|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Frequently Bought Together
Product Details
|
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
With broad strokes, Barry once again satirizes corporate America in his third caustic novel (after Jennifer Government). This time, he takes aim at the perennial corporate crime of turning people into cogs in a machine. Recent b-school grad Stephen Jones, a fresh-faced new hire at a Seattle-based holding company called Zephyr, jumps on the fast track to success when he's immediately promoted from sales assistant to sales rep in Zephyr's training sales department. "Don't try to understand the company. Just go with it," a colleague advises when Jones is flummoxed to learn his team sells training packages to other internal Zephyr departments. But unlike his co-workers, he won't accept ignorance of his employer's business, and his unusual display of initiative catapults him into the ranks of senior management, where he discovers the "customer-free" company's true, sinister raison d'être. The ultracynical management team co-opts Jones with a six-figure salary and blackmail threats, but it's not long before he throws a wrench into the works. As bitter as break-room coffee, the novel eviscerates demeaning modern management techniques that treat workers as "headcounts." Though Barry's primary target is corporate dehumanization, he's at his funniest lampooning the suits that tread the stage, consumed by the sound and fury of office politics that signify nothing. (Jan.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From School Library Journal
Adult/High School–By turns amusing and wry, this novel is a pleasure to read. It opens with a view of a large corporation as seen by a new employee whose first day on the job is one of high suspense–one of the doughnuts for a staff meeting is missing. Moving beyond the usual cheap but funny shots taken at corporate life, Barry takes his tale to the next level. What if this giant maze for laboratory rats in which so many people work was actually just that? The characters are stereotypes but readers will sympathize with them, nonetheless.–Ted Westervelt, Library of Congress, Washington, DC
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items. |
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most helpful customer reviews
2.0 out of 5 stars
Absurd past the amusing...,
By
This review is from: Company (Paperback)
Only 336 pages of story, yet it takes about 100 to get off the ground. It's interesting for a while (if you use that term loosely), but gets old very quickly, especially at the climax.Perhaps you have to have been part of it to get it?
5.0 out of 5 stars
Laugh out loud funny, and bitingly critical too,
By
This review is from: Company (Paperback)
I found my way to Max Barry through his previous book "Jennifer Government." The reason I read JG was because of my interest in sf and dystopic writing, and JG was recommended to me as a result. I wasn't expecting it to be so funny, however, and after finishing the book, I was hooked. As soon as I found "Company" on Amazon, I preordered it. (Okay, I'm cheap, I pre-ordered the paperback.)There's a lot to love about "Company." The idealistic hero of the story who goes up against both the big company and shadow government and successfully winning a huge victory for the oppressed working underclass is certainly something that every office worker dreams about. From a literary standpoint, there's a lot going on at the symbolic level that makes you think, too: there's a siren that attempts to pull down the hero, an ambitious warlord who takes advantage of chaos to consolidate his own power, and a mother figure emerging from the events of the novel hopeful and unscathed. Finally, I believe there was even a reference to the October Revolution in 1917 in the closing pages of the book, effectively foreshadowed by one of the company's receptionists earlier on. Is the book a veiled allusion to the Worker's Paradise? Hard to say, but certainly there are literary tropes and allusions that make the book stand out on multiple levels. The fun part about Company, however, is that if you don't want to have to think about all this literary nonsense, you don't have to - the book stands alone as a wildly entertaining story on the surface level, too. And just like JG, Company is tremendously funny. I read the book over the course of six hours and laughed out loud at least ten times. It's incredibly entertaining and makes you think - what more could you want? An excellent book by Max Powers, well worth your time.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
3.9 out of 5 stars (81 customer reviews) 29 of 31 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
He's done it again!,
By Jordan Michel - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Company: A Novel (Hardcover)
