What to Read When You’re Feeling Ambitious
The classic American story of ambition—work hard and you will be rewarded—has never seemed more outdated. Wages haven’t kept pace with the cost of living. Mass layoffs are taking place in sectors that include tech and journalism. The pandemic, for many 9-to-5ers, prompted a large-scale assessment of what to reach for, how hard to try to attain it, and whether the object or the effort is truly worth it. Rather than seeing boundless striving as an unquestioned virtue, a wide swath of people is now just as likely to ask whether it might be doing them more harm than good.
This is a question that books are well equipped to answer. Literature is rife with characters like Jay Gatsby, whose ambition eventually brings him down, or who have no ambition to speak of, like Herman Melville’s Bartleby. Recent changes in my own job situation have encouraged me to reassess, with the help of reading, where I fall on that scale: What is it I actually want? If I had more
