Dublin in the mid-1970s. Nine years old. It was a school day, but my father had brought me to work at his newspaper, the Evening Press, where he was features and literary editor. We climbed the stairs to his small third-floor office. There were more books than wallpaper. On the floor, magazines …
Sign in to Granta.com.
‘I think there should be a National Service of Hospitality. The best way to see the true face of humanity is to serve it a plate of chips.’
Camilla Grudova on bad-mannered customers.
‘Anyone who has ever worked night shifts will understand the vertiginous feeling that comes with staring down the day from the wrong end.’
A.K. Blakemore on working nights.
‘I was constantly reading job ads, trying to find my holy grail – a job I could stand to do, and someone foolish enough to hire me.’
Sandra Newman on learning how to play professional blackjack.
‘I loved being a receptionist. What I loved about it was playing the part of being a receptionist.’
Emily Berry on being a temporary office worker.
‘Every part of you would swell, including your eyeballs, and no matter how much water you drank, you were always dehydrated.’
Junot Díaz on working for a steel mill.
'I suggest he put aside all his writing rituals and that he give away all his money – that way he might find his talent will be rebooted.'
‘I think what draws me in is the spectacle of the law trying to deal with something that nothing can deal with – just the wildness of people.’
Izabella Scott in conversation with Helen Garner.
‘There’s this paradoxical nostalgia where even though yi suffered, yi miss it.’
Memoir by Graeme Armstrong.
‘In clothes, I met strangeness with strangeness. They dressed me with a kind of distanced power.’
Rosie Findlay on fashion and religion.
‘What I’m trying to do is to find ways of expressing myself which try to subvert those forms in order to make the speech act, or the writing act, transgressive in a way.’
