Making Things Right: A Master Carpenter at Work - Hardcover

Ole Thorstensen; Sean Kinsella

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0857056689 ISBN 13: 9780857056689

Publisher: MacLehose Press, 2017

Synopsis

En snekkers dagbok er fortellingen om et loft. Enkelt og greit. Fra snekkeren får den første telefonsamtalen med spørsmål om å legge inn anbud, til loftet står klart for innflytting. Det er tunge løft, fliser i fingrene og frustrasjon når nye anbud glipper. Boka er også full av glede og stolthet over å jobbe med et håndverk.

Samtidig er dette en bok om arbeid og identitet, om å jobbe. Det er en fortelling fra den andre siden av forbrukersamfunnet. Her er det produsenten som betrakter kunden og gir oss et speil for våre holdninger til en type arbeid vi er avhengige av.

Fra arbeidet på loftet trekker fortellingen linjer ut i det norske samfunnet, og blir et viktig innlegg i debatten om hvordan det er å jobbe i et manuelt yrke.

Tømreren Ole Thorstensen (f. 1965) debuterer som forfatter med en fortelling om hva han bruker dagene til, en bok om arbeid.

About this title

About the Author

Ole Thorstensen was born in Arendal, Norway, and makes his debut as an author with a story about work and identity and a tribute to manual labour. Thorstensen was raised on Tromoy, an island with five thousand inhabitants. He is a trained carpenter, and has worked for twenty-five years in the construction industry. He now lives in Eidsvoll, six miles north of Oslo.

Review

A swift and understated examination of a life spent working with one's hands . . . He does well to demystify the trades. The work is not magic - a matter of tools and time, patience, practice and desire. For its detailing of the labor involved, the book will as much be useful to someone facing a renovation as it will provoke nods of recognition from those in the trades. -- Nina McLaughlin * Wall Street Journal * A finely honed masterpiece . . . with precise prose, Thorstensen examines every nuance of the process, from the practical to the philosophical, from the craftsman's point of view -- Tim Alden * Independent * Making Things Right won't tell you how to do your loft conversion . . . but it should tell you what sort of guy you'd like to have it done by. -- A.H.S. Smyth * Spectator. * A surprisingly absorbing read . . . illuminating for the humble homeowner and giving a great sense of his world. A quirky offering. -- Nadine O'Regan * Sunday Business Post * An enriching and poetic tribute to manual labour, and to the ongoing importance of the art that goes into it. Ole Thorstensen writes about the values manual labour brings to society as a whole. Making Things Right is a sharp reminder that we cannot afford to lose them. -- Karl Ove Knausgard In Thorstensen's skilled hands, the everyday story of a suburban loft conversion is turned into an urgent study on the value of doing good work. It should be widely read. - Robert Penn, author of The Man Who Made Things out of Trees Thorstensen writes convincingly about heavy work as something honourable, without ever stumbling into romantic notions of physical work as a way to fill the emptiness . . . For Thorstensen the meaning already exists in the work itself and within him * Bokmagasinet * An important voice against knowledge deficiency . . . By documenting an entire course of a construction project in diary form, he offers insight into processes that very few people know anything about . . . The book is just as solid as the craft that he describes * Dagbladet * It is so rich in descriptions of all pleasures related to mastering a craft: the portrayal of the working community, the joy of seeing something take shape, and the knowledge that one has left a piece of oneself behind. The pleasure of drinking coffee from a thermos, listening to good radio, observe the city from new angles, and feel the weight of history when you continue building on something that the craftsmen before you started . . . A nice mix of sociology, philosophy - not to mention ethics * Klassekampen *

Edition details

• Publisher: MacLehose Press
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 0857056689
• ISBN 13: 9780857056689
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 238