Sean Adams (4)
Forfatter af The Heap: A Novel
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Værker af Sean Adams
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A modest tongue-in-cheek comedy that satirizes dead end jobs, officious supervisors clinging to their scrap of authority, insular scientific research communities, and perhaps, it can be said, the literature of unnamable and ancient existential dread embodied in my consciousness by HP Lovecraft.
A large research institute in a polar region has been abandoned and its scientists extricated - save for one mysterious presence. Sent in by the corporate board is a three person team of caretakers who are given weekly tasks, communicated by helicopter drop. These tasks include: opening all the doors to check for appropriate door opening volume. Sitting in all the chairs and making reasonable movements in them to check for stability. Placing golf balls on all tables to check for levelness. Etc.
Hart, the supervisor, treats these tasks with the utmost seriousness and conscientiousness. He is also quite keen to assert his small amount of authority over the other two. A source of humor, but: people generally want to find meaning in their work and avoid the feeling of alienation from their labor, as difficult as this may be in many categories of employment in modern society. It is hard not to feel empathy with him, with each of them, when his construction of meaning is punctured by seeing it through the eyes of an outsider (the remaining scientist):
The caretaking team has been warned to never leave the building, as strange effects have been discovered to happen to people who do. Outside is a flat landscape of pure white snow in all directions. But then something is seen from a window, that had not been there before. What is it? Where did it come from? Is it stationary or moving? Is it interfering with the building’s electricity? Is it affecting their minds and their sanity?
Well, the answer here is definitively not Lovecraftian. Alas! The book winds up its humorous satire of modern work through use of an extraordinary setting that, in the end, is just another example of corporate interest at work. No ancient horror, just a Board of Directors. Best treated by modern lampoon.… (mere)
A large research institute in a polar region has been abandoned and its scientists extricated - save for one mysterious presence. Sent in by the corporate board is a three person team of caretakers who are given weekly tasks, communicated by helicopter drop. These tasks include: opening all the doors to check for appropriate door opening volume. Sitting in all the chairs and making reasonable movements in them to check for stability. Placing golf balls on all tables to check for levelness. Etc.
Hart, the supervisor, treats these tasks with the utmost seriousness and conscientiousness. He is also quite keen to assert his small amount of authority over the other two. A source of humor, but: people generally want to find meaning in their work and avoid the feeling of alienation from their labor, as difficult as this may be in many categories of employment in modern society. It is hard not to feel empathy with him, with each of them, when his construction of meaning is punctured by seeing it through the eyes of an outsider (the remaining scientist):
I feel suddenly embarrassed. The efficiency with which we’ve arranged the chairs, sat upon the chairs, and shifted our weight upon the chairs - a system of which, moments ago, I’d felt exceedingly proud - suddenly seems so stupid, so trivial. These tasks feel crucial, because all involved treat them as such. But Gilroy is not a part of that system, and his continued presence recasts everything. They’re just chairs, and we’re just sitting in them. That is my job this week: I sit, professionally.
The caretaking team has been warned to never leave the building, as strange effects have been discovered to happen to people who do. Outside is a flat landscape of pure white snow in all directions. But then something is seen from a window, that had not been there before. What is it? Where did it come from? Is it stationary or moving? Is it interfering with the building’s electricity? Is it affecting their minds and their sanity?
Well, the answer here is definitively not Lovecraftian. Alas! The book winds up its humorous satire of modern work through use of an extraordinary setting that, in the end, is just another example of corporate interest at work. No ancient horror, just a Board of Directors. Best treated by modern lampoon.… (mere)
This review was written for LibraryThing Early Reviewers.So not my book, stopped reading. Could not get access to the story, or the writing.
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- 239
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I've dissassembled buildings, and can't accept that people are volunteering months extracting the materials to be reused.
It might have improved the story if we had any idea of why so many residents went to live in this highrise in the middle of a desert. As it is, the story was kind of pointless, except for pointing out how rich people can always find a way to profit--no surprise there.… (mere)