Haven't done this for a while but I read The Red Men by Matthew De Abaitua yesterday and some bits were instantly dog-eared. It's a great read. Somewhere between thriller, science-fiction and Grant Morrison magicy stuff. With convincing corporate bits and lots of chasing around London. The end's not quite as good as the beginning but the beginning is excellent.
It shouldn't surprise you that James was the publisher, way back in 2007.
p20 "My work for Monad was quite nebulous - it was conceptual, concerned with planning and development. I rarely saw any project through to completion, and so never acted in any decisive way upon the world. My will and ambition had been diluted by years of being the ideas man, a thinker, not a doer, a position of unchanging powerlessness in any company."
That'll probably ring bells for a few people. Erk.
p32 "With retrospect, the notion of an alternative magazine is as preposterous as an alternative arms manufacturer, or a counter-cultural oil company. It is a consumerist medium."
Actually I can imagine a counter-cultural oil company. Artisinal drilling.
p58 "George Orwell wrote that after the age of thirty the great mass of human beings abandon individual ambition and live chiefly for others. I agree with his insight, but it is no cause for despair."
He wrote that in Why I Write, explaining the egoism of the writer.
p97 "A meeting was called. Management still relished their places around the mature cherry wood boardroom table when it came to weighty decisions. Screens and conference calls were acceptable for thinking on the fly. Due consideration required the presence of natural materials of a heft and weight befitting their responsibilities."
It's not about video-conference fidelity, it's about being gathered around the same hefty bit of wood. Corporate magical thinking.
p115 "Watching the river of people flowing by, one channel was made up of such 'haircuts'; the ageing hipsters sticking to their skateboard style of low-slung denim and ironic t-shirts, a work outfit for industries in which youth had greater value than experience."
Eek. That sounds familiar.
p117 "The red men are a bad idea and we should stop it, but we can't, because money has its own mass, its own momentum, and we are on board the enormous vessel of a business plan."
p150 "He had come to this street after a study of the local shadow media; mimeographed manifestos and photocopied pamphlets picked up from cafes and dives, a throwback to a time before word processors. Their creators were suspicious of computers. These were off-line publications for the dark zones, their inky illustrated covers opened onto wonky text."
Starting to see this. Bits of resolutely un-networked media. More out of contrariness than suspicion at the moment, but I bet the paranoia will creep in. And then you'll get the DarkSneakerNets. What would they be? BovverNets.
Anyway. Good book. Worth a read.
