Making a Living, Making a Life

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Theme Essay | Discussion Prompts | Further Reading

Book, Author Information, and Discussion Questions:

Theme Essay

For most Americans, work is a economic necessity. We must buy groceries, pay the bills, support our families, and (if we are lucky) we have enough left over to save for a rainy day. Our idealized life is based on comfortable living provided by financial stability and well-being. In order to achieve the American Dream, we need money and the most reliable way of making money is to work.

We also have a very contradictory relationship with our jobs. While most of us complain about our work and dream of making enough money to retire early, many self-made millionaires continue to work. What these people have realized (along with many people facing retirement) is that how we define Who We Are is often inextricably linked to What We Do. How often have you heard someone say something along the lines of 'I am a teacher' rather than 'I teach'. But our equating of personal identity with our occupation can cause emotional and psychological problems when we are either forced to retire or are fired.

Modern manufacturing techniques can also make many workers feel like nothing more than cogs in a machine. Some workers feel a need to lash out against the impersonality of their work by creating their own signature in their work, even purposely denting what they are making just to maintain a sense of individuality. Yet factory workers are not the only ones who feel de-humanized by their work. Many people in the so-called "glamourous" fields, like acting and modeling feel that their work makes them nothing more than objects.

The works in this theme all address the relationship between us and our work. Working, a collection of interviews between Studs Terkel and numerous average workings Americans, explores the interviewees' opinions about their work, what is right and what is wrong about each one's occupation. Both Death of a Salesman and The Professor's House deal with the problems facing aging workers and their disillusionment about their vocations. Finally, Growing Up, Russell Baker's autobiography, looks at the effects of poverty, the difficulties of being a working woman in his mother's generation, and his mother's determination that Baker would 'make something of himself'.

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Discussion Prompts

What do a journalist, a salesman, a professor, and a computer engineer have in common? Woven into a novel, a play, an autobiography, and two works of non fiction, their stories illuminate the meaning of work and its place in our society. The "Working" theme engages readers in books which span the Great Depression to the Computer Age and provides a forum to explore a wide range of experiences in and about the realm of work. The theme was developed originally for the national Let’s Talk About It project by the American Library Association. In an essay written for the national theme pamphlet (1), author Joseph Parisi says,

. . . Who We Are tends to be inextricable related to What We Do. How We Do It,
though, may be the most pertinent part of the subject, as we may discover while discussing the five books gathered about our theme. Most of us have to work,

but some of us make a virtue of the necessity. Our occupations, these books suggest, can be fulfilling as well as frustrating, callings instead of chores, not only obligations but vocations. Whether one is retired, a member of the baby boomer generation or Gen X, the topic of "Working" still resonates and offers fertile ground for discussion. The selected books are rich with human experience that distill important questions, and readers will encounter such issues as

  • work time vs. leisure time
  • success and the American dream
  • equal opportunity in the work place
  • what constitutes job satisfaction
  • the demise of the "old" economy and the rise of the "new"
  • "work ethic" vs. ethics in the work place

In the end, it will be up to the readers to decide if what they have read supports "making a living" or "making a life."

(1) "Making a Living, Making a Life: Work and Its Rewards in a Changing America," Joseph Parisi, American Library Association, © 1984.

Books for Further Reading

  • Coleman, John R. Blue-Collar Journal: A College President's Sabbatical.
  • Franklin, Benjamin. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin.
  • Mead, Margaret. Blackberry Winter.
  • Selzer, Richard. Confessions of a Knife.
  • Wertheimer, Barbara. We Were There: The Story of Working Women in America.
  • Wilson, Sloan. The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit.

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Making a Living, Making a Life - Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller

Let's Talk About It!On this page:

Book Summary | Author Biography | Bibliography | Discussion Questions | Other links

Summary

Declared an American classic almost from its first staging, Death of a Salesman (1949) focuses on Willy Loman, a 63 year-old salesman. Loman's life starts to fall apart when he is forced to face the incongruity between his delusions about his own success and his children's potential and the actualities of their situation. The story of the Loman family unfolds during a 24 hour period and is fleshed out by a series of flash-backs depicted as symptoms of Willy's failing mind. Like most of Miller's work, this play deals with societal issues, most importantly our definition of success, the effect this definition has on people incapable of achieving such a success, and the relationship between reality and perception.

