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Toil: Building Yourself
Book by Procter, Jody
- GenresMemoirNonfiction
225 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2000
23 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
August 4, 2014
Jody Procter went to a fine university, migrated to San Francisco in a VW bus, became a hippie, spent his entire life writing while pursuing other work for money, and ended up as a carpenter. A lot like me. Toil: Building Yourself is Jody's meditative diary of one of the last jobs of his career, one rainy winter working as a carpenter building a McMansion in the Pacific Northwest.
As the newest hire on the crew, Jody was low man in the pecking order. He provides a detailed, graphic account of construction as viewed from the bottom. A bit too detailed at times. What I like best is when he steps slightly outside the job and considers the larger implications of what he's doing:
"Someday this house will be done, and we and all our voices and our inane chatter and our grim faces will be the ghosts of the workmen who built it, and whoever lives in it will know us only by the strange, unsettled sensations of movement and thought they pick up sometimes... We will have moved on somewhere else with our yearning laughter, our muddy boots, our hammers with their odd nicknames, our ladders, our wet nail-belts and tired feet, our fear of fuck-ups and death. And the house will be like our mountain and it will remain."
I like it when he tells us not what he's doing so much as how he feels about it: "When I'm at work, I like to work, to get into the rhythm of it, the perfection of it, the uninterrupted flow of it - on a really good day, the mystical, mantra-sounding, deep spirituality of it." This is a guy who recites his mantra while he's nailing studs.
We begin in November, 1994 with an empty lot, the first scrapings of the bulldozer blade "curling up rich, brown chunks of river-bottom dirt," and follow the work through the bickering and joking, the competition and the camaraderie. We meet Vern, the nearly unflappable contractor with a laconic Gary Cooper personality attached to a Don Knotts body. We meet Brian, the brash 19-year-old whose energy outpaces his skill set, who has a motor mouth, who thinks Rush Limbaugh is God and who, naturally, irritates the crap out of old hippie Jody. We meet Bud, whose one-year-old daughter is on chemotherapy and whose life is on the edge. We care about this crew, we watch them practice their craft, we understand how working on a construction site can be like immersing yourself in a nearly dysfunctional family.
Most of all we come to know - and worry about - Jody Procter, a man who, as the subtitle says, is building himself. Despite the humorous image on the cover, this man is haunted by some dark ghosts. First there are the aches and pains of a 51-year-old carpenter. But as a reader, I was less troubled by Jody's physical problems - which, as a 61-year-old carpenter, I am fairly acquainted with - and more concerned with his mental well-being. Jody grew up with wealth and privilege: "My father was a Republican businessman, a Harvard-club man, and a golfer ... whose only tools were the weeder and the trowel for the garden.... The work, such as it was, that was done to our house, was done by rough-looking working men, plumbers and carpenters and electricians who came to the house in their old trucks, and seemed to me as alien as if they had just arrived from Outer Mongolia. Now I had become one of them." And later he says, "I wonder, out of my graduating class, if I am now working at the most menial job. Would there be some sort of reverse accomplishment in lowliness?"
I hate that attitude. Having spent my own life in the construction trades, I've never seen myself as a failure. Most of the carpenters I know take pride in their work and in their livelihood. Only in literature, it seems, do we see ourselves as troubled, exploited, miserable laboring wretches. I suppose we can all be forgiven a bit of self-pitying. We have all been through some form of 12-step - it seems to be a job requirement.
But ultimately Jody does, in a sense, "build himself." You'll come away from this book with a sense of Jody's humility, kindness, compassion. You'll remember the humor and the love. And you may have a renewed appreciation of the depth of the word: Toil.
As the newest hire on the crew, Jody was low man in the pecking order. He provides a detailed, graphic account of construction as viewed from the bottom. A bit too detailed at times. What I like best is when he steps slightly outside the job and considers the larger implications of what he's doing:
"Someday this house will be done, and we and all our voices and our inane chatter and our grim faces will be the ghosts of the workmen who built it, and whoever lives in it will know us only by the strange, unsettled sensations of movement and thought they pick up sometimes... We will have moved on somewhere else with our yearning laughter, our muddy boots, our hammers with their odd nicknames, our ladders, our wet nail-belts and tired feet, our fear of fuck-ups and death. And the house will be like our mountain and it will remain."
I like it when he tells us not what he's doing so much as how he feels about it: "When I'm at work, I like to work, to get into the rhythm of it, the perfection of it, the uninterrupted flow of it - on a really good day, the mystical, mantra-sounding, deep spirituality of it." This is a guy who recites his mantra while he's nailing studs.
We begin in November, 1994 with an empty lot, the first scrapings of the bulldozer blade "curling up rich, brown chunks of river-bottom dirt," and follow the work through the bickering and joking, the competition and the camaraderie. We meet Vern, the nearly unflappable contractor with a laconic Gary Cooper personality attached to a Don Knotts body. We meet Brian, the brash 19-year-old whose energy outpaces his skill set, who has a motor mouth, who thinks Rush Limbaugh is God and who, naturally, irritates the crap out of old hippie Jody. We meet Bud, whose one-year-old daughter is on chemotherapy and whose life is on the edge. We care about this crew, we watch them practice their craft, we understand how working on a construction site can be like immersing yourself in a nearly dysfunctional family.
