Daniel Jenkin-Smith
@dcjenkin-smith.bsky.social
Postdoctoral researcher - author of 'The Rise of Office Literature' (Bloomsbury, 2025) - co-host of @smfmspodcast.bsky.social
Il faut, comme disait Balzac, offrir une surface commerciale.
Il faut, comme disait Balzac, offrir une surface commerciale.
Looking to compile the definitive collection of portrayals of tyrants in bikinis. So far I've just got Caligula in 'I, Claudius' (1976) and Louis XIII in 'The Devils' (1971).
Please get in touch if you have any others. Thanks.
Please get in touch if you have any others. Thanks.
November 5, 2025 at 8:52 AM
Looking to compile the definitive collection of portrayals of tyrants in bikinis. So far I've just got Caligula in 'I, Claudius' (1976) and Louis XIII in 'The Devils' (1971).
Please get in touch if you have any others. Thanks.
Please get in touch if you have any others. Thanks.
I had a great time at the 'Files, Forms, Fictions' symposium in Bonn last week. Excellent blend of bureaucracy chat, Adenauer anecdotes, and Bönnsch beer.
Thanks again to @alexandrairim.bsky.social and her colleagues for an excellent conference!
Thanks again to @alexandrairim.bsky.social and her colleagues for an excellent conference!
October 22, 2025 at 9:06 AM
I had a great time at the 'Files, Forms, Fictions' symposium in Bonn last week. Excellent blend of bureaucracy chat, Adenauer anecdotes, and Bönnsch beer.
Thanks again to @alexandrairim.bsky.social and her colleagues for an excellent conference!
Thanks again to @alexandrairim.bsky.social and her colleagues for an excellent conference!
If Dorothy didn't squash the Wicked Witch of the East, the legalistic Munchkins, still loyal to the Witch, would've subjected her and Toto to a Kafkaesque cycle of trials and appeals - all sung-through: 'The Bishop is in hock to the Lollipop Guild, but they're a front for the Lullaby League (etc.)'
September 9, 2025 at 9:11 AM
If Dorothy didn't squash the Wicked Witch of the East, the legalistic Munchkins, still loyal to the Witch, would've subjected her and Toto to a Kafkaesque cycle of trials and appeals - all sung-through: 'The Bishop is in hock to the Lollipop Guild, but they're a front for the Lullaby League (etc.)'
Ketchup of course speaks to the 'sanguine mythology' that underlies American cinema, but it is also only a proxy: highly commercial and domesticated. This speaks to the New Hollywood's social realism and its formalism. Ketchup is also highly gendered - emasculating for men and cathartic for women.
May 21, 2025 at 9:05 AM
Ketchup of course speaks to the 'sanguine mythology' that underlies American cinema, but it is also only a proxy: highly commercial and domesticated. This speaks to the New Hollywood's social realism and its formalism. Ketchup is also highly gendered - emasculating for men and cathartic for women.
'Where's Vera?' 'She went to shit and the hogs ate her!'
- This verbal and 'ketchup-al' explosion from Alice's colleague, Flo, creates solidarity between the three waitresses,
- And the sauce becomes a proxy for menstruation, complementing this moment of female expression in patriarchal workplace.
- This verbal and 'ketchup-al' explosion from Alice's colleague, Flo, creates solidarity between the three waitresses,
- And the sauce becomes a proxy for menstruation, complementing this moment of female expression in patriarchal workplace.
May 21, 2025 at 9:05 AM
'Where's Vera?' 'She went to shit and the hogs ate her!'
- This verbal and 'ketchup-al' explosion from Alice's colleague, Flo, creates solidarity between the three waitresses,
- And the sauce becomes a proxy for menstruation, complementing this moment of female expression in patriarchal workplace.
- This verbal and 'ketchup-al' explosion from Alice's colleague, Flo, creates solidarity between the three waitresses,
- And the sauce becomes a proxy for menstruation, complementing this moment of female expression in patriarchal workplace.
#3 - 'Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore' (Martin Scorsese, 1974): quirky Alice Hyatt (Ellen Burstyn) embarks on a road trip with her son to find a new life after the death of her abusive husband. A stint as a waitress provides ample opportunities for spills (and some female empowerment).
May 21, 2025 at 9:05 AM
#3 - 'Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore' (Martin Scorsese, 1974): quirky Alice Hyatt (Ellen Burstyn) embarks on a road trip with her son to find a new life after the death of her abusive husband. A stint as a waitress provides ample opportunities for spills (and some female empowerment).
- The accidental spill catalyzes Tully and Oma's split. As with Tully's failed boxing career, we are the playthings of fate;
- Sauce-soaked steak evokes the sanguine-corporeality of boxing, but it also expresses Tully's removal from this masculine world (he cooks the meal too - horror of horrors).
