sinful." —Letter from Barbara Pym to her friend Richard Campbell Roberts, 1/5/65


(Via Levi.)

A reader writes

Conversation in my new office (8/3)

C: Do you want to come to Starbucks with us?
M: Sure! Let's go.
M-K: I forget... which one is the good Starbucks?
C: It's the one between 5th and 6th, definitely.
M-K: Yeah... the other one is so much worse.