Most of all we come to know - and worry about - Jody Procter, a man who, as the subtitle says, is building himself. Despite the humorous image on the cover, this man is haunted by some dark ghosts. First there are the aches and pains of a 51-year-old carpenter. But as a reader, I was less troubled by Jody's physical problems - which, as a 61-year-old carpenter, I am fairly acquainted with - and more concerned with his mental well-being. Jody grew up with wealth and privilege: "My father was a Republican businessman, a Harvard-club man, and a golfer ... whose only tools were the weeder and the trowel for the garden.... The work, such as it was, that was done to our house, was done by rough-looking working men, plumbers and carpenters and electricians who came to the house in their old trucks, and seemed to me as alien as if they had just arrived from Outer Mongolia. Now I had become one of them." And later he says, "I wonder, out of my graduating class, if I am now working at the most menial job. Would there be some sort of reverse accomplishment in lowliness?"
I hate that attitude. Having spent my own life in the construction trades, I've never seen myself as a failure. Most of the carpenters I know take pride in their work and in their livelihood. Only in literature, it seems, do we see ourselves as troubled, exploited, miserable laboring wretches. I suppose we can all be forgiven a bit of self-pitying. We have all been through some form of 12-step - it seems to be a job requirement.
But ultimately Jody does, in a sense, "build himself." You'll come away from this book with a sense of Jody's humility, kindness, compassion. You'll remember the humor and the love. And you may have a renewed appreciation of the depth of the word: Toil.
January 3, 2009
Can you tell it's winter break, and that I'm on a reading frenzy?
I'd been meaning to read this book for a long time, ever since a colleague of mine gave it to me. I finally pulled it off the stack on my bed stand and blew off the dust--and am very glad I did. This book is a wonderful meditation on work, life, identity, desire.
My colleague knew Jody, the author, and told me that he died before the book came out. Knowing this information adds extra poignancy to the book.
I'd been meaning to read this book for a long time, ever since a colleague of mine gave it to me. I finally pulled it off the stack on my bed stand and blew off the dust--and am very glad I did. This book is a wonderful meditation on work, life, identity, desire.
My colleague knew Jody, the author, and told me that he died before the book came out. Knowing this information adds extra poignancy to the book.
March 10, 2020
Jody and I were in the same class at Harvard. And like Jody, I spent most of my career days working as a carpenter. I'm also a published poet: keithemmons.com.
I read Jody's book shortly after the year 2000, when it was published. Jody's writing is pure and beautiful. Many of his images are haiku-like in the manner they distill construction-job experience in a few simple words and images.
When we read a book, most of us expect some sort of grand and heroic detailing of adventure, excitement, deep insight and so on. If a book doesn't have some trumpeting characteristic outside the normal, literary critics and booksellers don't take much notice.
Jody's genius is his experience of everyday life as a heroic challenge, in and of itself. Normal life is a deeply impressing series of influences that are inimitable, indescribable and mortally important to the individual experiencing them.
Since I've lived so many days of my life as a carpenter, builder and foreman, Jody's words resonate with my on-the-job experience. I admire his writing. And I admire Jody's life dedicated to writing, insisting that every person's everyday, seemingly mundane life, is in fact a mysterious, near holy experience, of building ones self.
I read Jody's book shortly after the year 2000, when it was published. Jody's writing is pure and beautiful. Many of his images are haiku-like in the manner they distill construction-job experience in a few simple words and images.
When we read a book, most of us expect some sort of grand and heroic detailing of adventure, excitement, deep insight and so on. If a book doesn't have some trumpeting characteristic outside the normal, literary critics and booksellers don't take much notice.
Jody's genius is his experience of everyday life as a heroic challenge, in and of itself. Normal life is a deeply impressing series of influences that are inimitable, indescribable and mortally important to the individual experiencing them.
Since I've lived so many days of my life as a carpenter, builder and foreman, Jody's words resonate with my on-the-job experience. I admire his writing. And I admire Jody's life dedicated to writing, insisting that every person's everyday, seemingly mundane life, is in fact a mysterious, near holy experience, of building ones self.
January 8, 2011
Hmm... a diary of working that tells nothing new, except that the personal attitude of the author makes him join the ranks of construction workers. He could have done other things with his degree from Harvard and his MFA in creative writing, but those options disappeared over time. His indecision forces him to "toil" at a job he's done before, house framing and carpentry.
Love to see a book approach the subject where carpentry is a calling, and the time evaporates while he is working. He seems bored with his job, and the people he works with seem bored with their job.
Love to see a book approach the subject where carpentry is a calling, and the time evaporates while he is working. He seems bored with his job, and the people he works with seem bored with their job.
December 25, 2025
Found this book by chance at the library. Truly a wonderful look at everyday life and labor.
March 9, 2007
This is my uncle's only published book before he died of lung cancer. It brings tears to my eyes everytime I read it. If you want a look into the soul of another human being read this book. My mom still have 1500 copies so give a shout.
January 5, 2021
Work as a path to fulfillment. A deep appreciation of work and personal development.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews