具体描述
The Time Bind is one of this decade's most influential studies of our work/family time-dilemma. For three years at a Fortune 500 company, Arlie Russell Hochschild, the best-selling author of The Second Shift, interviewed everyone from top executives to factory hands. What she found was startling news: none of these working parents was taking the company up on chances for flex-time, paternity leave, or other "family-friendly policies." Instead, they were fleeing homes invaded by the pressures of work, while the workplace seemed transformed into a strange kind of surrogate home. Hochschild paints a picture of spouses as efficiency experts, children as emotional bill-collectors, and parents who feel like helpful mentors mainly to their workmates. "An important, provocative, ground-breaking analysis" (Newsweek), The Time Bind exposes the rifts in our crunch-time world and reveals how the way we live and work isn't working anymore.
The national bestseller that put "work/family balance" in the headlines and on the White House agenda, with a new introduction by the author.
When The Time Bind was first published in 1997, it was hailed as the decade's most influential study of our work/family crisis. In the short time since, the crisis has only become more acute.
Arlie Russell Hochschild, bestselling author of The Second Shift, spent three summers at a Fortune 500 company interviewing top executives, secretaries, factory hands, and others. What she found was startling: Though every mother and nearly every father said "family comes first," few of these working parents questioned their long hours or took the company up on chances for flextime, paternity leave, or other "family friendly" policies. Why not? It seems the roles of home and work had reversed: work was offering stimulation, guidance, and a sense of belonging, while home had become the place in which there was too much to do in too little time.
Today Hochschild's findings are more relevant than ever. As she shows in her new introduction, the borders between family and work have become even more permeable. With the Internet extending working hours at home and offices offering domestic enticements -- free snacks, soft music -- to keep employees later at their jobs, The Time Bind stands as an increasingly important warning about the way we live and work.
作者简介
Arlie Russell Hochschild’s fall 2016 book, Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right, addresses the increasingly bitter political divide in America. Based on five years of immersion reporting among Tea Party loyalists in Louisiana, Hochschild tries to bridge an “empathy wall” between the sides, to explore the “deep story” underlying the right that remains unrecognized by the left. Mark Danner calls the book “a powerful, imaginative, necessary book, arriving not a moment too soon." Robert Reich writes” Anyone who wants to understand modern America should read this captivating book." In its review, Publisher’s Weekly notes: “After evaluating her conclusions and meeting her informants in these pages, it’s hard to disagree that empathy is the best solution to stymied political and social discourse.”
Her 2012 The Outsourced Self: Intimate Life in Market Times, explores the many ways in which the market enters our modern lives and was named one of the best books of the year by Publishers Weekly. Her other books include: So How’s the Family?, The Managed Heart, The Second Shift, The Time Bind, The Commercialization of Intimate Life, The Unexpected Community and the co-edited Global Woman: Nannies, Maids and Sex Workers in the New Economy. In reviewing The Second Shift (reissued in 2012 with a new afterword) Robert Kuttner noted Hochschild’s “subtlety of insights” and “graceful seamless narrative” and called it the “best discussion I have read of what must be the quintessential domestic bind of our time.” Newsweek’s Laura Shapiro described The Time Bind as “groundbreaking.” In awarding Hochschild the Jesse Bernard Award, the American Sociological Association citation observed her “creative genius for framing questions and lines of insight, often condensed into memorable, paradigm-shifting words and phrases.” A retired U.C. Berkeley professor of sociology, she lives with her husband, the writer Adam Hochschild in Berkeley, California.
目录信息
读后感
Sitting silently in a train, listening to the radio while watching the remote scenery outside, I found myself most peaceful and joyful, especially when sunlight fell down on my hair and shoulder. Trees and lands far away from the window seemed to stay in th...
Sitting silently in a train, listening to the radio while watching the remote scenery outside, I found myself most peaceful and joyful, especially when sunlight fell down on my hair and shoulder. Trees and lands far away from the window seemed to stay in th...
Sitting silently in a train, listening to the radio while watching the remote scenery outside, I found myself most peaceful and joyful, especially when sunlight fell down on my hair and shoulder. Trees and lands far away from the window seemed to stay in th...
Sitting silently in a train, listening to the radio while watching the remote scenery outside, I found myself most peaceful and joyful, especially when sunlight fell down on my hair and shoulder. Trees and lands far away from the window seemed to stay in th...
Sitting silently in a train, listening to the radio while watching the remote scenery outside, I found myself most peaceful and joyful, especially when sunlight fell down on my hair and shoulder. Trees and lands far away from the window seemed to stay in th...
