The Craftsman [Paperback]

I really wanted to like this book more than I did in the end. I had heard Sennett talking about it on Radio 4 ("Thinking Allowed" 6 February) and was fascinated. It is a topic which usually is only addressed in passing, but worthy of a serious treatment of its own. I started to read with enthusiasm, but eventually it became harder and harder work and I almost gave up.
It has to be said that the parts are fascinating, and Sennett the musician and even the cook are as much in evidence as Sennett the sociologist; substantial sections stand alone as engaging examples of original and stimulating reflection and insight. And one cannot deny the amazing range of Sennett's erudition, the disciplines over which he ranges, the forms of craft about which he writes. (Strangely, the discipline to which he pays least attention is the substantial body of psychological research on skill acquisition.) But the result is sprawling and disorientating; his attempts to summarise chapters and stages in the argument just draw attention to the problem of fitting them all together. Perhaps it would have made more sense to publish as a collection of essays without any attempt to impose an overall structure.
Although Sennett can hark back to Homer and Hesiod, and more recently to Ruskin and Morris, he is to the best of my knowledge effectively inventing the modern study of craft as a discipline. So he is not writing within a tradition; he does not have prior work with which to argue, and even the methodology of study is vague.
Incidentally, although I have nowhere near the range of scholarship that Sennett displays, there are places where he deals with writers with whom I am quite familiar, and I did not always recognise his treatment of their ideas. And although he acknowledges assistance with proof-reading, there is a substantial number of errors. There are just eighteen pages of notes and no separate bibliography; given that no reader is likely to match Sennett's range of background reading, it would have been useful to trace more material back to its source.

This book is very interesting but not at all what I was expecting - which was a more historical account of craftsmanship. It is in fact quite philosophical. Although interesting, it is let down badly by a lack of cohesive theory and disparate stated purposes which become confusing.

What makes it great is that it is full of fascinating details of all kinds of different crafts (cooking; violin making; goldsmiths; architects even "open" software designers). It looks at every aspect of craft from its history to what makes a good craftsman.

The book is divided into three parts (1) Craftsman - looking at the history of craft moving from community based (in the medieval guild system) to individual knowledge and achievement (eg. Stradivari and Michelangelo) (2) Craft - looking at what goes into crafting - the use of the hand, analysising how the moment of inspiration occurs, how the best craftsman work with obstacles rather than against them and (3) Craftsmanship - the obsession with quality and whether ability is natural or can be taught.

It wasn't what I expected as I thought it would be in its entirety about the history of the craftsman and its modern disappearance. Although there are really interesing and thought provoking parts of history woven in, it is really much more philosophical. It is very theoretical suggesting sweeping theories that don't really transcend across the book and on analysis seem a bit flawed and remote. It smacks of a desperate attempt to unify essays that are incapable of unification.

It is the author's desire to try and pull it all together that is actually the weakness here. It makes it very confusing and lacking a single message. This is due to the breadth of the subject.

Overall, it is well worth reading as it is interesting and will provide you with lots of thought provoking tales to discuss over a glass of wine. But you will be left wondering exactly what it was the author was aiming to do.

This book could have met a clear need: a work explaining clearly what craftsmen have to offer in a post-industrial age would have been welcome. Also,we could use a book explaining why so many of us rush to buy objects at "craft fairs" etc. even when they may be of lower quality than their industrial equivalents.
Sennett rightly stresses the (good) craftsman's commitment to quality and the involvement in craftsmanship of implicit knowledge (in industry, there can also be a commitment to quality, but only on the basis of explicit knowledge). But he says little about the expression of personality, flair or even a certain Weltanschauung through craftwork. (Sennett seems to assume that artists are not craftsmen but surely the two categories overlap considerably.) He includes an essay on the hand but is less clear on whether craftworks are necessarily handmade. (I believe not necessarily: poets and composers are craftsmen without needing to exercise any special manual dexterity.)
I agree with the other reviewers that (i)Sennett does not lay down a clear line of argument and gets bogged down in examples and byways, not all of which are strictly relevant; (ii) the book is shoddy: Penguin should be particularly ashamed of the paperback edition which contains all the typos of the hardback edition uncorrected and is produced meanly with tiny margins; so much for craftsmanship!
Again, like other reviewers I have reservations about Sennett's use of his sources. I'll give one example: his references to Adam Smith. He says (a) that the "Wealth of Nations" (1776) was published a generation after the "Encyclopédie"(1751-1772) [!] and that Smith asserted that "machines would end the project of enlightenment"; but Smith says no such thing: he recognises that the repetitive work entailed by the division of labour (not necessarily involving machines) may dull people's minds but proposes a remedy for this (adult education). Smith argued - surely plausibly - that mechanisation increased productivity to society's general benefit, making inter alia education available to a wider range of people.
Moreover (b) Sennett ignores Smith's admiration for the intelligence of agricultural craftsmen: in agriculture division of labour may be compatible with the preservation of some crafts, e.g. animal husbandry. Then (c) Sennett says that in "The Theory of Moral Sentiments" Smith "asked his readers to enter into the misfortunes and limits of other human beings" but he did no such thing: he clearly asserts that "sympathy" is a part of human nature; it does not "instruct ethically" as Sennett says but is the meaning of ethics.
These examples raise doubts in my mind about Sennett's use of e.g. Plato or Kant and his references to the scientific revolution (which all seem to be based on secondary sources).