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Lightning Rods

3.28 of 5 stars 3.28 · rating details · 645 ratings · 195 reviews

“All I want is to be a success. That’s all I ask.” Joe fails to sell a single set of the Encyclopedia Britannica in six months. Then fails to sell a single Electrolux and must eat 126 pieces of homemade pie, served up by his would-be customers who feel sorry for him. Holed up in his trailer, Joe finds an outlet for his frustrations in a series of ingenious sexual fantasies...more

Hardcover, 273 pages

Published October 5th 2011 by New Directions

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Dec 19, 2011 Lee rated it 4 of 5 stars

Written circa 1999, Helen DeWitt's second novel seems spawned by the stain on Monica Lewinsky's dress. Should've been published years before October 2011 -- a shame that those who LOVED DeWitt's first novel published in 2000, The Last Samurai, had to wait so long for NYC publishers to get their act together (long live New Directions!).

Readers who like to laugh should read this one: the first hundred pages seemed to have 1+ LOLs per page. Sometimes reminded me of George Saunders, Michel Houllebe ...more Written circa 1999, Helen DeWitt's second novel seems spawned by the stain on Monica Lewinsky's dress. Should've been published years before October 2011 -- a shame that those who LOVED DeWitt's first novel published in 2000, The Last Samurai, had to wait so long for NYC publishers to get their act together (long live New Directions!).

Readers who like to laugh should read this one: the first hundred pages seemed to have 1+ LOLs per page. Sometimes reminded me of George Saunders, Michel Houllebecq, Amanda Filipacchi, Charlie Kaufman, Torsten Krol. Initial hiliarity ensues thanks to the revelation and ridiculously enjoyable, rational unraveling of the title's significance. In a recent interview, she says this one was inspired by Mel Brooks and the "Springtime for Hiter" bit in "The Producers" rather than the considerably higher art "The Seven Samurai" by Kurosawa that inspired her first one.

With this one, revealing any of its audicious/bawdy turns would reduce its pleasures. Let's just say it's about an innovative solution to a workplace challenge and that this innovation is controversial at first but becomes more commonplace in time. A pleasure I will reveal is that every page is purposefully studded with cliched language, sometimes as many as three cliches/word packages per sentence. At times I was so badly busting a gut I felt like I could eat a horse, which is a whole different kettle of fish that once brought to water is a pea in the satirization pod re: the rise and sustained erection of an American business endeavor. Gotta love good ol' American get up and go.

The book's last line is "In America anything is possible" but the story ain't anything goes. Once it introduces and establishes the plot's implausible engine, the rest involves its rational defense against all obstacles, particularly politically correct ones but also those faced by any new business, like competition from cheaper services etc. Despite the initial freakishness, such focus is a strength but maybe also one of the book's weaknesses? A zany, rational, totally enjoyable pageturner, like DeWitt's first novel a little bit -- not as explicitly smart as "The Last Samurai" but still fundamentally smarter and culturally critical and joyously unhinged (and flat-out funnier, the first third of it at least) than most contemporary American fiction I've read.

As in her first book, lots of short chapters, cliffhangers, and white space between chapters so you finish a chapter and turn a few pages and suddenly find you're five pages deeper into the reading day's page count. There's something attractive about that apparently accelerative effect . . .

Anyway, friendly folks at New Directions (or elsewhere), please publish more of her manuscripts posthaste! She's got fans willing to buy her stuff and spread the word.
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Nov 03, 2012 Fionnuala rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Fionnuala by: & other stories

I bought this because it was promoted by a small independent publisher called '& other stories' and it sounded both hilarious and intriguing.
However, at the end of the day, when push comes to shove, De Witt spins a funny enough yarn but she’s skating on fairly thin ice.
It has to be said in her defence that she rolls out this ‘penetrating’ tale with her tongue placed firmly in her cheek and once you take that on board, things fall into place quick as lightning.
The main character, a failed...more

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May 06, 2013 Maureen rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2013

do you want to eliminate pesky sexual harassment lawsuits in the workplace?

why, install "lightning rods" service in your office to sate the inevitable urges of your top sales performers by giving them the opportunity for anonymous release! plus! you'll get extra use out of the disabled bathrooms! not to mention adequate office skills from a fine pool of temporary employees!