- Sauce-soaked steak evokes the sanguine-corporeality of boxing, but it also expresses Tully's removal from this masculine world (he cooks the meal too - horror of horrors).
May 21, 2025 at 9:05 AM
- The accidental spill catalyzes Tully and Oma's split. As with Tully's failed boxing career, we are the playthings of fate;
- Sauce-soaked steak evokes the sanguine-corporeality of boxing, but it also expresses Tully's removal from this masculine world (he cooks the meal too - horror of horrors).
- Sauce-soaked steak evokes the sanguine-corporeality of boxing, but it also expresses Tully's removal from this masculine world (he cooks the meal too - horror of horrors).
#2: 'Fat City' (John Huston, 1972): Billy Tully (Stacey Keach) is a boxer past his prime, shacked up with the eccentric and (thoroughly show-stealing) Oma (Susan Tyrrell). However, a booze-fueled domestic feud over an evening meal throws in the towel on their relationship:
May 21, 2025 at 9:05 AM
#2: 'Fat City' (John Huston, 1972): Billy Tully (Stacey Keach) is a boxer past his prime, shacked up with the eccentric and (thoroughly show-stealing) Oma (Susan Tyrrell). However, a booze-fueled domestic feud over an evening meal throws in the towel on their relationship:
- Hunger only cements the fact that our naif will fall for a childish prank (the lid is not screwed on);
- But the stain is also a pseudo-wound for this hyperreal image of Americana - 'they got me, Zeke!'
- And, considering his failed career, this crotch stain becomes a humiliating early climax.
- But the stain is also a pseudo-wound for this hyperreal image of Americana - 'they got me, Zeke!'
- And, considering his failed career, this crotch stain becomes a humiliating early climax.
May 21, 2025 at 9:05 AM
- Hunger only cements the fact that our naif will fall for a childish prank (the lid is not screwed on);
- But the stain is also a pseudo-wound for this hyperreal image of Americana - 'they got me, Zeke!'
- And, considering his failed career, this crotch stain becomes a humiliating early climax.
- But the stain is also a pseudo-wound for this hyperreal image of Americana - 'they got me, Zeke!'
- And, considering his failed career, this crotch stain becomes a humiliating early climax.
#1: 'Midnight Cowboy' (John Schlesinger, 1969).
John Voight's Joe Buck embodies many contradictions: the wholesome image of American fantasy, he is also an impoverished and unsuccessful 'hustler'; a happy-go-lucky naif, he is also deeply traumatized. These are expressed in his ketchup spillage:
John Voight's Joe Buck embodies many contradictions: the wholesome image of American fantasy, he is also an impoverished and unsuccessful 'hustler'; a happy-go-lucky naif, he is also deeply traumatized. These are expressed in his ketchup spillage:
May 21, 2025 at 9:05 AM
#1: 'Midnight Cowboy' (John Schlesinger, 1969).
John Voight's Joe Buck embodies many contradictions: the wholesome image of American fantasy, he is also an impoverished and unsuccessful 'hustler'; a happy-go-lucky naif, he is also deeply traumatized. These are expressed in his ketchup spillage:
John Voight's Joe Buck embodies many contradictions: the wholesome image of American fantasy, he is also an impoverished and unsuccessful 'hustler'; a happy-go-lucky naif, he is also deeply traumatized. These are expressed in his ketchup spillage:
1. It's got to be the desk itself - can't have bureaucracy without a bureau (although, now I think about it, you sort of can these days...)
Back to Flaubert's Bouvard and Pécuchet, and their very sweet, custom-made, 'love-desk' (here envisaged by artist, Gareth Long): garethlong.net/bouvardAndPe...
Back to Flaubert's Bouvard and Pécuchet, and their very sweet, custom-made, 'love-desk' (here envisaged by artist, Gareth Long): garethlong.net/bouvardAndPe...
March 20, 2025 at 9:42 AM
1. It's got to be the desk itself - can't have bureaucracy without a bureau (although, now I think about it, you sort of can these days...)
Back to Flaubert's Bouvard and Pécuchet, and their very sweet, custom-made, 'love-desk' (here envisaged by artist, Gareth Long): garethlong.net/bouvardAndPe...
Back to Flaubert's Bouvard and Pécuchet, and their very sweet, custom-made, 'love-desk' (here envisaged by artist, Gareth Long): garethlong.net/bouvardAndPe...
2. Pens (and pen-holders): (a very French-heavy listicle, this) enter Huysmans' M. Bougran: an office fetishist whose obsessive cataloguing of his pens (including by taste) gets me hot under the detachable collar.
Time for another saucy trip to the Birmingham Pen Museum!
Time for another saucy trip to the Birmingham Pen Museum!
March 20, 2025 at 9:42 AM
2. Pens (and pen-holders): (a very French-heavy listicle, this) enter Huysmans' M. Bougran: an office fetishist whose obsessive cataloguing of his pens (including by taste) gets me hot under the detachable collar.
