A review by jasonfurman
The Physiology of the Employee by Honoré de Balzac

4.0

Balzac's taxonomy of the "employee"--which he spends over one hundred pages defining but appears to constitute a civil servant working in Paris and can be defined as "Someone who needs his salary to live and isn't free to resign as he isn't equipped for anything other than producing endless piles of paperwork." As Balzac notes, the "employee" is not to be confused with the Statesman--"Axiom One: Where the Employee Ends, the Statesman Begins." Thus begins a taxonomy that considers a wide variety of ranks, ranging from "intern" (the translator's term for "supernumerary clerk", which does seem an awful like like a modern intern) to "Head of Department" along with a cross-cutting wide variety of types ranging from "The Dapper" to "The Codger" to "The Bootlicker". All of this is described with a combination of wit and insight that feels much lighter and less deeply philosophical/historical than much of Balzac's anatomy of society. Moreover, much of the description of bureaucracy feels strikingly modern and relevant today.

The Physiology of the Employee in some ways serves as a nonfiction counterpart to Balzac's somewhat obscure novel Bureaucracy.

This particular edition was published by Wakefield Press is a nicely bound, nicely formatted paperback that has 19th century French illustrations that perfectly match the text (it is unclear to me if these illustrations were part of an edition in Balzac's time). Certainly worth a quick, enjoyable read.