Lightning Rods
Helen DeWitt
(Author)
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Description
"All I want is to be a success. That's all I ask." Joe fails to sell a single set of the Encyclopedia Britannica in six months. Then fails to sell a single Electrolux and must eat 126 pieces of homemade pie, served up by his would-be customers who feel sorry for him. Holed up in his trailer, Joe finds an outlet for his frustrations in a series of ingenious sexual fantasies, and at last strikes gold. His brainstorm, Lightning Rods, Inc., will take Joe to the very top -- and to the very heart of corporate insanity -- with an outrageous solution to the spectre of sexual harassment in the modern office.
An uproarious, hard-boiled modern fable of corporate life, sex, and race in America, Helen DeWitt's Lightning Rods brims with the satiric energy of Nathanael West and the philosophic import of an Aristophanic comedy of ideas. Her wild yarn is second cousin to the spirit of Mel Brooks and the hilarious reality-blurring of Being John Malkovich. Dewitt continues to take the novel into new realms of storytelling -- as the timeliness of Lightning Rods crosses over into timelessness.
An uproarious, hard-boiled modern fable of corporate life, sex, and race in America, Helen DeWitt's Lightning Rods brims with the satiric energy of Nathanael West and the philosophic import of an Aristophanic comedy of ideas. Her wild yarn is second cousin to the spirit of Mel Brooks and the hilarious reality-blurring of Being John Malkovich. Dewitt continues to take the novel into new realms of storytelling -- as the timeliness of Lightning Rods crosses over into timelessness.
Product Details
| Publisher | New Directions Publishing Corporation |
| Publish Date | October 05, 2011 |
| Pages | 192 |
| Language | English |
| Type |  Hardback |
| EAN/UPC | 9780811219433 |
| Dimensions | 8.1 X 5.7 X 1.1 inches | 1.0 pounds |
BISAC Categories: Literary Fiction
About the Author
Helen DeWitt was born in a suburb of Washington, DC. Daughter of American diplomats, she grew up mainly in Latin America, living in Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, and Ecuador. She went to Oxford to study classics for a BA and D.Phil. She left academia to try to write a novel, moving eventually to London and acquiring UK citizenship. She had some 100 fragments of novels when she began work in 1995 on the novel that was published as The Last Samurai in 2000. The book caused a sensation at the Frankfurt Bookfair 1999, going on to be translated in 20 languages (DeWitt reads some 15 languages to various degrees of fluency). On the reissue of The Last Samurai by New Directions in 2016 it was hailed by Vulture Magazine as The Best Book of the Century. She is also the author of Lightning Rods, a Mel Brooksian satire on sexual harassment, and Some Trick, a collection of stories. She has been based in Berlin since 2004, but also spends time at a cottage in the woods of Vermont improving her chainsaw skills.
Reviews
Lightning Rods [is] Helen DeWitt's merrily demented satire of the obtuse sexual politics of American corporate culture. Brazen, outrageous, and--the key to good satire--just plausible enough to give it the bite of truth. It made me cringe; it made me blush; but mainly it made me laugh. This week, I read Lightning Rods again, and was struck by the degree to which it seems, in our post-Harvey Weinstein world, where each day brings new revelations of egregious male misbehavior, like a work of credible realism.--Alexandra Schwartz "The New Yorker" (10/27/2017 12:00:00 AM)
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