Time for another saucy trip to the Birmingham Pen Museum!
Time for another saucy trip to the Birmingham Pen Museum!
3. Blotters: in French, 'buvard', for which the former of Flaubert's hapless clerks, 'Bouvard et Pécuchet' (1881) must be named. In this light, the ink-absorbing tool becomes an ironic metaphor for the intellectual detritus that deposits itself on the office workers' mind.
March 20, 2025 at 9:42 AM
3. Blotters: in French, 'buvard', for which the former of Flaubert's hapless clerks, 'Bouvard et Pécuchet' (1881) must be named. In this light, the ink-absorbing tool becomes an ironic metaphor for the intellectual detritus that deposits itself on the office workers' mind.
4. Scrap paper, J.-G. Ymbert tells us in 'Moeurs administratives' (1825), 'contains more veritable history than in a thousand volumes': life stories, institutional secrets, the rise and fall of empires - they can all be discerned from clerks' doodles.
March 20, 2025 at 9:42 AM
4. Scrap paper, J.-G. Ymbert tells us in 'Moeurs administratives' (1825), 'contains more veritable history than in a thousand volumes': life stories, institutional secrets, the rise and fall of empires - they can all be discerned from clerks' doodles.
5. Les cartons verts: the office is an artificial landscape, but a landscape nonetheless – retired clerks should be cautious about moving to the countryside, Paul Duval tells us in his 1841 sketch, ‘l’employé’: they may find themselves yearning for ‘verdure of the box files’.
March 20, 2025 at 9:42 AM
5. Les cartons verts: the office is an artificial landscape, but a landscape nonetheless – retired clerks should be cautious about moving to the countryside, Paul Duval tells us in his 1841 sketch, ‘l’employé’: they may find themselves yearning for ‘verdure of the box files’.
Time for another thread in honour of publication day: top 5 articles of office paraphernalia!
In the office, objects appear to have powers of their own ('bureaucracy' itself can be translated as 'rule-by-the-desk'), a theme that recurs in its literary portrayal:
In the office, objects appear to have powers of their own ('bureaucracy' itself can be translated as 'rule-by-the-desk'), a theme that recurs in its literary portrayal:
March 20, 2025 at 9:42 AM
Time for another thread in honour of publication day: top 5 articles of office paraphernalia!
In the office, objects appear to have powers of their own ('bureaucracy' itself can be translated as 'rule-by-the-desk'), a theme that recurs in its literary portrayal:
In the office, objects appear to have powers of their own ('bureaucracy' itself can be translated as 'rule-by-the-desk'), a theme that recurs in its literary portrayal:
Publication day: 'The Rise of Office Literature' is out now! Every time I look inside I find something new to quibble with.
Thanks to the team at @bloomsburyacad.bsky.social for all their hard work!
Here it is in its natural element:
Thanks to the team at @bloomsburyacad.bsky.social for all their hard work!
Here it is in its natural element:
March 20, 2025 at 8:48 AM
Publication day: 'The Rise of Office Literature' is out now! Every time I look inside I find something new to quibble with.
Thanks to the team at @bloomsburyacad.bsky.social for all their hard work!
Here it is in its natural element:
Thanks to the team at @bloomsburyacad.bsky.social for all their hard work!
Here it is in its natural element:
A new entrant in the hotly contested category of 'best incredibly short 19th-century clerk scene in cinema'™: Powell and Pressburger's 'Tales of Hoffmann' (1951).
Love the ink stains on the lens - although slightly weirded out by the 'Far Side'-style glasses.
Love the ink stains on the lens - although slightly weirded out by the 'Far Side'-style glasses.
March 18, 2025 at 9:35 AM
A new entrant in the hotly contested category of 'best incredibly short 19th-century clerk scene in cinema'™: Powell and Pressburger's 'Tales of Hoffmann' (1951).
Love the ink stains on the lens - although slightly weirded out by the 'Far Side'-style glasses.
Love the ink stains on the lens - although slightly weirded out by the 'Far Side'-style glasses.
1: But such futile cruelty is what makes these pranks so funny. The best example is in Balzac's 'Les Employés' (1844):
An extended sequence in which the old dotard, Poiret, discovers that his hat is full of lard, but he is forever incapable of divining that his colleagues put it there.
An extended sequence in which the old dotard, Poiret, discovers that his hat is full of lard, but he is forever incapable of divining that his colleagues put it there.
February 27, 2025 at 10:53 AM
1: But such futile cruelty is what makes these pranks so funny. The best example is in Balzac's 'Les Employés' (1844):
An extended sequence in which the old dotard, Poiret, discovers that his hat is full of lard, but he is forever incapable of divining that his colleagues put it there.
An extended sequence in which the old dotard, Poiret, discovers that his hat is full of lard, but he is forever incapable of divining that his colleagues put it there.
