VICE Japan

• 海外

元々は政治風刺の漫画を手掛けていたデイヴィッド・リーズ。今では顧客の鉛筆を削って生計を立てている。国勢調査局での研修を機に鉛筆削りに目覚め、今では『鉛筆の削り方』という本まで出版。

鉛筆を削って金を稼ぐなんて、今まで誰が考えただろうか。馬鹿げた男に見えるかもしれないが、そこには彼の〝芯〟念が垣間見える。働く喜び、良い仕事への心意気、高度な情報技術と原始的な手作業の融合——。彼の仕事は、我々が忘れかけていたなにかを思い出させてくれる。

David Rees is not kidding. He really does sharpen pencils for a living.

Sure, he made his name as a humorist (from 2001 to 2009, he created the acclaimed political cartoon "Get Your War On"). Yes, he's been known to create straight-faced projects with a satirical bent (e.g. URL Shortening Service for Twitter and Joey the Midwife Advertising Agency). And of course, there are plenty of laugh-out-loud moments of over-writing in his new book, How to Sharpen Pencils.

But think twice before you call Rees out for empty sarcasm. Since 2010, he's actually made thousands of dollars sharpening pencils by mail through his Artisanal Pencil Sharpening service. The pencil-sharpening techniques in his book are all legitimate and replicable. He really does travel the country to perform his pencil-sharpening demonstrations. He even took the sharpening show on a cruise ship, and once, into a waterfall.

And as I found out when I spent a gorgeous afternoon with him at an abandoned paper-clip factory in his hometown of Beacon, NY, what he does is hypnotic — and, at times, oddly moving.

At the intersection of irony and sincerity, high art and low, wood and the Web, there is David Rees. Like each of his pencils, he's one of a kind.

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