Max Barry's Company

The SMH's Spectrum reviewed this book the other day, or perhaps it was an article, because there was a review in yesterday's Spectrum, so unless the editor was inhaling a little too much and inadvertently published reviews of the same book twice in a fortnight, the first article must have been an interview of sorts.  It interested me because the book sounded good and focused on Barry's success in America while remaining virtually unheard of in Australia.  Normally there is a ticket parade for any Australian deemed successful overseas, so it seemed quite odd that he is still so unknown.  But then there has been two articles/reviews in a fortnight and I bought the book, so perhaps I just did not allow time in which this celebration is to take hold.  This is Barry’s third book, the other two I’ve yet to read.  It is a parody of corporate culture, which offers meat food for wit to feed on.  He does a particularly nice job with the vacuity of corporate-speak, ‘teamwork’, ‘goal oriented’ and so on. The plot centres on a new graduate recruit, Jones,  to a large corporation, which seems to produce nothing and revolves around departments meeting other departments’ demands rather than those of any external customers.  Unfortunately Jones character never seems to develop that much, there’s vague references to his life outside the office, and to his time before taking up employment at the company, but not enough to really find the book’s claim for his ethical superiority to be that believable.  And so the brief appearances of his sister and former housemates just seem unnecessary rather than illuminating.  The femme fatale of the piece, Eve, is a much more interesting character and offers some interesting thoughts on moral relativity and ethics in the business world, at least being consistent in the ultimate outworking of absolute ambition.   While the plot doesn’t exactly pivot with the precision of a champion-netballer, it is both interesting and funny, and certainly emphasises the soul-destroying hell of corporations determined to make money whatever the cost for staff.  Or appear to be making money so that the share prices goes up and senior management actually make money.  It’d make a very good film script, in the I heart Huckabees/Being John Malkovich vein.  In some ways I think Barry should have written it as a film, a lot of the scenes that take a few pages to cover in the book could have been achieved visually in 20 seconds and would have meant that there weren’t quite so many characters clunking about the plot.  This all sounds overly negative though, the book is worth reading, and the thing that makes the book worth a read is the writing, Barry has a nice turn of biting parody that makes for an entertaining afternoon.  

Golden Moments of Procrastination #3

Ah, the virtual world, and its multi-faceted opportunities for the consumption of time. How joyful is the procrastination which not only affords you idle amusement, but provides it for your fellow internet burghers. Not only has Carl gone to the effort of installing a webcam in his office, but now others can watch him chat with the people that go to view it... I'm still not entirely sure that I understand that Phd topic, but at least I can live in hope that one day I'll visit and he'll have pigtails...

Golden Moments of Procrastination #2

I just blogged about procrastinating in order to procrastinate. It all gets very circular sometimes doesn't it?

Golden Moments of Procrastination #1

I just went to check the mail downstairs, an activity that becomes strangely vital when I'm attempting to write - normally I go for days without checking - and accidentally walked to the lake.

On things that amuse

There is something odd about laughing out loud - and I mean loud - when you are alone isn't there? There you are, maintaining a largely internal dialogue with the world around you, and then an ad comes on television, declaring that a one kilo block of cheese is 'Great for School Lunches!'and you fine yourself bleating with laughter. Oh the image of an eight year old opening up their décor lunch box to find a big yellow block inside. Or when I find myself excited at the 'ding' of an arriving email, even though it is an email that I have just sent myself, and forgotten in the two second interval.

There is an oddness to the sudden outburst, where it makes me intensely conscious for a moment of my surroundings in a way that I hadn't been previously, engaged as I was in mindless observation of TV, laughter kind of interrupts that internal world - same thing when I go to the movies alone. I don't usually laugh quite so hard as when I have gone with other people. Hence the extraordinary level of humour in 'Little Miss Sunshine' when I was
doubled over in the cinema. Fortunately everyone around me was, so I wasn't the loser in the corner finding the film way more entertaining than everyone else.

On Before Sunset

Ethan Hawke is morphing into Tom Cruise. It's very strange, even his mannerisms remind me of Tom. Fortunately he's taller, and seems less likely to jump up and down on sofas ranting about post-natal depression, but the resemblance is there. Happily this does mean that he has encountered a stylist in the past decade, who has taught him the benefits of shorter, clean hair and product. The changes wrought in his character do seem oddly similar to those I've seen in friends - when guys go from the floppy longish hair with the centre part and baggy clothes to more stylish attire and an actual hair style. Ethan even wears belts now. Still, no butt.

Julie has been particularly sartorially blessed, but give it another nine years and I'm sure there'd be a what were they thinking quotient rearing its head. Both of them look a lot better at 32 than 23 which is nice, I think it might be possible to draw blood on Ethan's cheekbones, he's certainly a lot thinner these days. To the point that when the film opened I had the thought 'what, he's been on crack for the past decade?' but I got past that.

I can see why not everyone loved the film (Margaret did, David didn't, for the record), being more of the talking heads for quite some time, but it revisit the characters very well - very much one for the fans of the original film, if you hadn't seen the first one you might be hard pressed to care too much about the sequel, and I'm prepared to think that you might have needed to be an adolescent at the time to truly _connect_ with Ethan's pain, to care at all about his current setting. And the double dvd pack certainly helps those of us that couldn't remember anything other than the basic premise of the film.