Biography of Arthur Miller

Arthur Miller was born in 1912 in New York City to a middle class family. His family lived in Brooklyn during the Great Depression where they struggled under financial hardship. This change in the family's fortunes is reflected in many of Miller's works. After high school Miller worked for two years to earn money to attend college. In 1938, he graduated from the University of Michigan, where he had begun writing plays and winning awards. After college, he returned to New York. A football injury kept him out of World War II. Miller is best known for Death of a Salesman, which brought him international fame. He was hailed as one of the greatest twentieth-century American playwrights. In the 1950s, when anti-communist sentiment in the U.S. was growing in fervor, Miller's play The Crucible, about the Salem witch hunts, became an allegory for the McCarthy era. He was investigated by the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1956, and when he refused to give names to the committee, was cited for contempt of Congress. The Supreme Court reversed this ruling in 1958. Miller was also in the limelight because of his marriage to movie icon Marilyn Monroe 1956-1961. Now in his eighties, Miller continues to write and lives with his third wife Ingeborg in Roxbury, Connecticut.

Bibliography

Plays

  • The Man Who Had All the Luck (1944)
  • All My Sons (1947)
  • Death of a Salesman (1949)
  • An Enemy of the People (1950)
  • The Crucible (1953)
  • A Memory of Two Mondays (1955)
  • A View from the Bridge (1956)
  • The Misfits (1961)
  • After the Fall (1964)
  • Incident at Vichy (1964)
  • The Price (1968)
  • The Creation of the World and Other Business (1972)
  • The Archbishop's Ceiling (1977)
  • Playing for Time (1980)
  • The American Clock (1980)
  • Two-Way Mirror (1982-84)
  • Danger: Memory (1987)
  • The Last Yankee (1991-93)
  • The Ride Down Mt. Morgan (1991)
  • Broken Glass (1994)
  • Mr. Peter's Connections (1998)

Fiction

  • Focus (1945) [novel]
  • Jane's Blanket (1963) [children's book]
  • Homely Girl (1992) [novella]
  • I Don't Need You Anymore [short stories]

Non-Fiction

  • Situation Normal (1944)
  • In Russia (1969)
  • In the Country (1977)
  • Chinese Encounters (1979)
  • "Salesman" in Beijing (1983)
  • The Theater Essays of Arthur Miller (1978) [edited by Robert A. Martin]
  • Timebends: A Life (1987) [autobiography]

Discussion questions for Death of a Salesman

  1. Is the idealization of rural life in the play meant as a realistic alternative to the business life?
  2. What is the significance in Happy and Willy's boss sharing the same first name (Howard)?
  3. Why does Willy refuse to take a job from Charley?
  4. What is significant about the ways in which Willy tries to commit suicide (and eventually succeeds)?

Web Sites

Visit the Arthur Miller Society's web site for a wealth of information, including an annotation of Miller's major works and a chronology of Miller's life: www.ibiblio.org/miller/

The Arthur Miller Society's web site also has a list of links to other Miller web sites: www.ibiblio.org/miller/links.html

The Kennedy Center's web site has a brief biography of Arthur Miller: http://www.kennedy-center.org/calendar/index.cfm?fuseaction=showIndividual&entity_id=3762&source_type=A

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Making a Living, Making a Life - Russell Baker


Growing Up by Russell Baker 

Let's Talk About It!On this page:

Book Summary | Author Biography | Bibliography | Other links

Summary

With wit, irony and skillful dialog, Russell Baker tells the story of growing up during the Great Depression. His story centers on the struggles his family endured while holding onto the American Dream. Baker's indomitable mother is the force in his life which enables him to overcome, through hard work and luck, and to rise above his humble beginnings to go to college, marry, and begin a career in the newspaper business. Throughout the book, the struggles of ordinary people bring not only inspiration but insight into our own times. This excerpt from the "Working" theme pamphlet by Joseph Parisi sums the book with these words:

"Reflecting on this period of economic misery and social upheaval, other readers may make comparison with our own troubled present, and may find their own parallels in a determined mother or other strong and influential family figures who seem to guide our destinies and help us achieve our goals, with the Baker story in mind, the members of the discussion groups may also want to reconsider how ambitions--so recently distrusted--the traditional American Work Ethic, and the ideal of Success continue to affect our lives."

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Biography of Russell Baker

Russell Baker was born in Loudoun County, Virginia in 1925. He chronicles his formative years during the Great Depression in Baltimore in his memoir, Growing Up, published in 1982. Baker attended Johns Hopkins University on the G. I. Bill, graduated, and began working as a police reporter for the Baltimore Sun in 1947. In 1954 he joined the New York Times in Washington and began writing political commentary in his column "Observer," which he continued for thirty-six years until December, 1998. Mr. Baker won the Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Commentary in 1979 and for Biography in 1983 for Growing Up.

