Job Hunting
O, VOX! The job hunt keeps me from drinking at the fountain of Voxers' pith and wisdom. There are some great opportunities out there for Balzac scholars and administrative polymaths like me and Marian the Librarian...
From The Music Man:
Marian:
Mama, a man with a suitcase followed me home. [...] I know what the gentleman wanted.Mrs. Paroo:
What, dear?Marian:
You'll find it in Balzac.Mrs. Paroo:
Well, excuse me for livin', but I never read it!
Entertainment is in short supply for me these days; job hunts don't inspire pop culture. Working is a great motivator (viz. the catchy "Welcome to the Working Week" by Elvis Costello). So is school, though maybe the only excellent novel set in higher education is Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis. But the in-between phase of the post-academic career search? A cultural void!
Were artistic inspiration a slave to logic, job hunting would be a great subject for art. It's a quest like any other. There would be no Don Quixote without dusty roads and no Jane Austen novels without carriages that move people between districts. The verve, the tension of fiction requires a transition between places or between social groups. Name a great novel: odds are that it has something to do with provincial kids moving to the city because they need a job, or city folk vacationing in the country to prove that they're not the working kind.
A few job-hunt-related moments in pop culture:
1. Charles Bukowski
2. M.I.A., "Paper Planes":
All I want to do is BANG BANG BANG BANG!And KA-CHING!
3. Gwyneth Paltrow smirks "I hate job hunting" in the trailer for Iron Man.
4. Sylvia Plath's poem "The Applicant" is an interview of a prospective husband. (Hear Plath recite it, or read the text by yourself, at poetryarchive.org.)
First, are you our sort of a person?
Do you wear
A glass eye, false teeth or a crutch,
A brace or a hook,
Rubber breasts or a rubber crotch,Stitches to show something's missing? No, no? Then
How can we give you a thing?
Stop crying.
Open your hand.
Empty? Empty. Here is a handTo fill it and willing
[...]
Comments
The Blue Aeroplanes set 'The Applicant' to hard, driving, angry, wonderful music. You practically levitate to it.
It's a perfect match to an angry, bitter, rhythmic poem.
Here are some tales shared by those who probably needed a little more BANG BANG BANG BANG! to go with their KA-CHING! when it was all said and done.
A shimmering letter shall soon be sent -- whither my 1c stamps?