Ethan and Julie clearly hadn't left the characters behind them, they helped write the screenplay for this one, and I think they dealt pretty well with the possibility that the theme of 'unfulfilled love that has a second chance' presents, of the film turning into monumental, vast swathes of sentimentality that expand like a salinating desert to eventually encompass us all in a sea of pain and leave us vomiting into our fortuitously large popcorn containers. There's a nice meandering theme of 'what if' that they concentrate on, as well as discussing their lives, and the film is much more located at a specific time and so references particular things - I liked that they included Nina Simone (as a conversation topic I mean). Both characters have a slightly dark sense of humour which is cool, but it is hard to believe that people who hadn't seen each other in a decade would be quite so ready to bag each other out, but then I guess that's true love for you.

What is very cool is that the film is set in Paris - and opens in Shakespeare & Co. - The. Bookstore. That. I've. Been. Too. Fictionally, Ethan slept there, so it's possible that a fictional character has slept in the bed that I have actually read in! Just imagine what Baudrillard would say about that. Admittedly, possibly nothing at all as there is a good chance his theories have no bearing on that.

On Before Sunrise

Last night I watched Before Sunrise for the first time since I was about sixteen. When this movie came out I remember being in quite the flurry of excitement, as it was in the midst of the Reality Bites-induced 'Ethan Hawke as greasy haired anti-hero of the cynical generation' that so characterised my lank-haired youth. I was quite startled by the film, as apart from the basic premise - Ethan and Julie Delpie wander around a European city for one night, knowing they have to go their respective ways in the morning - it turns out that I remembered nothing, nothing, about this film. It never ceases to astonish me just how little information I can retain about things. It has the advantage of meaning I can read and watch things over and over again and be just as surprised by them every! single! time! but it does have slight drawbacks as far as the 'operating in reality' aspect of life.

The watching of Before Sunrise was because I went into the Land of Temptation again (JB Hi-Fi). They had a double set of the DVDs of Before Sunrise and its sequel, Before Sunset. I haven't seen Before Sunset yet, but its release, with the descriptions of its premise 'Ethan and Julie meet ten years later, this time for a day' created in me one of those 'it's been ten years!' moments. It generally got fairly bad reviews, as did I think the original film, being targeted at the late-adolescent girl who was happy to swoon at Ethan as he uttered his pseudo-profundities for an hour or so. Not a subset which is likely to create broad appeal. I suspect there may have also been a subset of late-adolescent boys who couldn't wait to get to uni and be Ethan, slack-hair and all.

When the movie started I thought they were going to leave Ethan in the rust-coloured skivvy he appears in in the first scene for the whole film. Fortunately he gets changed, into the late-nineties uniform of grey tshirt and leather jacket. Unfortunately he doesn't acquire a belt, which isn't a great look, especially on the buttless. Julie remains in the same outfit for the entire film, that particularly lacking nineties look of black dress over white tshirt look with flannel shirt over the top and bulky shoes. What were we thinking? There's also a random polka-dot skirt underneath the black dress, so she just inhabits the land of clash for the entire film. Obviously my initial reactions to film are lost in a haze of swoon, but I'm pretty sure I thought she looked excellent when I first saw her in this attire. I remember thinking during the nineties, as we all recoiled in horror at the eighties, that there would never be a time when we would feel that way about the nineties, because fashion just wasn't making those kind of mistakes.

I can certainly see why people found this film inordinately irritating, featuring as it does two people wandering around for twelve hours talking about themselves, and then ending. But I still did enjoy it, even with a little bit more of an idea that I would probably smack Ethan repeatedly these days, rather than put up with his meandering narcissism. Yes, that's right, it's perfectly polite to ask someone a deeply personal question, receive a decent answer and then come back with a thought that you had that reincarnation didn't make sense because there are so many more people these days than there used to be and so, what, were they like, fragments of souls now? No, you twit, reincarnation believes in the progression of souls through different forms, so it means that what were single-celled organisms have gradually progressed to their glorious, near-ultimate form of the human male. What really doesn't make sense is how you, oh slack-haired saggy-panted one, could be regarded as the almost-height of the reincarnatory ladder. If that's my next option, I choose labrador.

When I was sixteen I'm pretty sure I would have had more of a 'wow, that's so like, excellent - going round Europe on trains for two weeks, thinking really deep thoughts'. What's so amazing about really deep thoughts... Honey, there's a reason that girl in Madrid dumped you and sent you into that vortex of pain that sent you to the trains of Europe. He didn't seem at all interested in the breads of Europe. I'll keep you posted on my thoughts about the sequel.

Housekeeping

I have just updated the appearance of this blog. I'm not sure if it works, but the point-and-click colour palette was just so fun that I couldn't stop myself, results be damned.

In the process of my sprucing, I lost the counter, so for future reference, add 1388 to the new counter for the true, glorious, success of this here bloggeral to be revealed. But I don't have the link for some peculiar academy to contend with anymore, and that is a thing of happiness.

It is nice that the blogmasters have made it possible for those of us happier in the GUI environment to make changes, and not have to figure out complicated codes to change things, which always resulted in me thinking 'white is fine as a background anyway' after I had squinted at the text box for awhile.