The Wage Slave's Glossary [Paperback]

Joshua Glenn (Author), Pseud) Seth (Illustrator), Mark Kingwell (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 20, 2011

AS FEATURED IN THE OCCUPY WALL STREET PROTEST LIBRARY

Everybody knows a brown-noser when they see one. But how about a freeter? A workbrickle? A jack? Can they tell downsizing from greybearding or brightsizing?

With The Idler’s Glossary (2008), Mark Kingwell and Joshua Glenn offered a spirited defense of leisure. As confirmed idlers themselves, they assured us their Glossary could provide “everything you need to know about how to conduct a life.” Today, however, as we recover from the worst global recession since 1929, the work-world is a very different place. In order to understand it better, our anti-capitalist etymologists are therefore putting down their cigars, picking up their shovels, and drudging out English from the ditch of corporate jargon. For anyone who’s ever had to moil for high muckety-mucks, The Wage Slave’s Glossary is essential reading—as the moral wit of Kingwell & Glenn is indispensable to the present age.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A tiny, lovely book, beautifully designed and illustrated by Seth, delightful to pick up and hold in your hand"—Geist

"Exhausted demonstrators looking for the lightest reading they can find, at least in the literal sense, might want to pick up Joshua Glenn and Mark Kingwell’s “Wage Slave’s Glossary,” a nifty pocket-size volume also spotted on the shelves in Zuccotti Park. A follow-up to the authors’ “Idler’s Glossary,” the book provides energized Marxists and depressed Dilberts alike a witty guide to terms like “air family” (the false sense of community among co-workers), “afternoon farmer” (19th-century slang for someone who wastes the entiremorning), “keeping up with the Joneses” (the title of a popular cartoon that first appeared in 1913) and “on the wallaby” (Australian for “tramping the country on foot, looking for work”), not to mention more self-explanatory terms. (“Bossnapping,” anyone?)"
—New York Times

"A fun dictionary of modern office idioms and new economy jargon."
—The Atlantic

"A wry brand of enlightenment ... a pocket-sized guide to the terms of paid labor."
—Boston Globe

"A light-serious compilation against capitalism run amok."
—Globe & Mail

"The Wage Slave’s Glossary is a grand and saddening tour of language past and present ... a labor of love, and worth your money and time."— Michael LeddyOrange Crate Art

About the Author

Joshua Glenn: Joshua Glenn is a Boston-based journalist and scholar. He has labored as a bicycle shop manager and skateboard courier, a busboy and barrel-washer, a researcher and teacher, a handyman and house painter, a bartender and espresso jerk, and also as a magazine and newspaper editor. He lives in Boston.

Mark Kingwell: After some years of graduate studies in Britain and the United States, Mark Kingwell found he had inadvertently perfected a form of idling for which he could get paid. He is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto, a contributing editor of Harper's Magazine, including the author of fifteen books.

(Pseud) Seth: Seth is the cartoonist behind the painfully infrequent comic book series Palookaville. His books include It's a Good Life if You Don't Weaken, Wimbledon Green, Bannock, Beans and Black Tea, and Clyde Fans Book One. His books have been translated into five languages.

Product Details

• Paperback: 136 pages
• Publisher: Biblioasis; 1 edition (September 20, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 192684517X
• ISBN-13: 978-1926845173
• Product Dimensions: 4.2 x 0.5 x 6.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,094,430 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars This is my new bible October 28, 2011

By Ann Nocenti

Format:Paperback

I spent too many years as a Wage Slave. This slim, delicious, pocket-sized delight has become my companion-in-arms. I carry it with me, and can thumb it and open to any page and it bolsters my conviction to be a wage slave no more. Wage Slave's Glossary not only introduces one to new terms: "zero drag"!! but defines the words with deep history and tongue-deep-in-cheek satirical bent in the same sentence. It is a book that's snagged the zeitgeist, and it is my number one stocking stuffer. Any single definition in this book is worth the cover price and more.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Glossary that shouldn't be glossed over October 28, 2011

By T. Murgatroyd

Format:Paperback

This book couldn't have come at a better time. I heard about it through the N.Y. Times and saw that the Occupy Wall Street Library had picked it up, so I went out and found a copy, and I was glad I did. There was nothing of what I was afraid of: it wasn't kitschy or insubstantial or trying too hard to be funny. Instead I found it wonderfully incisive, satirical, contemporary, on-point. Kingwell's introduction on Wage Slavery and Bull**** is market-savvy and goes a long way towards unpacking the rhetoric of capitalism. He draws on Russell, Weber, Parkinson, Pournelle, Moore, Sorel, Frankfurt, Galbraith, Marcuse, Arendt--but also on Douglas Coupland, Ricky Gervais, Nicholson Baker, Ed Park, and Joshua Ferris. Here's a sample:

"Work language is full of bull****, and ... passes itself off as innocuous or even beneficial. Especially in clever hands, the controlling elements of work are repackaged as liberatory, counter-cultural, subversive: you're a skatepunk rebel because you work seventy hours a week beta-testing video games. The manager is positioned as an 'intellectual', a 'visionary', even a 'genius'. 'Creatives' are warehoused and petted. Demographics are labelled, products are categorized. Catchphrases, acronyms, proverbs, cliches, and sports metaphors are marshalled and deployed. Diffusion of sense through needles complexity, diffusion of responsibility through passive constructions, and elaborate celebration of minor achievements mark the language of work. And so: Outsourcing. Repositioning. Downsizing. Rebranding. Work the mission statement. Push the envelope. Think outside the box ... "

