After leaving the university without a degree, Green, the scion of a very old and very rich aristocratic family, went to work as a foundryman in a factory. Living, the novel that emerged from this experience, is written in clipped sentences, many of them shorn of articles. Moving from the workfloor to the loading dock through offices front and back and out into the streets and rooms of the surrounding town, Living reveals the epic oddity of modern mechanized life.