the protagonist of lightning rods is joe, a salesman who hits upon this business venture after failing to succeed in the do...more do you want to eliminate pesky sexual harassment lawsuits in the workplace?

why, install "lightning rods" service in your office to sate the inevitable urges of your top sales performers by giving them the opportunity for anonymous release! plus! you'll get extra use out of the disabled bathrooms! not to mention adequate office skills from a fine pool of temporary employees!

the protagonist of lightning rods is joe, a salesman who hits upon this business venture after failing to succeed in the door-to-door encyclopedia and vacuum games. he is certain the scheme will be a sure-fire money maker, deciding he can adapt his own sexual fantasies ("wall sex") to an enterprise he is sure will make him a success and solve the heartbreak of sexual harassment.

the novel is an old-fashioned satirical romp: i smirked and nicknamed it "the immodest proposal" as i read it. rather than baby food and famine, dewitt audaciously sets her sights on marketing, sales and sexual commerce in corporate culture. while the subject matter is salacious in that there is frank discussion of sex acts and masturbation but it's not really smutty, like those books of nicholson baker's that can be VERY smutty. it actually reminded me more of The Mezzanine's dispassionate and detailed voice. the enduring love of language shared by both authors consistently betray in their writing is also much in evidence.

barring that interest in language, lightning rods has less in common with her other novel, the much-admired The Last Samurai. here it is more pointed, and less studied, throughout one hears echoes from annual reports and other such business communiques. i did grow tired of her repeated use of the term "aggro" to describe the top-selling (white and male of course, since this is corporate america's ruling elite) salesmen who apparently have only two settings: rut or shill. does this betray my age? when did "aggro" replace "macho"? but hey, i dislike the usage of "resto" and "recco" as well, so maybe it's just a "o" thing.

lightning successfully channels dewitt's concentrated thumbing of her nose at the machine that runs the world not only in satire and language but also by populating her book with the caricatures of people who either use the service or work within it, people that one might recognize from any office: we all know lucilles, and renees, and elaines, the ed wilsons, and of course, the roys from HR. joe's lofty side business providing all kinds of ingenious and hilarious flush flourishes was a highlight in this fun satirical slight over-long fantasy that aptly displays dewitt's sense of humour and versatility. please ma'am, could i have some more?(less)

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Feb 19, 2013 David Hebblethwaite rated it 4 of 5 stars

Lightning Rods is a satire on American corporate culture and social mores, which traps its readers and characters alike in mazes of rhetoric. Helen DeWitt’s protagonist is Joe, a salesman who failed at selling encyclopedias and vacuum cleaners, but has his brightest idea when hope seems dim. Retreating into his private fantasies, Joe theorises that sexual harassment in the workplace could be dealt with if men had a legitimate outlet for their desires. He devises a system whereby a select group o...more

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Jan 15, 2013 Mac rated it 3 of 5 stars

Lightning Rods will offend a lot of people with its sex and sexism; it could upset both men and women, most minorities, the business community, and little people, to name just a few groups. The novel will also make a lot of people laugh out loud with its sex and sexism as it satirizes all kinds of human behavior, particularly sexual harassment and equal employment opportunity.

As I continued reading, I was pulled back and forth between the two camps, often saying concurrently, "No, you can't say...more

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Dec 15, 2012 Sam rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: novels

Style-wise, a real stunner. Several reviewers have already talked about the recycled macho ad-speak, and that's part of it, but there's a weird, twisted kind of imagistic beauty going on in the early part of the book that animates the adspeak, as in the moment when Joe goes walking on the sand and notices a pelican:

"The sand near the road was choppy, warm where the sun hit, cool where the hollows were in shade. Then the sand was firm and ribbed, and then it was flat and wet. The line of pelican...more Style-wise, a real stunner. Several reviewers have already talked about the recycled macho ad-speak, and that's part of it, but there's a weird, twisted kind of imagistic beauty going on in the early part of the book that animates the adspeak, as in the moment when Joe goes walking on the sand and notices a pelican:

"The sand near the road was choppy, warm where the sun hit, cool where the hollows were in shade. Then the sand was firm and ribbed, and then it was flat and wet. The line of pelicans was coming back along the waves."

