I wish there were more books written by Helen DeWitt, then I
could read them all and recommend them enthusiastically to every reader,
writer, every random passer-by, probably resulting in my eventual arrest and
incarceration in a mental institution. That’s how much I like Helen DeWitt.
Sadly, for me, she has written only two books but those two books are amazing. Read
on for crazy enthusing.
Lightning Rods was published in UK by And Other Stories, an
independent publishing house which is National Lottery funded and operates to
strict principles (called its ’11 Commandments’) including the intention to
publish not for private profit. You can read all about And Other Stories here: http://www.andotherstories.org.
Like many independent presses, And Other Stories seem focused on providing a
quality product both in terms of the binding, paper quality, look and, let’s
not forget the most important part, quality of writing. They also appear to be
focused on publishing the more ‘challenging’ fiction which, perhaps, the
mainstream publishers would be less likely to pick up, including the highly
successful Booker nominated Swimming Home by Deborah Levy, which I also read
and enjoyed and will no doubt get around to blogging about at some point. They
operate a subscription service (which I obviously had to sign up to), and even
thank their subscribers by name in the back of the book (which is almost
unbearably wonderful). And Other Stories strike me as a very interesting
publisher to watch, and I hope to be exploring their back and future catalogues
more.
So, that’s a bit of publisher enthusing over, let’s get to
the book. Lightning Rods tells the story of Joe, a hopelessly optimistic
salesman who becomes an unlikely hero. Joe fails to sell any Encyclopaedia
Britannica and, try as he might, he fails to sell any Electrolux vacuum
cleaners too. After moving to Eureka, Florida, in search of a salesman’s
paradise he finds, instead, one which has been cleaned up already.
“By the end of the week he realised this was not going to be
as easy as it looked. Because every single house he went to had the same story
to tell. They already had an Electrolux, they’d bought it just after Hurricane
Edna, and it was one of the best things they’d ever done. The customer would
then insist on dragging out the faithful Electrolux and singing its praises.
Yessir, the customer would say, reckon I’ll break down before this thing does.”
As a consequence Joe spends a lot of time eating pie, not
making sales, and sitting alone in his trailer fantasising. In fact Joe has one
particular fantasy which involves a sexual encounter in which a woman is
leaning against a wall so that her upper half is visible from one side but her
lower half is not. Her lower half is being pleasured by a suitably equipped man
whilst her upper half appears calm. Perhaps she has a conversation with
someone, and that someone would never know what was happening behind the lower
half of the wall.
Joe, in his spare sales free moments which are many,
develops this fantasy into a game show in which the player has to guess which
of three ladies is being pleasured from behind the wall. Joe’s problem comes
when instead of focusing on his fantasy, drawing the maximum pleasure from it, he
starts to wonder if the game is rigged. This, coupled with his failure to sell
a single Electrolux, is when Joe realises he has a real problem and decides to
do something about it.
“He had hit rock bottom. Because, let’s face it, the kind of
guy who gets ahead in the world, the kind of guy who makes a mark, the kind of
guy who makes a difference, is the kind of guy who deals with his sexual urges
and gets on with the job. He is not the kind of guy who lies around obsessing
about whether some kind of completely imaginary game show is rigged.”
Joe realises that what he has been focusing on is the wrong
problem. He has been trying to sell something which people had no need for and
blaming himself for being a poor salesman whereas the success or failure
centred around the product. Instead he needed to focus on what people need and
it will sell itself. And this is where his fantasy comes in.
Joe invents ‘Lightning Rods’ as a method of dealing with
sexual harassment in the workplace. Sexual harassment, he reasons, is rife and
women have good reason to expect to not be subjected to that in the workplace.
However, highly successful men are likely to be testosterone driven and
conversely will be more likely to commit incidents of sexual harassment. This
is a problem, he decides, for HR personnel who wish to protect their highly
successful male staff whilst knowing that a sexual harassment case against them
is nigh on inevitable. However, Joe decides, if he can deliver a safe outlet
for those highly testosteroned staff to relieve their sexual urges in the
workplace then this will reduce instances of sexual harassment, creating a
safer workplace for both men and women.
