What does an interpreter at the United Nations have in common with a cinematographer who lights a movie set or a man who tunes the piano for a symphony orchestra? Not much, youd think. But in a society driven by narcissism and fake celebrity, its nice to know that there are people out there who share a passion for hard work yet get their satisfaction not from Facebook FB +1.35% likes but from the inherent value of what they do. Through Invisibles: The Power of Anonymous Work in an Age of Relentless Self-Promotion, the first nonfiction book by David Zweig —a journalist and musician who has also written a novel—we meet an elite group of professionals connected by an ambivalence toward acclaim, a focus on being meticulous and a willingness to shoulder responsibility for the behind-the-scenes tasks they perform. Its a refreshing point of view, written with the precision and detail of the magazine fact checker Mr. Zweig used to be. The values he champions are those that could surely benefit our society (and economy) more than our current obsession with personal status, a condition being driven largely by the mass self-surveillance of social media. Everybody is watching and evaluating everybody else all the time, something that normalizes the expectation for recognition of everything you do, Mr. Zweig says. But the expectation is itself misguided,he argues, and only gets in the way of achieving true reward and satisfaction through self-challenge. Mr. Zweig trots out the requisite sociologists, economists and psychologists to give his thesis bobble-head support. Even the ghost of Thorstein Veblen comes onstage briefly with his 1899 classic, The Theory of the Leisure Class. As a scholar cited by Mr. Zweig puts it, summarizing Veblens view: People with artisanal instinct or workmanship, a taste for gratuitous curiosity . . . [are] motors of economic social, and scientific progress. Thus validated, Mr. Zweig begins his unsung-hero vignettes with a man who surely has one of the most obscure jobs in the world. Jim Harding is a wayfinder, a graphic designer who comes up with cues to help people navigate through spaces like the fish-skeleton layout of the Atlanta airport, a place that handles 250,000 passengers a day through its more than 200 domestic and international gates. Its Mr. Hardings job to make the transit process as logical as possible. So he spends a lot of time thinking about lighting, color and signage, including what typeface to use (Helvetica, sans serif, is good because the font is easy to read from a distance). He explains to Mr. Zweig that a color change—like the sudden gold of a security-check zone, contrasting with the steel gray of the space ahead of it—tells the traveler subconsciously that something different is coming up, signaling that you should head there for the next step. As Mr. Zweig explains, the goal isnt so much to keep people from getting lost as it is to get them where they need to go without having to think about it. Mr. Hardings most recent challenge was helping to complete Atlantas new international terminal. Among other things, he was required to redo thousands of old maps of the airport, including those posted in concourses and parking garages. As a subtle touch, he put a curved top on many of the terminals interior signs and the street signs that encircle the new building, an echo of its roofline. In the domestic terminal, all the signs are rectilinear. Such adept attention to the subtle points of design may result in people not noticing the work that Mr. Harding has done. Which is just fine by him. For most of us, having our work seen, or gaining recognition or a higher profile, is a key measure of success, Mr. Zweig writes, yet for Harding invisibility is a mark of honor. As it is for Pete Clements, otherwise known as Plank, top tech man for the rock band Radiohead. It is his job to make sure that the bands drum set, guitars, amplifiers and effects-pedals (like the Turbo Rat, which puts a guitar in distortion mode) are working properly and that nothing disastrous happens during a concert. If he does his job well, nobody thinks about what he does. Planks main task is to serve as the personal tech for lead singer Thom Yorke, who uses as many as 12 guitars on a single night. Plank has to tune the guitars before the concert begins and retune them while it is going on. Since Mr. Yorke changes guitars between songs, Plank has to be ready with the on-deck instrument and, within a split second, turn off the wireless radio on the guitar he has just been handed to prevent a nasty feedback buzz. Its stressful work, but the care it requires fits Planks skill set, and the anonymity fits his shy, behind-the-scenes personality. Mr. Zweig sometimes gets mired in minutiae, particularly in the chapter explaining how the piano tuner for the Pittsburgh Symphony does his work. Several quoted sentences from the tuner make Absalom, Absalom! seem like Goodnight Moon. (So, if I make the F3 and F4 octave two cents wide (the F4 will be tuned two cents sharp of pure), every octave will need to be two cents wide, coast to coast on the keyboard.) To his credit, Mr. Zweig urges the reader to skip ahead to the next section if the physics of tuning seems too taxing. Perversely, one cant help yearning for a moment of schadenfreude in Invisibles—say, a U.N. interpreter who mistakenly sets off a minor world crisis. But because Mr. Zweigs subjects are perfectionists, no such events occur. And certainly no one seeks a pat on the back. As Mr. Zweig notes, patients dont typically thank their anesthesiologists for not killing them during surgery. Indeed, anesthesiologists never get the fruit baskets. They are just expected to do their jobs. Mr. Pinkerton is former managing editor of Forbes and former deputy managing editor of The Wall Street Journal.
Posted on: Tue, 24 Jun 2014 00:41:58 +0000