(William Buckley)
(Nat Hentoff)
(Albert Einstein)
(Al Gore)
(Martin Amis)
(Martha Stewart)
Folks have started sending me more.
(Michael Pollan — his book, ‘A Place of My Own: The Architecture of Daydreams’, is about building this office.)
(H. L. Mencken)
(J.G. Ballard)
(Ass kicking.)
(Cornel West)
7 comments ↓
Looks like only Martha has gone paperless. That’s Bill’s home office; his digs at National Review were never so messy.
Where is yours?
i’ll have to take one.
I can relate to all but the last photo. If my desk is a mess I know where everything is, but when it’s all nice and tidy I’m lost and get frustrated when I don’t know where something is. My wife doesn’t understand: now I can tell her that Albert Einstein and Bill Buckley had messy desks and they turned out to be great men.
I think my wife will just make me sleep on the couch.
No fan of the current President, but in his defense, the Oval Office is used both for actual work and for photo-ops. Every president’s desk looks different when he speaks from the Oval Office than when he works there. For example, pictures of family are always turned to face the camera. Why would you put a picture of your family on your desk such that you can’t see it?
In general, the more fascistic a person, the neater the office. The more intelligent the messier. These two tendencies collide and the result is the real world condition.
It’s also true, as Heywood Floyd said, if the office is used for meetings, photo Ops, etc. it’s kept clean. Buckley, obviously kept his Magazine Office clean and worked at home.
Gotta love the office from Michael Pollan’s book. Who couldn’t be productive in that setting?
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