Just because this might be DeWitt doing a first-rate Hemingway parody doesn't detract from the way the prose rhythms enact wave movement, and the clarity of their description. Some of Joe's early sexual fantasies contain weird examples of this, too, and the combination of recognizable corporate speak - "get this baby off the ground," "there was a lesson to be learned from all this," "it's just a feature of the human psyche that when we undergo humiliation of some kind we tend to look for somebody else to humiliate" - and this oddly beautiful language is what gives the very first parts of the book such torque.

That and the absolutely vicious satirical mechanism that DeWitt sets up for the first hundred pages - the unfolding of the Lightning Rod mechanism, which is the sort of thing that has you murmuring "oh no no no" the whole time you're reading. Some highlights were the awkward office kissing party (not to be missed) and the extended riff on "Ed Wilson containment." The continual development of the Lightning Rod mechanism - for those of you who don't know, a bathroom stall where men have sex with designated women through a hole in the wall - allows DeWitt to hang scathing little riffs on hyper-masculinity and office relations and gender roles as she sees fit, without worrying that any of this will distract from the main drama of whether or not Joe the salesman is going to get his insane project "off the ground."

But, as others have noted, once the Lightning Rods are established DeWitt kind of gets lost a little. The stuff with affirmative action seems canned, and the character it introduces seems especially one-dimensional, even for a story in which multi-dimensionality isn't the main point. And the FBI stuff in part seven just seems vague and kind of inexplicable. This is partly a result of that incredibly tight structure of the first one hundred pages going a little baggy, but it's also a failure of language. Consider the opening of the FBI section:

"One day Joe was sitting in his usual booth at the back of Stan's Grill, eating a char-grilled burger and drinking an ice-cold Bud. It was the end of a long day, and when he'd had a long day he liked to come to Stan's and unwind."

This sort of language occurs all too frequently in the final third of the book: too boring to be effective as parody, too flat to be interesting as prose. It represents a failure of linguistic imagination, which is all the more sad when you consider how amazing the early language is, like this scene from one of Joe's early sexual fantasies:

"After a while one of the contestants started to get a personality. She was the consecutive winner for twenty shows. She wore a pink jacket and immaculate pink lipstick and make-up, and she had dark in a hairsprayed permanent. People looked at the heaving buttocks in the insert and they couldn't believe that someone that cool could possibly be getting the full-service 24-hour Revco from the rear. Then after she won the round the MC would say Let's just see that amazing performance again."

Nothing in that paragraph (with the exception of that amazing phrase "full-service 24-hour Revco") is all that tricky on its own, but DeWitt cobbles the banal language together into a mockery of itself - the soul of satire! Whereas a lot of the language in the third part of the book just lies there, lifeless and boring, and eventually you feel like you got the gist a hundred pages ago.

Still, well worth reading for the first hundred pages alone, which are mind-blowing.(less)

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Oct 07, 2012 Olga Zilberbourg added it

Published by innovated & Other Stories Press in London, UK, this is a wise and humorous send-up of contemporary corporate culture. The plot--the top layer of meaning--has to do with an Encyclopedia Britannica salesman Joe, who, unable to sell a single Encyclopedia, starts a business capitalizing on his erotic fantasy. He imagines having sex with a woman stuck leaning of the window and whose upper body is invisible to him. He conceives of "lightning rods," a contraption that he installs in of...more Published by innovated & Other Stories Press in London, UK, this is a wise and humorous send-up of contemporary corporate culture. The plot--the top layer of meaning--has to do with an Encyclopedia Britannica salesman Joe, who, unable to sell a single Encyclopedia, starts a business capitalizing on his erotic fantasy. He imagines having sex with a woman stuck leaning of the window and whose upper body is invisible to him. He conceives of "lightning rods," a contraption that he installs in office buildings to provide top salesmen necessary "release"--and hires women to service these contraptions accordingly. It's a naughty book, a book fully aware of the feminist critique of the masculine gaze that disassembles a woman into discrete body parts (breasts, buttocks, legs, vagina), accepts this property of the gaze for granted and pushes it to its practical limits. Men are constantly thinking of sex--why not provide them with a practical option to satisfy their desires, as a part of Sexual Harassment policy, no less? DeWitt pokes fun at the legalese and euphemistic language of corporate America, lightheartedly picks at the commonplace understanding of male sexuality, and touches at issues of power and domination and the nature of personal and professional success.