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Bibliography

  • An American in Washington, 1961
  • No Cause for Panic, 1964
  • All Things Considered, 1965
  • Our Next President, 1968
  • Poor Russell's Almanac, 1972
  • So This Is Depravity, 1980
  • Growing Up, 1982
  • The Rescue of Miss Vaskell, 1983
  • The Norton Book of Light Verse (editor), 1986
  • The Good Times, 1989
  • There's a Country in My Cellar, 1990
  • Russell Baker's Book of American Humor (editor), 1993

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Web Sites

Read a lecture delivered by Russell Baker at Stanford University's John S. Knight lecture series for distinguished journalists. "Will the Media Be the End of Us?" knightfellows.stanford.edu/public/lectures/baker_bio.html

Read an article by John Corry, published at The American Spectator Online, February, 1999. "The Demise of Columnists: Reflections on the Retirement of Russell Baker," www.spectator.org/archives/99-02_corry.html

For information about the sequel to Growing Up, see a review of Baker's The Good Times written by Ward Just, May 28, 1989, and published on the New York Times web site. "Still Growing Up: A Reporter's Journey" www.nytimes.com/books/99/05/02/specials/just-baker.html ,

Visit the Michigan Historical Museum's web site which provides links to articles about the Depression. The Great Depression News www.sos.state.mi.us/history/museum/explore/museums/hismus/1900-75/depressn/labnews2.html

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Making a Living, Making a Life - Willa Cather

The Professor's House by Willa Cather 

Let's Talk About It!On this page:

Book Summary  |  Author Biography  |  Bibliography  |  Discussion Questions  |  Other links

Summary

The Professor's House is the story of Godfrey St. Peter, a man in his fifties who seems to have achieved success: professional status as an academic, material wealth and social standing, and  a devoted family. But all is not as it seems. St. Peter is confronted with aging and an accompanying loss of his intellectual prowess, professional challenges to his independence as a scholar, and domestic upheaval. Over the course of a year, St. Peter struggles to come to terms with his personal and professional choices.

Biography of Willa Cather

Willa Cather was born in 1893 in Virginia. She moved with her family at age nine to Read Cloud, Nebraska, which became the setting of several novels. She attended the Univeristy of Nebraska before beginning a career as a journalist, teacher, and writer. She won the Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours in 1923. Willa Cather died at age 73 in 1947.

Bibliography

Novels:

Alexander's Bridge (1912)

O Pioneers! (1913)

The Song of the Lark (1915)

My Antonia (1918)

One of Ours (1921)

A Lost Lady (1923)

The Professor's House (1925)

My Mortal Enemy (1926)

Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927)

Shadows on the Rock (1931)

Lucy Gayheart (1935)

Sapphira and the Slave Girl (1940)

Short Stories:

The Troll Garden (1905)

Youth and the Bright Medusa (1920)

Obscure Destinies (1932)

Verse:

April Twilights (1903)

Essays:

Not Under Forty (1936)

Discussion Questions

For questions developed by Random House, Vintage Publishers, see the listing for The Professor's House under www.readinggroupguides.com/guides/professors_house.html

Web Sites

A comprehensive site devoted to Willa Cather can be found at icg.harvard.edu.

From a web site hosted by the Kutzdown University of Pennsylvania for their distance learning classes, maintained by Dr. Bette A. Reagan, read this article which contains a Cather biography, a bibliography of Cather's works, a list of criticisms, and awards and honors. www.kutztown.edu/~reagan/cather.html

Visit the online version of the Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial and Educational Foundation, located in Cather's childhood home of Red Cloud, Nebraska: www.willacather.org/

For more information on the research Cather did at Mesa Verde for her novel The Professor's House, read a paper presented to the 1999 Fall Cather Symposium: "Willia Cather on Mesa Verde," by Amy Kort, University of Wisconsin-Madison. www.willacather.org/Newsletter/Spring2000/WillaCatheronMesaVerde.htm

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Making a Living, Making a Life Studs Terkel

Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel about What They Do by Studs Terkel

Let's Talk About It!On this page:

Book Summary | Author Biography | Bibliography | Other links

Summary

Studs Terkel interviewed hundreds of workers from all walks of life from waitresses to executives to find out what people think about work. The resulting collection of 135 interviews are loosely organized under various topics. One of the themes to emerge from the book is how people see their attitudes toward work have changed. Terkel's improvisatory writing style has been compared to jazz riffs as he gives voice to America's workers telling their stories.

Biography of Studs Terkel

Louis (Studs) Terkel was born in New York City in 1912. When he was eight, he moved to Chicago where his mother ran a hotel. He was shaped by the Great Depression and the international socialist movements in the 1930s and 40s, out of which Terkel developed his interest in investigating "the common people" who infuse American society with vitality and creativity. Terkel's famous interviews arose out of his job as a disk jockey when he sometimes interviewed jazzmen and folk singers. His radio program was carried on WFMT in Chicago for forty-five years. In 1985, he won the Pulitzer Prize for The Good War. Terkel currently works as writer-in-residence at the Chicago History Society cataloging his audiotapes from the thousands of interviews he has done over the years.

