02 June 2015

Then We Came to an End

A concise and accurate description of the book is "Catch-22 set in an office".
If you liked either book, you'd like the other. The structure is very similar: a series of stories about the people around the narrator that reveals a great deal about the human condition. For example:
Every lovelorn jerk is the victim of bad timing, good intentions, and someone else's poor decision making.

We were hired guns of the human soul, we pulled the strings on the people across the land and by God they got to their feet and danced for us.
What, then, were we to make of an empty sketch pad or blank computer screen? How could we understand our failure as anything but an indictment of us as benighted, disconnected frauds? [...] we had no real clue how to tap basic human desire, we lacked a fundamental understanding of how to motivate the low sleepwalking hoards. [...] Our souls were as screwy and in need of guidance as all the rest. What were we but sheep like them? We were them.
I do enjoy the first person story telling of Then We Came to an End more. By using "we" instead of "I", the reader is made part of the gossiping group but at the same time is a step removed.

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