Lightning Rods was written in the late 1990s and it took more than a decade for it to find the right publisher. & Other Stories is a two-year old innovative press that aims to publish primarily works in translation but also a few English-language originals. I've heard about it for the first time from my friend Yvette, who became a member of their team of readers. The press aims to bring out four books a year and asks readers to subscribe like they would to a magazine. I joined after examining the titles they already brought out--and a couple of weeks after I subscribed one of their books, Deborah Levy's Swimming Home, was longlisted, and then shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. I haven't read this one yet, but I definitely look forward to reading more books from their exciting catalog.(less)

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Aug 16, 2012 Noralo rated it 1 of 5 stars

HORRIBLE. Sexist, heteronormative, simplistic about race - it's got pretty much everything you don't want to see in a contemporary novel, by a woman no less.

I read the entire thing because I kept thinking, of course we will move on from the sex-in-the-workplace thing and it will have farther-reaching implications. But every time the narrator explicitly stated there were far-reaching implications (which happened quite a lot), it was less a commentary than a chain of reactions.

Even when I tried t...more

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Vincent Well, as it says in the book (slightly amended to fit the context better): "[...] had some [people] getting pretty upset. [...] To the point where I w...more
16 de Oct 13:55

Noralo Vincent wrote: "Well, as it says in the book (slightly amended to fit the context better): "[...] had some [people] getting pretty upset. [...] To the...more
16 de Oct 19:00

Vincent Well, the main thing I think is that I don't believe this is how she actually sees things. To me, it's quite clearly satire. You can get moral books a...more
16 de Oct 23:29

Jun 01, 2012 Matt rated it 4 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed this book, a very bizarre fantasia that I think got some really amazing early reviews, reviews that might have oversold the book a little.

The hook is definitely notable: a down on his luck door-to-door salesman repurposes his sexual fantasies as a product that can, he claims, deal with the aggressive sexual environment in the workplace. And the ideas that this spins off-- about gender, work, sex fantasies, etc, are all pretty deftly worked through here. On the level of ideas, th...more

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May 09, 2012 Justin Evans rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

A friend of mine, whom I very much respect, told me this wasn't very good. Here's my suspicion: if you've read 'The Last Samurai,' which I have not, and you come to this book expecting something moving and tender, you'll probably hate it. It's like taking a swig of cola, only it isn't cola, it's bourbon. Nasty. But if you're expecting bourbon... that can be very pleasant.

Like bourbon, this book is more about stripping paint than nourishing or softly soothing. It's funny and gross, but also very...more

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Apr 04, 2012 Prometheus rated it 4 of 5 stars

The surefire sign you are in the hands of a master is if her novel exhausts all the intellectual possibilities of the situation she has devised, or, to put it another way, the novel leaves no intellectual stone unturned. Most novels don't come close. Most novels don't even try. Helen DeWitt's LIGHTNING RODS, however, succeeds in doing just that.

Does this mean the book is perfect, that it has no errors to its name? No, not by a long shot, but the errors, as happens in all great literature, add r...more

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Apr 03, 2012 Alison Smith rated it 1 of 5 stars

Lightning rods – Helen de Witt
I was really looking forward to her second novel with a lot of anticipation. The wait has been a long one, since her marvellous The Last Samurai one of my fave books, which I have read at least 3 times, unusually for me. So I bought it at vast expense, on line, and fetched the hard-covered book (not available in paperback) this week, and read it very swiftly – it’s not a long book.
Once I’d got over the shock of this outrageous, shocking novel which – by the by – sho...more Lightning rods – Helen de Witt
I was really looking forward to her second novel with a lot of anticipation. The wait has been a long one, since her marvellous The Last Samurai one of my fave books, which I have read at least 3 times, unusually for me. So I bought it at vast expense, on line, and fetched the hard-covered book (not available in paperback) this week, and read it very swiftly – it’s not a long book.
Once I’d got over the shock of this outrageous, shocking novel which – by the by – should be sold in a plain brown wrapper stamped, Age Restricted: 21 and over only, I realize I’m disappointed. I know it’s unrealistic to expect a second novel to be a reprise of the first brilliant debut, but that said ....
The two novels could not be more dissimilar. Both in content and style. The first one told an unusual story peopled with quirky, interesting, sympathetic characters; I was spellbound from page 1. Rods has an arresting cover, with a bright blue background, and three sets of bright blue eyes (painted, not photographed) showing an expression of great surprise. Once you discover the contents, you realize why they look so startled.
In short, the book is a satire on modern American marketing and business methods, and the use of sex in the office environment, purveyed in a clinical, conveyor-belt manner, to male staff, the women serving as lightning rods for otherwise troublesome sexual energy which would – under normal circumstances – give rise to endless sexual harassment suits, low productivity etc. etc. The book has a sweetly reasonable tone which reports in a matter of fact way, the success of ex-vacuum cleaner salesman Joe who succeeds in launching, selling and succeeding with their crazy scheme. It almost sounds like an anthropologist’s report on a sociological experiment, and less like an article from Playboy. The dust jacket says that the book is irredeemably filthy and parts of it are – we’re full frontal with male fantasies, and some down to earth language and details on fornication. But oddly, the outlines in some detail how two former Lightning Rods go on to make glittering careers in the legal field and Supreme Court, all on their LR earnings.
On finishing the book I continued to feel flabbergasted at the theme and the plot – it is galaxies away from the first book and it’s hard to accept that it was written by a woman . I deliberately didn’t read any reviews of the book mid-read, but will do so now and see what other readers had to say about it. It was much heralded when it appeared.
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Mar 13, 2012 Jessie rated it 2 of 5 stars

