WEBVTT

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Now, I've often felt
that it's a serious lack

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in American literature--
that, is not too much

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written about business.

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And for the very good
reason that most artists

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leave business as
soon as they can,

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because they can't stand it.

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And so that the most
characteristic activity

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of America, which
is big business,

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is largely unexplored in
American fiction and poetry--

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with some, you know,
great exceptions

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like Dreiser, who made a careful
study of the whole business.

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So I try and write what I
can about my own experience

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at work.

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Let me try another one on
you, this is both on you.

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You're going to
start off as work.

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Always prudent, but unprepared
for spontaneity and weather,

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the office workers got their
pressed survival jackets

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soaked while running in new
rain from work to travel home.

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Some of the typists laughed to
feel real water not from taps.

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They are the ones
with joys to dream

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of once the day is typed away.

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Once, I had hoped
to dream in the rain

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for a life unbothered by
the economics of appearance,

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and I did, for years, and
knew its soaking intimacy.

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Now I am pressed in
the synthetics too

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and have no place to go to
in the weather except home.

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But, it is not so bad, pacing
an empty office after 5:00

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in the trash of squalid crises.

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I hit the key of "i"
on a girl's machine

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and see that it is
red, nail polish

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red, with her device of getting
on beautifully for survival.

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That is not just vanity.

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I get rebellious for the truth
of outside weather sometimes,

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but my check is here on Friday.

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You mustn't assume from this
that I work in an office.

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I haven't done a serious
day's work in five years.

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But, now that I've
been away from it,

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I can see it, saying some.

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I can talk about it better.