Being a bit sniffy about business isn't considered as odd asit should be in theUK. At universityI took a course in the portrayal of business in literature, a subject that DJ Taylor picks up in The Times this week. In the classic English novel, the business man is "little more than a caricature, tending at the upper level to straightforward swindlers of the Trollope variety and at the lower to dissenting grocers calling their assistants into prayers while sanding the sugar".
Not much has changed: the business man is usually the fattie with the cigar; books on the matter written by anyone with commercial experience "can be counted on the fingers of one hand"; and too many people and politicians still consider business to be the enemy.
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