Another of the fine Tourney of Books 2012 books... I don't know. On the one hand: sort of a comedy? Which is rare this year? On the other hand: ugh! I don't read reviews of the Tourney books 'til I'm done with them, but my other ToB friend mentioned that this book was written by someone who lives in Germany,and that it was a comedy, and that did give me a bit of pause. I understand that it is a satire - perhaps this is like A Modest Proposal, taking something further than it was ever meant to be...more

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Feb 19, 2012 christa rated it 4 of 5 stars

It shouldn’t be an awkward thing to explain to my hair guy the plot of Helen Dewitt’s novel “Lightning Rods.” For one thing, he has just spent the trimming process going into moderate detail about his current dating life and the highlighting process talking about the time when he was 27 and fell into a relationship with a woman nearly twice his age who confessed to him that she hadn’t slept with anyone in 10 years.

But here I am, backed head first into a sink, my face Prude Purple. The team one...more It shouldn’t be an awkward thing to explain to my hair guy the plot of Helen Dewitt’s novel “Lightning Rods.” For one thing, he has just spent the trimming process going into moderate detail about his current dating life and the highlighting process talking about the time when he was 27 and fell into a relationship with a woman nearly twice his age who confessed to him that she hadn’t slept with anyone in 10 years.

But here I am, backed head first into a sink, my face Prude Purple. The team one sink away is just a little too close, the sound system’s music a little too quiet, for me to comfortably get to the key plot points: A man who invents a Workplace Sexual Harassment Deflection system that goes like this:

1. Businessman sits in his cubicle working on his computer.
2. Notification pops up on screen inviting man to the handicap stall of the workplace bathroom.
3. Once inside, a panel opens in the wall and here comes the bottom half of an anonymous naked woman, dubbed a Lightning Rod. Condoms are dispensed nearby.
4. Said man then has sex with the anonymous woman.
5. Woman is rolled back to the women’s bathroom side, panel shuts, man returns to his workspace invigorated by the sexual release.

The outcome: Higher productivity, less sick leave, no threat of sexual harassment suits from randy men, out of control with sexual urges, dishing unwanted advances to the women on staff. As if explaining the plot isn’t awkward enough, explaining why this isn’t book isn’t shit -- that it is in fact funny, satire, akin to “The Canterbury Tales” in some ways -- is another animal. Most people don’t want to listen to book talk long enough to hear this part, I’ve found. Book plot summaries as casual conversation with casual readers have an interest time limit similar to the amount of time allowed to deconstruct a dream. I’d be better off just saying: “It’s about a guy. An ‘idea’ man. It’s funny.”

Joe is an encyclopedia salesman who eventually shifts to vacuum cleaners and finds himself in a Florida town recently ravaged by a hurricane where all the residents already have and love the machine he is trying to sell. When he goes door-to-door trying to sell the cleaner, he is invited inside, fed pie and the owners of the vacuum wax lovingly about their relationship with the Electrolux. In between non-sales, Joe chills in his trailer mentally engaged in an elaborate fantasy involving a woman half clothed, half not, leaning over a table or out a window. The naked part is being penetrated, while the clothed part is doing nothing to reveal what is happening. He takes it even further, turning the scene into a game show that plays in his head. That’s when he realizes he could use this interest, turn it into a reality. A real service.