The Lightning Rods themselves (women, delivering sexual
services) would also need means of protection in order to ensure they didn’t
suffer adverse effects on their reputation. Joe’s idea is to place his
Lightning Rods into standard workplace roles and implement a system whereby
they could be selected at random and provide their service whilst remaining
anonymous. This involves conversion of a room into a space whereby the woman’s
nether parts can be accessed whilst her face and any distinguishing features
remain hidden.
Having had this idea, the rest of the book explores Joe’s
journey in making his Lightning Rods product, against all odds, a success. Joe
buys himself a thousand dollar suit, creating the right image, and armed with
some dubious research and statistics works his way through a series of
obstacles including racial discrimination, tangles with the FBI, and an unhappy
workforce to deliver Lightning Rods into every major employer in US. Joe
becomes the unlikely hero in the middle of a bizarre story which seems so
unlikely it couldn’t possibly be for real.
This is not a book for the easily offended, nor one to be
read superficially. It’s not even really about pornography or sexism. At the
heart of DeWitt’s book is the idea of the American Dream, that everyone can
make it if they work hard enough, coupled with the idea that, with the
application of pure reason, everything appears logical. What is bizarre about
the success of Lightning Rods is how it is Joe’s skill at sales-focused
reasoning that makes everything he does appear kind-of-right and kind-of-
normal when it patently isn’t. Had DeWitt used a less controversial ‘product’
then the story just wouldn’t succeed. In Lightning Rods DeWitt explores the
boundaries of what we might accept if only someone sold it to us hard enough,
something that is all too painfully reflected in real life when we see how
easily people will hand over their civil liberties for the mere illusion of
protection.
What is so awesome about DeWitt is how clever and brilliant
and entertaining and funny her writing is. I cannot emphasise enough how often
I found myself chuckling away on those long, lonely journeys to and from work
on the train, then went back and read a passage again just for the sheer joy of
it. She has that kind of wise-cracker easiness to her writing which draws you
in, and with this light comedic touch she is able draw open taboos without
falling into the trap of caricature or abuse. This following passage highlights
how one short encounter on a bus seeds in Joe what turns out to be his greatest
invention, the adjustable toilet and which could, so easily, be considered
offensive:
“The thing was, never having actually come across a dwarf in
real life before, and only having seen Time Bandits a long time ago, Joe had
never realised just how short a dwarf can be. The shuttle bus had a fairly low
step, but it was way too high for the dwarf. Well, obviously the guy had to
deal with this type of situation before, he just took hold of the pole in the
middle of the door and swung himself right on up, no problem. He had to hand
the driver money to put in the fare dispenser, which was also way too high, and
then he went back into the bus and he had to swing himself up again just to get
into one of the seats – what kind of a way was that to go through life?
Joe paid his fare then he went back into the bus and sat
down a long way from the dwarf. One of the first lessons you learn in life is
to avoid men of below average height. There’s something about being short that
makes a man feel he has something to prove, say he stopped growing at 5’6”, a
couple of extra inches would have made all the difference, instead of going
with the flow he tends to be aggressive if not downright mean. Take away
another couple of inches, and you’re into mean son of a bitch territory. Take
it right on down to 3’11” and God only knows what you’re up against. Best to
keep a safe distance.
Anyway, the bus pulled out, and Joe’s mind reverted to its bĂȘte
noir: the disabled toilet. And the thing he suddenly realised was that the
disabled toilet would be way too high for someone like this dwarf. No better
than any of the other toilets, in fact, except that it had a rail he could use
to climb up onto the seat. And if you stop and think about it for a minute,
when was the last time you saw a toilet with a dwarf icon on the door? Well,
what kind of world do we live in when we give people no option but to climb up
on the seat whenever they need to answer the call of nature?”
Where DeWitt avoids this is by observing without judgement,
coupled with the boundless optimism and problem solving capabilities of Joe. Ultimately
DeWitt exposes how one man thinking through various problems, with a little
twisted reasoning, can take you to an unexpected conclusion that somehow,
inexplicably, seems logical. It is all very funny and entertaining, but
underneath it all there is a message that we can all be sold pretty much
anything as long as we’re willing to accept authority from someone who merely
looks the part and is able to spin the logic in such a way that has us all
agreeing and wondering why we hadn’t seen it for ourselves. It is a brave,
challenging novel which could quite easily be misconstrued as sexist,
inappropriate or just plain dirty, but it is, in truth, none of these things.
It is, plainly speaking, brilliant.
Lightning Rods receives an implausible 10 out of 10 Biis.
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