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There
has been a recent surge in the popularity of the workplace
novel. This year alone has brought Joshua Ferris's Then
We Came to the End, the paperback edition of Max Barry's
Company, and all those "faction"/bildungsroman/ roman
à clef novels (Little Pink Slips, Mergers &
Acquisitions, Falling Out of Fashion, Because
She Can). Perhaps readers enjoy seeing people suffer more
than they, or maybe they yearn for a job where they could
afford several dolce de leche lattes a day. No doubt the hit
TV shows The Office and The Apprentice have
contributed to our desire for literature that extols the virtues
of the everyday.
The problem
for David Bledin's first novel, Bank, is one of logistics—with
all these other books coming out at the same time, what is
he adding to the mix? Working in Bledin's favor is that his
book is not a thinly veiled exposé of a famous celebrity.
Bank offers more for the reader interested in story
and character, as opposed to idle gossip.
Mumbles,
the protagonist in Bank has one hell of an awful job—he
is a young investment analyst. Down the road, he may be able
to coast a bit, but for now, his life consists of late nights
and weekends working with Excel and PowerPoint, fueled by
terror and fancy coffees. The plot itself is rather obvious:
After suffering indignities at the hands of his superiors
and losing the girl, Mumbles is tired of wasting his youth
in a white-collar sweatshop, and rebels against the tyranny
of the Bank. Along the way, there will be both high jinks
and shenanigans. One or two characters will fail, loves will
be won and lost and won again. What saves Bank is Bledin's
comedic timing and attention to detail, making this an enjoyable,
fast-paced, and fun read.
Bledin
uses clever shorthand, like referencing Paulo Coelho's The
Alchemist when Mumbles's father suggests he consider leaving
his job, using the book's idea of obtaining inner peace when
following one's desires. He also references Stockholm Syndrome
to describe why it's impossible ever to leave the Bank, but
then he gets a little bogged down explaining the shorthand,
making it overly long. Bledin also gives all his characters
descriptive sobriquets—The Sycophant, The Star, The Prodigal
Son, Unadulterated Sex, The Utterly Incompetent Assistant—which
serve to key readers in to which particular pigeonhole these
characters fit.
Despite
having to pull frequent all-nighters and working weekends,
he and his pals (a.k.a. The Gang of Four) have time to go
out for lunch and Starbucks breaks, where much of their shenanigan-plotting
takes place. In one plot, Mumbles proclaims he'll propose
on the spot to any woman who can finish a lunch order of General
Tso's chicken at the gang's favorite lunch spot; they hold
him to it, thus introducing Mumbles's love interest, The Woman
with the Scarf.
The flaws
are minor. Bledin sweeps the reader up deftly, allowing us
to join the Gang of Four in their outrageous acts of skullduggery
on their way to (we hope) their inevitable epiphanies. Sure,
some of the tomfoolery is closer to the Tom Green movie Road
Trip than anything Jim did to Dwight in The Office,
but Bledin's fast-paced, funny style allow readers to gloss
over the predictability and stereotypical situations, and
root the characters on as they struggle with their lives at
the Bank.
(May,
2007)
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