He finds women that are proficient in office duties, women who can type a lot of words per minute and understand the details of working as a personal assistant or secretary. The women form a sort of temp agency. They are swapped into the staff, paid well, and throughout the day they might leave their chair a few times to service the faceless dudes, then return to their office work. One woman, who is saving up money to go to Harvard Law School, considers it just an extension of going to the bathroom. No bigger deal than flushing a tampon. It’s just a body, right? And she’s making a lot of money. Another Lightning Rod uses the time spent in the stall to read Proust in French. She, too, is saving for law school and building a bigger brain.

Complications arise, of course, and Joe tweaks the system. He solves the problem of Equal Opportunity Employment and he comes up with a way to make bathrooms accessible for people of all sizes. Meanwhile, he’s got other inventions in the works.

A few years ago during NaNoWriMo I tried to write something in the genre of Funny Porn for Smart people and while this isn’t exactly porn, it is the exact pitch I had hoped (but failed) to hit. This somewhat absurd, but also not very absurd, bit of satire. Dewitt has done something really interesting with this novel and it’s original concept, quirky character sketches and thorough round of the “What if-skies.” (less)

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Feb 08, 2012 Judith rated it 4 of 5 stars

From the author of "The Last Samurai" comes something completely different. Can you picture an office system in place designed to cut down on sexual harassment lawsuits by providing a completely discrete onsite service of sexual intercourse? That's the story here: Joe, a disgruntled vacuum cleaner salesman, using his own sexual fantasy as a model actually develops and markets a system whereby the appropriate body parts are offered through a small opening in the disabled stall of the men's room o...more

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Jan 07, 2012 Dubs rated it 4 of 5 stars

It's January 7, but this will definitely make my best-of 2012 list. The story is clever, but so implausible on the surface that DeWitt has to justify its existence. How can anyone be expected to believe a yarn about a traveling salesman who gets rich by making anonymous sex in the disabled toilet a feature of the American workplace? The genius is in that justification.

Every character in this book is justifying absurdities, constantly. DeWitt's breezy, sharp tone, (reminiscient of Chuck Palahniuc...more It's January 7, but this will definitely make my best-of 2012 list. The story is clever, but so implausible on the surface that DeWitt has to justify its existence. How can anyone be expected to believe a yarn about a traveling salesman who gets rich by making anonymous sex in the disabled toilet a feature of the American workplace? The genius is in that justification.

Every character in this book is justifying absurdities, constantly. DeWitt's breezy, sharp tone, (reminiscient of Chuck Palahniuck, maybe, although it's been a while since I've read him) captures the language of justification and evokes sales pitches, internet comments, and that guy at the bar who talks too loudly. Dialogue, both the characters' internal monologues and their conversations with each other, frequently begins with "Well, the way I see it." All DeWitt's characters are selling something; even the ones who aren't explicitly selling a product seem to be selling themselves on their life choices. A daring subtext suggests that this self-delusion is part of the American character.

We all have narratives about ourselves and our choices that we offer up in, say, interviews and online dating profiles, and it's hard to read this book without wondering about those narratives. The characters in this book seem to be selling themselves short, so to speak, but it's hard to get a grip on why their sales pitches leave an unpleasant taste. Lucille, who works as a lightning rod to pay for law school, likens talking about her sex-work duties to talking about using tampons. Lucille has developed convincing argument, and everyone in this book is convincing on the face. DeWitt, though, has a knack for leaving just enough absurdity in these justifications that the reader starts to question the sanity of the characters and, as the Lighning Rods scheme grows, those characters' worlds.

Lightning Rods doesn't depict a dystopia, really, but DeWitt skillfully accomplishes what great dystopian fiction does best. By convincing the reader that a seemingly absurd development could plausibly come to pass in a fictional world similar to our own, she exposes the less obvious absurdities of the world we do inhabit.

I was disappointing at how abruptly the book seemed to end. DeWitt alludes throughout the novel to big, luxurious improvements in the lightning rods concept, and to trouble for and the eventual demise of the main character. None of those developments come to pass. There were points, toward the end of the book, where I was wondering if something had gone wrong during the download (I read this on my Nook)--it felt like pages or chapters might be missing.(less)

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Oct 13, 2011 Karl rated it 5 of 5 stars

Picked this up after work today because of an interview on The Awl (http://www.theawl.com/2011/10/a-conve...) and a glowing Bookforum review (http://www.bookforum.com/inprint/018_...). Totally worth it.

