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Title: 11 Years 9 Months, and 5 Days by Greg Tate ISBN: 0-7388-2984-6 Publisher: Xlibris Corporation Pub. Date: 13 December, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $20.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.75 (4 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Short quick and definitely worth it
Comment: Your appreciation for this book will be increased if you've ever had a [bowel movement]job, ever had to watch as incompetent management destroyed every shred of morale and independent thought in their staff. It's really short, it's not a masterpiece and it's full of typos but what you get is pure content. There is no wasted space in this book. Practically every sentence has something for you, and that something is usually funny, ironic, or yet another tidbit to make you shake your head and say "How did he ever put up with this?" This one will stay in my permanent library of books I have too much of a connection with to ever throw away.
Rating: 5
Summary: Move over, Albert Camus!
Comment: There are very few books in this world that can make me laugh out loud, even on the second or third or tenth reading. This is definitely one of them.
Some people I've shown this book to just didn't "get it." They saw the author as a clueless loser who just wrote whatever came into his head. I feel sorry for those people.
Like the fictional works of Albert Camus and Jean Paul Sartre, Greg Tate's narrative pulls us into an absurd world that must be faced on its own terms. It's the world of the anonymous working stiff, of petty indignities, of corporate insanities, of people and things that refuse to cooperate with our cherished plans and dreams. Thrown into this hellish world, a world he never made, Greg Tate saved himself by learning to laugh at his predicament. He shares his keen, deadpan observations of life at the Burger Store with us, forcing us to watch as things go wrong again and again and again, blaming people, yes, but never making the mistake of trying to find some deeper meaning in it all.
Tate is the post-modernist writer par excellence: things happen over and over, an endless stream of people come and go from the store through a revolving door, getting hired and quitting or getting fired, pausing only to piss him off or to commit some absurd act. Words are repeated, language breaks apart, communication devolves and fails. Tate's use of dialogue, in fact, is a worth successor to Eugene Ionesco and the Theater of the Absurd.
Here is a passage that should give a flavor of the book:
During the first week of March, the store was out of glass cleaner. Ward was accusing Walter of not doing his job. Keith said something to me about the windows not being cleaned. I told him there was no glass cleaner. He said, "Use dish soap." I went and washed the windows. When I got finished, Ward said something to me about the windows not being cleaned. I told him there was no glass cleaner. He said, "Why didn't you say something?" I had mentioned that there was no glass cleaner. I had also left a note in the office saying, "We need glass cleaner." Ward said, "There was no note." He said, "I am going to put an ad in the newspaper that the Burger Store needs a janitor." Ward then said, "I might put an ad in the newspaper that the Burger Store needs 2 janitors." He sounded like he was going to fire me. If he was going to fire me, I would go on unemployment. The thing was, he had to chew me out in front of everybody. Ward wouldn't chew me out downstairs where nobody was around. I think he was afraid that I would kick his [butt], and he wouldn't have any witnesses. [p. 36]
At the end of the book, Greg Tate says he's working on a fictional drama. I can't wait!
Rating: 5
Summary: An enigmatic masterpiece
Comment: I am a woman of little words so let me just say that I found the content devilishly beguiling-- is the book a simple auto-biography or an insightful commentary on the universal drudgery of work?
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Title: Everything But the Burden : What White People Are Taking from Black Culture by Greg Tate ISBN: 076791497X Publisher: Harlem Moon Pub. Date: 09 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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