Mark Larson on Hope and importance
If ever there was a book that encompassed a personal obsession it would be Mark Larson’s latest, Working in the 21st century: An Oral History of American Work in a Time of Social and Economic Transformation. An oral anthology of what makes American workers keep waking up in the morning and what has made them shift expectations, careers, and their ideas of happiness over the past few years.
As someone who has worked multiple jobs in multiple fields which means I have up and quit multiple jobs over and over again in pursuit of the sometimes elusive fulfillment through work, I often wonder –daily, hourly – what is it that makes someone stay in a job, what is it that makes someone happy working a job that someone else would see as torture, what is it that keeps us setting our alarms and repeating it all day after day? Larson took those questions and more to over 100 people across the country and the consensus, despite an array of points of view, was that we simply want to matter at the end of a day and at the end of our days.
“I started at the beginning of covid when we thought it would be a couple weeks but it turned out that I was working on it the entire time when we went into deep reflexion, it happened accidentally,” Larson said. And though an accident, Larson was able to capture these interviews
during a moment of profound contemplation across the country. It was the perfect time to ask why do you do what you do, how does it make you feel, is this what you wanted your life to look like? Larson, who was interviewed by Studs Terkel (author of Working, 1974, whom Larson was very much inspired by) multiple times, was struck that despite being shy, sitting with Terkel, Larson wanted to talk. “I always wanted to find out what’s the mechanics of that, what did he do,” Larson said. “I think it’s more of it’s just showing interest…showing genuine interest.”
And like when Terkel asked the questions, Larson found that people simply wanted to talk. There are interviews in the book that will haunt and shape the way you think about your day-to-day life, choices, and what actually matters. This isn’t a book about business accumen or climbing ladders, at the core of it Larson and everyone who he interviewed are pondering happiness, how much substance our lives hold within the greater scheme of the universe. He is talking to each and everyone of the people in this book about their life’s work, and that very much goes beyond paychecks, spreadsheets, bosses, being a cog in the wheel.
“Studs saw his interviews as exploration, as supposed to this is what I am looking for from this person, so then when you look at the whole book, it really was let me just explore what is out there,” Larson said. “It is more academic to say here is a point I want to prove. I wanted to stay away from that. I wanted an array of people’s views and experiences. This isn’t a sociological study this is portraiture. I just want to hear what you have to say.”
The portrait that lingers in my head is of Joel Greeno, a dairy farmer, who lost his family’s farm and all that made him content only to end up in a cement walled factory, away from the fresh air, the animals, the routine and the memories. Larson seems to have similar portraits that flash before his eyes still. Broderick Love, an Amazon fulfillment worker, being one. Love already knows he doesn’t matter at work, what he wants to matter is what he says about his work, Amazon and similar companies that treat the hardest working employees as numbers and not people, stripping the job and the workplace of any sense of humanity. “I said are you fearful of losing your job, should I change your name, and he said if Bezos happens to pick this book up and it makes a difference, at least it will have mattered somehow,” Larson said.
It can not go unmentioned that the majority of us, Americans, especially without the promise of health care that actually covers well, health care, amongst many other factors that force us to choose a career, take a job, because it will keep us as alive with the basics of need. But what about happiness without the the privilege to choose what you love instead of choosing what is necessary? Larson has a section in the book called The Pursuit of Happiness which is filled with interviews of artists, entrepreneurs, and people pulling double duty to make their dreams come true. As Larson put it, their heart is taking them one way, but logistics and certainty were taking them another, and these are the people who took a leap of faith not knowing if pursuing their American dream would work out.
“The broomsquire, Amanda, she talks specifically about the American dream failing her parents, that guides so much of what she does, Carolyn Grace worked at a large university and then was let go with a bunch of other people and is now consulting and is barely hanging on, and she said, going back to the American dream, that she was raised in catholic school and what it’s about is you do good in the world and then that is the reward, but there is no monetary value to it, she said, almost bitterly, and now where am I.”
Larson in book form, and in person, exudes hope even while telling the stories of others who are inching towards losing theirs. I frankly asked his opinion on if the American dream is dead. As someone who can spiral to the edges of bleakness fervently, Larson is the opposite and was quick to remind me that though corny, Americans still very much strive to achieve more from life. “If you want to say is the American dream is dead, I don’t think so, I think the aspiration to live the life I want to live is definitely there,” Larson said.
Larson’s Working in the 21st Century: An Oral History of American Work in a Time of Social and Economic Transformation is available through Agate Publishing and your local book sellers.
