Now, I've often felt that it's a serious lack
in American literature-- that, is not too much
written about business.
And for the very good reason that most artists
leave business as soon as they can,
because they can't stand it.
And so that the most characteristic activity
of America, which is big business,
is largely unexplored in American fiction and poetry--
with some, you know, great exceptions
like Dreiser, who made a careful study of the whole business.
So I try and write what I can about my own experience
at work.
Let me try another one on you, this is both on you.
You're going to start off as work.
Always prudent, but unprepared for spontaneity and weather,
the office workers got their pressed survival jackets
soaked while running in new rain from work to travel home.
Some of the typists laughed to feel real water not from taps.
They are the ones with joys to dream
of once the day is typed away.
Once, I had hoped to dream in the rain
for a life unbothered by the economics of appearance,
and I did, for years, and knew its soaking intimacy.
Now I am pressed in the synthetics too
and have no place to go to in the weather except home.
But, it is not so bad, pacing an empty office after 5:00
in the trash of squalid crises.
I hit the key of "i" on a girl's machine
and see that it is red, nail polish
red, with her device of getting on beautifully for survival.
That is not just vanity.
I get rebellious for the truth of outside weather sometimes,
but my check is here on Friday.
You mustn't assume from this that I work in an office.
I haven't done a serious day's work in five years.
But, now that I've been away from it,
I can see it, saying some.
I can talk about it better.