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Book Nook provides readers with insights into the world of books. Vick Mickunas takes you into the center of the publishing world with the latest book buzz, book reviews, and exclusive chats with authors..Home > Blogs > Book Nook > Archives > 2008 > May > 24 > Entry
cubicle life
Millions of Americans work in office cubicles. During difficult economic times some cubicle occupants fear for their livelihoods. Corporate downsizing creates a host of empty cubicles.
Ed Park knows the feeling. He was the editor of the Village Voice Literary Supplement when he became concerned about his future there. The new owners of the newspaper fired Park in 2006. Suddenly, he had lots of spare time. He used it to write his first novel, “Personal Days.”
The story takes place in an office building in Manhattan. A group of office workers are working for a nameless company. It is never made clear what it is exactly that this company does. Whatever it is, there are big changes on the horizon. Cubicles are being vacated as workers are being sacked.
Fans of the television program “The Office” will recognize the set-up. It doesn’t matter what these office workers are supposed to be doing. We are more interested in their interactions and their growing paranoia as the axe continues to fall upon their co-workers.
The boss is a fellow named Russell. Behind his back almost everybody calls him “The Sprout.” There are about half a dozen workers who hang out together. They are concerned because their company has been bought by a shadowy organization that they refer to as “the Californians.”
These employees try to figure out if there are any patterns to these job cuts. They have noticed that people are being fired who have first names that begin with the same letter. One woman is terminated after being exiled to an abandoned floor, a place they call “Siberia.”
A new employee seemingly appears out of nowhere. He has an English accent and nobody can figure out what he does. Is he in management? His name is Grime and his behavior is quite mysterious.
Meanwhile, the soap opera plays out in the workplace. There are flirtations and fascinations. One character obsessively Googles himself. He has an unusual name and it annoys him to think that his namesakes “are having more fun, leading more interesting lives, than he is.”
“Personal Days” is spot on in depicting the mundane comedy of cubicle life, the computer crashes, the office intrigues, battles over where to go for lunch, the puzzle of who owns that rotting banana in the refrigerator.
The book is written in three parts. By the time readers reach the final section the story has morphed into a run-on sentence in the form of an e-mail being written inside a stalled elevator by a character who has figured out what is really going on.
Park has penned a brooding farce that glistens with a sinister frivolity.
Vick Mickunas
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment | Categories: escapism
Comments
By victor mickunas
May 28, 2008 10:53 AM | Link to this
Watch out Pete, your supervisor is reading your e-mails…By prose
May 25, 2008 7:31 PM | Link to this
Have not read the book but, having spent much of my adult life in a cubicle or smaller yet, a “station”, I know what they are. Prison cages of the mind, spirit and life force is a generous assesment. Dilbert is humorous and accurate but does not fully portray the true human anguish that these present day slave quarters exact upon their residents.