‘Craftsmanship names an enduring, basic human impulse,” the sociologist Richard Sennett has observed, “the desire to do a job well for its own sake.” That human impulse reverberates like a hammer bang throughout Ole Thorstensen’s “Making Things Right,” a swift and understated examination of a life spent working with one’s hands.
Mr. Thorstensen, a savvy and matter-of-fact master carpenter from Norway, tells the story of a loft renovation in an Oslo home built in 1890, from the initial bid to the final job-site tidy. Chapters start with hellos to the family on Monday morning and end with the straightening and organizing before quitting time on Friday, bringing us along as the work moves from architectural drawings through demolition, framing, boarding, venting, window installation, fire-stopping, tiling, plumbing, painting and finish work, from the fast and brutal to the painstaking and meticulous.
“There is nothing mysterious about skilled manual labor,” Mr. Thorstensen writes. And he does well to demystify the trades. The work is not magic—a matter of tools and time, patience, practice and desire…The book is, at its core, about relationships—between carpenter and co-workers, architects, engineers; between carpenter and client; and ultimately between worker and work. Mr. Thorstensen writes beautifully of the simple pleasure of carrying a load with someone: “To hold one end of something heavy and be aware of another’s movements, feel them transmitted through the object, is an experience all its own . . . it is a good way to get to know one another.” …
Mr. Thorstensen shares the timeworn concern that people these days are divorced from material reality and have little interest in how their pants were sewn, chickens slaughtered, shelves built. “I sometimes wonder if it has affected our idea of time.” … He makes a case for the pleasure in starting with nothing and ending with something, for a life spent accumulating experience, and he’s attentive to details large and small, like the way music sounds better on the radio once a room is insulated. “I would like to be reborn a tradesman many times in a row with my experience intact,” he writes, wishing only for a new back each time. How many of us can say this about our work?
~ Nina MacLaughlin, Making Things Right’ Review: How to Build a Life (WSJ, May 3, 2018). A book review of a Norwegian carpenter’s step-by-step account of home renovation, alongside a paean to craftsmanship and working with one’s hands.
Notes:
- Find “Making Things Right: The Simple Philosophy of a Working Life” by Ole Thorstensen on Amazon (April 2018)
- Image: Getty