Or later, on the sudden burst of "office comedy" novels in the past ten years:

"These books are hilarious, and laughter is always a release.... But their humour is a sign of doom, not liberation. The 'veal-fattening pen' label applied to those carpet-sided cubicles of the open-form office (Coupland) does nothing to change the facts of the office. Nor does calling office-mateyness an 'air family' (Coupland again) make the false camaraderie any less spectral. Coupland was especially inventive and dry in his generation of neologisms, but reading a bare list of them shows the hollow heart of dread beneath the humour. Indeed, the laughs render the facts more palatable by mixing diversion into the scene of domination - a willing capitulation, consumed under the false sign of resistance."

The same could be said of The Office. It's brilliantly put. And Kingwell's essay in combination with Glenn's incredibly wide-ranging definitions (which move from the 16th century to 2011, and include terms from Britain, China, and Japan), produces a substantial--far more substantial than you'd think for such a little book--assessment of work language.

I'd never heard of Blackberry Prayer ("the oddly supplicative posture characteristic of distracted white-collar types ... indiscreetly fiddling with their Blackberries") or Leisure Sickness ("victims of which are more likely to report feeling ill during weekends and vacations than when working ... as a result of being unable to relax"); I also had no idea how many types of ceilings one could hit. Glass? Sure. But there're also Bamboo ceilings (for Asian-Americans), brass ceilings (in the military), concrete ceilings (for minority women), gray ceilings (for the post-boomer generation), stained-glass ceilings (for religious organizations), glass cliffs (for women who break through the g.c. but face extra-high risks of failure), and glass corsets (for the openly gay). Glenn does an excellent job of roping the latest and most surprising terminology in with the familiar, while our understanding the latter he consistently deepens and expands.

As Kingwell & Glenn admit, this little book may not "overthrow capitalism," but it succeeds in doing what they set out to do: "highlight essential things about our predicament - philosophy's job ever." Five stars. And speaking of stars: the illustrations by Seth are out-of-this-world good. I'm giving this little guy out left, right, and center. Read more ›

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Love these! October 28, 2011

By Khalas

Format:Paperback

If you've seen the Idler's Glossary you know what to expect from The Wage Slave's Glossary: fun bits, some learnin', and gorgeous design. And it couldn't be more timely.
(Plus not to be a shelf nerd but it looks great in my Seth section.)

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The ideal accessory for the occupation October 28, 2011

By T. Nealon

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

Having been a big fan of The Idler's Glossary, I was actually a little skeptical of this second effort - supposing it was just the gristle, excess fat and neck cobbled together with some design sense, but this couldn't be further from the truth! Far from the leftovers of the charming and thoughtful Idler's work, The Wage Slave's Glossary is even more vital, not the weak soup, but the strong reduced stock (to really run with this metaphor) that speaks directly to our times. Like any good glossary, from Bierce to John Carter, it is at its best when flipped rather than read end to end - and you'll soon find yourself unable to put it down; taking too long breaks at work, saying "well just one or two more definitions...

So start casting off those chains and buy a copy!

10 of 22 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars Warning: AUTHOR HAS FRIENDS LEAVE FAKE REVIEWS, VOTE DOWN NEGATIVE REVIEWS October 15, 2011

By A. J. Bishop

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

UPDATE (11/02)

For a while after the book came out, my review was the only one. Now, some uber-positive ones have been posted. There are now 4 others, besides my own.

A 5-star review from Ann Nocenti, who is a frequent contributer to HiLobrow.com, a site OWNED BY THE WRITER OF THIS BOOK.

A 5-star review from T. Nealon, who is a frequent contributer to HiLobrow.com, a site OWNED BY THE WRITER OF THIS BOOK.

The others? It can't be proven they are also friends of the author, because they use pseudonyms, but what are the odds they would ALL APPEAR ON THE SAME NIGHT, weeks after publication?

On October 15th, a negative review was written. 13 days later, ALL ON THE SAME NIGHT, 4 new positive reviews appeared, all of them were voted as "HELPFUL", and the one negative one was downvoted straight to hell.

Clearly, the authors saw my review, an honest one, and decided they wouldn't tolerate it. They opened up their email contact list, emailed some friends, and asked them to vote the negative review down and leave some positive notes.

To the followers of Hilobrow: The covert trashing of an honest review, and the leaving of fake reviews in a cynical attempt to sell more books - is that what are supporting by reading that blog?

Now for the review:

Forget the money - this book is not worth your time. A major disappointment....

1 Lazy - reads like it was hastily slapped together

2 No depth

3 Not funny (they try, and it is sad)

4 Too many song lyrics (at least a dozen definitions contain them, maybe more)

5 Too many incomplete definitions ("Office Politics" doesn't even contain a definition, just a quote from an unnamed sci-fi book, which does nothing to illustrate the concept)

Shame on BoingBoing for recommending this. I had incredibly high hopes, being sympathetic to the subject matter. When I bought it, I quickly learned that the best entries (such as they are) were cherry-picked for BoingBoing's "exclusive preview". Way too much filler material, including song lyrics and quotes from other (BETTER) material. Read more ›