Sources: see web site links below

Bibliography

  • Giants of Jazz (1957)
  • Division Street: America (1967)
  • Hard Times: An Oral History of the Depression in America (1970)
  • Working (1974)
  • Talking to Myself: A Memoir of My Times (1977)
  • American Dreams: Lost and Found (1980)
  • The Good War: An Oral History of World War II (1984)
  • Chicago (1986)
  • The Great Divide: Second Thoughts on the American Dream (1988)
  • Race: How Blacks and Whites Think and Feel about the American Obsession (1992)
  • Coming of Age: The Story of Our Century by Those Who've Lived It (1995)
  • My American Century (1997)
  • The Spectator (1999)

Biography

  • Studs Terkel: A Life in Words by Tony Parker (1996)

Web Sites

Read a review of Working: "Everybody Who's Nobody and the Nobody Who's Everybody," by Marshall Berman, March 24, 1974, The New York Times: www.nytimes.com/books/99/09/26/specials/terkel-working.html

Read "Listener, Talker, Now Literary Lion: Its Official" by Mel Gussow, The New York Times, June 17, 1997, [ www.nytimes.com/books/99/09/26/specials/terkel-lion.html ], an article written when Terkel was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Read reviews of Terkel's books and articles about Terkel from the archives of The New York Times web site: www.nytimes.com/books/99/09/26/specials/terkel.html

Links to various articles about Studs Terkel www.geocities.com/Heartland/3511/FAMOUS/Studs.htm

Read "Working Studs: An Interview with the Master Worker-Interviewer on his Own Craft," by Hank Hoffman, 1999, on the New Haven Advocate web site: www.newhavenadvocate.com/articles/working4/html

Read a June 28, 2000, review written by Ann Marlowe for the Salon.com web site of Gig: Americans Talk About Their Jobs at the Turn of the Millennium, edited by John Boew, Marisa Bowe and Sabin Streeter, which has been called an update of Studs Terkel's Working.www.salon.com/books/review/2000/06/28/gig/index.html

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Making a Living, Making a Life Tracy Kidder

The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder

Let's Talk About It!On this page:

Book Summary | Author Biography | Bibliography | Other links

Summary

In the late 1970s, a group of computer engineers at Data General Corporation were teamed to create a new 32-bit super microcomputer, dubbed the Eagle, that was faster and more powerful than its predecessors. In narrative fashion, the book tells the story of the computer's creators: "the Hardy Boys," the engineers who created the hardware, and "the Microkids," who developed the microcode which enabled the computer to run its software programs. Full of company intrigue, personal sacrifice, and raw energy, the book captures the new work ethic of the technological age on its cusp. Juxtaposing personal stories of the engineers with the actual process of developing the computer, Kidder reveals real life drama as the engineers race against the clock to create their machine. Although not a technical book, it is sprinkled with details about a computer's insides that are interesting even to a non-scientific audience. Part chronicle of a scientific endeavor, part celebration of the triumph of human intelligence and creativity, The Soul of a New Machine won both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction in 1982.

Biography of Tracy Kidder

Tracy Kidder, a free lance journalist, is recognized as a leading writer of nonfiction, for which he has won numerous awards. Born in 1946 in New York City into an upper middle class family, Kidder's father was a lawyer and his mother was a teacher. He graduated from Harvard and served for a year in Vietnam. He began his career doing free lance writing for The Atlantic Monthly. The hallmark of Kidder's writing is his meticulous research which enables him to go beneath the surface to examine the details of human lives that tell a more complete story. He lives in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Sources: see web site links below

Bibliography

  • The Road to Yuba City: A Journey into the Juan Corona Murders (1974)
  • The Soul of a New Machine (1981)
  • House (1985)
  • Among School Children (1989)
  • Old Friends (1993)
  • Home Town (1999)

 

Web Sites

Read a profile of Tracy Kidder and his writing: "In His Element: Tracy Kidder" by Elaine Hines, 2000: www.andover.edu/publications/bulletinwinter2000/kidder/kidder.htm

Another profile in the April, 1999, issue of The Atlantic Monthly: www.theatlantic.com/issues/99apr/990477.htm

The computer game "Adventure" plays a role in the debugging of the Eagle. Visit this link to find out how the game was created: people.delphi.com/rickadams/adventure/a_history.html

Visit this web site created by the University of Denver to learn more about what computer engineers study: www.engr.du.edu/guide/undergrad1.html

Read reviews of The Soul of a New Machine:

On the Discovery Channel Canada's web site, a review by from David Smillie, July 4, 2000, "The Soul of a New Machine, by Tracy Kidder." exn.ca/Stories/2000/07/04/54.cfm

Published in the New York Times, August 23, 1981: "The Hardy Boys and the Microkids Make a Computer," a review by Samuel C. Florman: www.nytimes.com/books/99/01/03/specials/kidder-soul.html

A viewpoint from a freelance software programmer, "Eran Tromer's Book Reviews: 'The Soul of a New Machine'" www.forum2.org/eran/shelf/soul-machine.html

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