用户评价
我得说，这本书的语言风格充满了古典主义的沉重感和一种近乎诗意的晦涩。它不是那种让你捧起来就能轻松消化的读物，更像是需要你带着放大镜去研究的古老手稿。作者似乎对每一个形容词都有着近乎偏执的考量，每一个句子的结构都经过了复杂的语法重塑，使得信息的传递不再是直接的箭头，而更像是一团盘绕上升的烟雾。我特别欣赏其中几段关于“记忆的腐蚀性”的哲学探讨，那些句子长得令人望而生畏，却又在关键时刻爆发出惊人的洞察力，揭示了时间如何悄无声息地重塑我们对现实的认知。阅读过程就像是在攀登一座布满苔藓的古老阶梯，每一步都必须小心翼翼，生怕脚滑，但一旦到达顶端，所见的风景又是如此的宏大和令人震撼。这种文学上的野心是毋庸置疑的，它试图触及存在的本质，去探究那些人类永恒的困惑。但是，坦白说，这种高密度的、自我指涉的文本结构，极大地抬高了阅读门槛。有那么几处，我不得不停下来，查阅一些背景知识或者干脆放弃对句子表层含义的完全捕捉，转而专注于它所营造的整体情绪氛围，否则，很容易在文字的海洋中迷失方向，最终感到筋疲力尽。
这本书的叙事节奏简直像是一场精心编排的慢跑，起初，你感觉步伐稳健，每一个场景的铺陈都细致入微，仿佛作者在用雕刻刀打磨每一块砖石。那种对日常琐事的捕捉，那种对人物内心世界微妙波动的描摹，让人不禁放慢自己的阅读速度，生怕错过任何一处精妙的留白。主人公A的职业困境，那种在既定轨道上挣扎却又无法挣脱的宿命感，通过一系列看似无关紧要的日常对话和场景转换，被层层剥开。特别是对城市生活中那种无声的疏离感的刻画，简直入木三分，让你在阅读时仿佛能听到自己心跳的回声，以及窗外若有若无的车流声。然而，随着故事深入，这种细致入微反而有种令人窒息的压迫感，仿佛作者设置了一个巨大的迷宫，而我们都被困在其中，寻找那个似乎并不存在的出口。情节的推进是如此缓慢，以至于某些章节读完后，我需要回过头来确认自己到底读到了什么新的信息，而不是简单的重复前文的情绪渲染。这对于追求强情节驱动的读者来说，可能会构成一个不小的挑战，需要极大的耐心去适应这种“情绪优先于事件”的叙事哲学。这种风格的优点在于其深度和氛围的营造，缺点也正是在于此——它牺牲了阅读的流畅性，要求读者投入几乎同等的精神密度来解码作者的意图。
我必须承认，这本书的“世界构建”能力达到了令人惊叹的程度，尽管它所描绘的世界与我们所处的现实非常相似，但作者通过细微的调整，成功地创造了一种“似是而非”的陌生感。这种陌生感并非来自科幻元素，而是来自于对人类行为模式的极端化、纯粹化的展示。例如，书中对“等待”这一行为的详尽描述，将其提升到了一种接近宗教仪式的层面，仿佛生命本身就是一场永无止境的、对尚未到来的事物的敬畏性的守候。这种对日常细节的抽丝剥茧，使得整个故事的基调显得异常肃穆和庄严。然而，正是在这种对“永恒等待”的强调中，我感觉到了文本的自我重复。在故事的中后段，尽管语言和场景不断变化，但核心的情绪张力——那种悬而不决、拖沓无尽的感觉——开始变得单调。它像一首旋律优美但过于冗长的交响乐，在高潮迭起之后，似乎缺乏一个干净利落的收尾，而是逐渐消散在无尽的尾音之中，留给读者的更多是挥之不去的疲惫感，而非豁然开朗的释然。
这本书最大的特点，或者说最大的争议点，在于它对“线性时间”的彻底颠覆。它不是简单地使用闪回或预叙，而是将时间线打碎、重组，甚至在同一段落内让不同的时间点产生剧烈的交叠和碰撞。举个例子，主人公在描述一个童年场景时，突然会无缝地切入他老年时对同一场景的感悟，但这种切换没有明显的标志，完全依赖读者的上下文理解能力来区分“过去之我”和“现在之我”的声音。这种非线性的叙事手法，极大地增强了作品的实验性，也使得阅读体验变得高度不稳定和充满挑战。你永远不知道下一秒即将面对的是平静的回忆还是一场意识的暴风雪。虽然这在艺术上无疑是前卫的，但对于我这种习惯于清晰因果链条的读者来说，初期带来的挫败感是巨大的。我经常需要借助笔记来梳理人物关系和事件的时间轴，这无疑打断了阅读的沉浸感。它要求读者放弃传统小说的期待，转而接受一种更接近梦境逻辑的叙事结构，挑战了我们对“故事”的基本定义。
从主题深度上来看，这本书无疑是厚重的，它没有回避那些令人不适的社会和心理议题。它不动声色地揭露了社会结构中那些看不见的权力运作，以及个体在面对巨大、无形压力时的心理防线是如何一步步被瓦解的。作者对“异化”这个概念的阐述，是通过一系列看似琐碎的职场政治和家庭互动来完成的，没有激烈的冲突或戏剧性的爆发，一切都发生在表面的平静之下，这反而更显其恐怖。你仿佛能闻到那种办公室里空调循环的、略带霉味的空气，感受到那种被制度精确控制的无力感。但这种对社会弊病的解剖，是以牺牲人物的“可爱度”为代价的。书中的角色，尽管刻画得无比真实，却也普遍被一种深刻的、近乎形而上的悲观主义所笼罩，他们的对话充满了智慧，但同时也缺乏温暖的连接点。因此，尽管我能理性地赞赏作者的洞察力和批判精神，但在情感上，我很难与他们产生强烈的共鸣，阅读过程更像是一次严谨的学术考察，而非一次情感上的投入和释放。