2: Indeed, bureaucratic structures somehow neutralise the volition behind such pranks:
Charles Pooter, struck by a paper ball, tells us in 'The Diary of a Nobody' (1892) that, 'I am not a rich man, but would give half-a-sovereign to know whether that was thrown by accident or design'.
Charles Pooter, struck by a paper ball, tells us in 'The Diary of a Nobody' (1892) that, 'I am not a rich man, but would give half-a-sovereign to know whether that was thrown by accident or design'.
February 27, 2025 at 10:53 AM
2: Indeed, bureaucratic structures somehow neutralise the volition behind such pranks:
Charles Pooter, struck by a paper ball, tells us in 'The Diary of a Nobody' (1892) that, 'I am not a rich man, but would give half-a-sovereign to know whether that was thrown by accident or design'.
Charles Pooter, struck by a paper ball, tells us in 'The Diary of a Nobody' (1892) that, 'I am not a rich man, but would give half-a-sovereign to know whether that was thrown by accident or design'.
3: But tragically, office pranks reflect the logic of bureaucracy itself. Viz. J-G Ymbert's 1823 play, 'Le Chanson' and its analogue version of the 'reply all' gaffe:
A derogatory song about the boss is mechanically copied by a braindead scribe who loses his job when it reaches management.
A derogatory song about the boss is mechanically copied by a braindead scribe who loses his job when it reaches management.
February 27, 2025 at 10:53 AM
3: But tragically, office pranks reflect the logic of bureaucracy itself. Viz. J-G Ymbert's 1823 play, 'Le Chanson' and its analogue version of the 'reply all' gaffe:
A derogatory song about the boss is mechanically copied by a braindead scribe who loses his job when it reaches management.
A derogatory song about the boss is mechanically copied by a braindead scribe who loses his job when it reaches management.
4: But carnivalesque can turn into class struggle, as with Henry Monnier's 'Hat Trick':
Simply bring two hats to work. Leave one at your desk to give your boss the impression that you have briefly stepped out of the office, then (wearing the other, naturally) go AWOL.
Simply bring two hats to work. Leave one at your desk to give your boss the impression that you have briefly stepped out of the office, then (wearing the other, naturally) go AWOL.
February 27, 2025 at 10:53 AM
4: But carnivalesque can turn into class struggle, as with Henry Monnier's 'Hat Trick':
Simply bring two hats to work. Leave one at your desk to give your boss the impression that you have briefly stepped out of the office, then (wearing the other, naturally) go AWOL.
Simply bring two hats to work. Leave one at your desk to give your boss the impression that you have briefly stepped out of the office, then (wearing the other, naturally) go AWOL.
5: In Punch's 1845 'Guide' to clerks, we read that 'leap-frog is an agreeable exercise; for it not only fills up the time, but obviates the chief objection to the employment of a clerk, on the ground of its being sedentary.'
Jokes here are simply the 'yang' to desk work's 'yin.'
Jokes here are simply the 'yang' to desk work's 'yin.'
February 27, 2025 at 10:53 AM
5: In Punch's 1845 'Guide' to clerks, we read that 'leap-frog is an agreeable exercise; for it not only fills up the time, but obviates the chief objection to the employment of a clerk, on the ground of its being sedentary.'
Jokes here are simply the 'yang' to desk work's 'yin.'
Jokes here are simply the 'yang' to desk work's 'yin.'
Another listicle in advance of 'The Rise of Office Literature'!
Pranks and jokes are a timeworn office tradition - but what are their philosophical underpinnings? Let's peel back the jelly from the stapler and journey to their dark heart...
Pranks and jokes are a timeworn office tradition - but what are their philosophical underpinnings? Let's peel back the jelly from the stapler and journey to their dark heart...
February 27, 2025 at 10:53 AM
Another listicle in advance of 'The Rise of Office Literature'!
Pranks and jokes are a timeworn office tradition - but what are their philosophical underpinnings? Let's peel back the jelly from the stapler and journey to their dark heart...
Pranks and jokes are a timeworn office tradition - but what are their philosophical underpinnings? Let's peel back the jelly from the stapler and journey to their dark heart...
1st 🥁 - A bizarre choice given how little screen-time they get, but Mssrs Grout and Golightly, the government clerks in Mike Leigh's 'Peterloo' (2018), are bang on the money. Oddball bachelors, tittering at intercepted mail as they toil amidst the mouse droppings: tyranny has never been so quaint.
December 19, 2024 at 1:57 PM
1st 🥁 - A bizarre choice given how little screen-time they get, but Mssrs Grout and Golightly, the government clerks in Mike Leigh's 'Peterloo' (2018), are bang on the money. Oddball bachelors, tittering at intercepted mail as they toil amidst the mouse droppings: tyranny has never been so quaint.