I was in the middle of reading The Kite Runner when this one finally arrrived (I preordered it months ago), but I immediately dropped everything else to read it.It's got a great plot twist early on, so I can't say too much about the story. It's about a guy who gets a job at a company and realizes soon after he begins that he has no idea what the company does. He begins a quest to understand the enigmatic mission of Zephyr Holdings, and that's when things turn a little strange. As in his others novels, Max Barry uses over-the-top parody to satirize the corporate world. This one's mainly about general management and office politics, so most everyone will see elements that they recognize. When you're not frightened by how familiar these characters and situations are, you'll be laughing. For anyone looking to comparison to his other novels: I think it's better than Jennifer Governement, but probably not quite as good as Syrup. It shares their theme of corporate satire but with more focus on general management. It's a quick read and a lot of fun, and I have a feeling it'll be one that I think about for a long time in the future. 13 of 14 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars
Disappointing,
By Bill - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Company (Paperback)
I wanted to like this book, just like I wanted to like Jennifer Government but ultimately it fails and for the same reasons. There's just no depth here. Maybe I shouldn't look for any, just accept it as light-hearted satire. Still, the entire story line feels contrived, existing only to point out truths that we all know anyway: big corporations don't care about their employees. Maybe if just one senior manager was given a small amount of depth, rising above the expensive suit-wearing, golf-playing, Porsche-driving cold-hearted power grabber, the book would have been more memorable. Another reviewer compared this type of corporate satire to the movie "Office Space" and to the TV series "The Office." The reason "The Office" (US version) is so entertaining is that the characters are well-developed and likable. The boss, while giving the outward appearance of the crude, boorish status-seeker, is also genuinely concerned about his employees and strives to be well-liked. In Max Barry's story, we don't get to know any of the characters enough to care about them.And I have to agree with what other reviewers here have pointed out, that use of the word "sacked" instead of "fired" is bizarre for a story that takes place in Seattle. It also seemed strange for the setting to be Seattle when no features of the city are incorporated into the story. It would have been better not to mention the city and keep the story generic. I think Max Barry has a lot of skill as a writer, enough to keep my interest despite the flaws. I wish that he, like Chuck Palahniuk, would put his talents to better use. 11 of 12 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Ruthlessly funny: another send-up from Barry,
By Debbie Lee Wesselmann - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Company: A Novel (Hardcover)
Max Barry is the literary equivalent of Dilbert creator Scott Adams. Starting with Syrup, Barry's novels are both humorous and ruthless in their send-ups of the corporate world, satires that juggle biting wit with suspense. With Company, Barry skewers companies that reorganize with a regularity that rivals Old Faithful. Protagonist Jones is a newly hired sales assistant at Zephyr Holdings, a company whose employees are not exactly sure what the company does, although all are sure that the best way to survive is not to question the orders coming from Senior Management. The Training Sales Department, where Jones works, is embroiled in controversy because one of the reps did not get his morning donut, and there's talk of sabotage. When top-performing Wendell is fired for being "involved in some irregularities concerning morning snacks" and for having commissions that the unit wants to use for its own solvency, the reps realize that the company has begun to punish good results. The panic that ensues has sales reps scrambling to sabotage their own accounts so they can keep their jobs.In Barry's hands, the destruction of a company has never been so tongue-in-cheek. Here, a series of forwarded calls lead to the crash of the entire computer network, and, because someone must be blamed, the entire tech staff is ousted. Without a viable computer network, employees can't work, although, after the initial panic subsides, they are all too happy to pretend to be working without actually accomplishing anything. Mini-dramas erupt like pimples. As friends disappear from their cubicles, abruptly escorted off the premises by security, people willingly sever all ties with them. Conclusions, often based on nonsense, are whispered. In the midst of all this is Jones: fresh-faced, idealistic, ethical, and determined to do a good job despite the advice he receives from his co-workers. Barry's strength has always been in his absurdist touch, with individual scenes meaning much more than the characters that propel them, and Company does not divert from this winning formula. This novel's unrelenting mockery of American business practices will have readers alternately smiling and grimacing, especially if they have had even a small glimpse into today's corporate America. |
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
