anti-work novels

[ed miliband]

this could be an interesting topic and i can't really do it justice with my broken keyboard

but something like saturday night and sunday morning - the protagonist is a lad called arthur seaton - he works in a factory and his main interests are drinking smoking and fucking (to put it frankly) - it's an important novel (imo) because it's very clearly about working class life but it refuses to romanticise the worker-as-worker (if that makes sense) - dude hates his job and gets fucked up every weekend to escape it - no "socialist realism" here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturday_Night_and_Sunday_Morning

it's also beautifully written - imagine dh lawrence re-interpreting bukowski

of course - bukowski is another classic of this "genre"

[Ravachol]

I guess some of Kerouac's work qualifies. In addition, Nanni Balestrini's novels on the Italian autonomist movement have (obviously) a big element of the refusal of work.

[ed miliband]

bump?

[Spurcatu]

What is certain about the working class is that under capitalism they suffer from alienation (marx's theory of alienation) and lack of satisfaction from their jobs. But even under a non-exploitative environment labour will never be done for the sake of labour and few ever enjoy toiling no matter what the cause is. Those highly sensual types are highly dedicated to the satisfaction of the self, and labour is just a means in acquiring the dose of their sensual fulfillment. Work done deliberate and interested is done by more moderate types, that lack appetite and praise systems of values, forms of ethics and ultimately enforcing them as establishment rules over others, but when it becomes as such, they become egotistical and authoritarian.

[Art Vandelay]

Definitely Bukowski; but that's all that I can think of.

[bcbm]

bartelby the scrivener by herman melville

[ed miliband]

What is certain about the working class is that under capitalism they suffer from alienation (marx's theory of alienation) and lack of satisfaction from their jobs. But even under a non-exploitative environment labour will never be done for the sake of labour and few ever enjoy toiling no matter what the cause is. Those highly sensual types are highly dedicated to the satisfaction of the self, and labour is just a means in acquiring the dose of their sensual fulfillment. Work done deliberate and interested is done by more moderate types, that lack appetite and praise systems of values, forms of ethics and ultimately enforcing them as establishment rules over others, but when it becomes as such, they become egotistical and authoritarian.

fuck that.

[hetz]

The slaughterhouse?

Dunno.
But Bukowski is a sure bet.