This book is, first off, insane. Not in a screaming/straightjacket way but in the way absurd, hyper-logical satire inherently has to be. Brilliant-borderline-sick stuff. It would come off as dry if DeWitt weren't so adept with raunch and humor and the combination of the two. There is no quiet chuc...more

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Dec 02, 2011 Georgette rated it 3 of 5 stars

Joe is a down-on-his-luck salesman living in Florida and spending most of his days and night fantasizing about women, and various scenarios involving women, men, and sexual hi-jinks that border on the bizarre. He comes up with an idea that he sees revolutionizing office productivity and the microcosm that takes place in the office- women as "lightning rods", aka women who provide sexual release for the male office workers. The women, through his lengthy process of thought, would be anonymous and...more

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Apr 02, 2012 Patrick rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is an odd one. I tried to describe the subject of this book to my girlfriend and she made a face. I think most people would make a face, to be honest. It must have been a hard sell. And yet the most remarkable thing about it is how it makes an incredible and disturbing thing seem alarmingly rational by the end of the book. Capitalism and the post-Ford work ethic has affected, commodified and ritualised virtually every aspect of the life of a modern office worker. Personnel departments manag...more This is an odd one. I tried to describe the subject of this book to my girlfriend and she made a face. I think most people would make a face, to be honest. It must have been a hard sell. And yet the most remarkable thing about it is how it makes an incredible and disturbing thing seem alarmingly rational by the end of the book. Capitalism and the post-Ford work ethic has affected, commodified and ritualised virtually every aspect of the life of a modern office worker. Personnel departments manage people like, well – Human Resources. Management determines ideal standards for everything we do, both in and out of work. Companies monitor the health of their employees, record their communications, shape the very style of their daily existence. So why should sex be exempt from a little management theory?

At first I was inclined to think that for the difference in subject alone, it couldn’t be more different from the author’s previous novel, ‘The Last Samurai’ (which I liked very much). But though the style is tighter and more concise, it is still recognisably the same writer. There’s that same preoccupation with the parts of ourselves we must surrender to other people or to other things in order to buy back the time and the headspace to do what we want in life. There’s that bone-dry wit, this time applied to the banalities of office life and the intensely stupid contortions of business speak. And there’s that old preoccupation with the possibility of hope through education, reading as a very real and special kind of self-improvement that can only take place outside the things demanded of us by the outside world.

It’s also quite funny. But not ‘funny ha-ha’. It’s a satire which, like all the greatest satires, refrains from openly holding forth on its eerily flat and occasionally hopeless cast of characters. Perhaps my only disappointment was that it doesn’t really end; the book pretty much just stops once DeWitt has wrung every ounce of interest out of the conceit. Maybe that’s not such a bad thing – for Joe and his scheme to have met a sticky end (as it were) would come with all the lofty moral judgment of the author as god, and that wouldn’t work at all here. The book can’t really end because the story hasn’t really ended. Perhaps so long as we go on thinking about women in a certain way, it never will end. (less)

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Nov 01, 2011 Al rated it 4 of 5 stars

I honestly have no idea what to make of this book. It's a satire, sure, but of what? Business? (The MARC record says "corporate culture", which I could see, but with caveats.) America in general? A Certain Type of Person (ie. salesman or business person or huckster or unreformed male chauvinist)? I'm not sure. It was inspired by The Producers, which I've never seen, so maybe watching that would help. The book is essentially the story of a man with an absolutely absurd and distasteful idea who no...more

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Jan 05, 2013 Christopher Stevenson rated it 5 of 5 stars

Patently offensive! Heteronormative! Sexist! Just like the society in which we live. Lightning Rods is humorous and certainly not for weak stomachs. Many have suggested the book is a critique of corporate culture and capital. Perhaps, but Lightning Rods goes beyond business-as-usual to the darkest chambers of our beings, namely: the restroom and sex. Not just sex, but masturbation. Not just masturbation, but common fantasies. Not just common fantasies, but the fantasies people couldn't possibly...more Patently offensive! Heteronormative! Sexist! Just like the society in which we live. Lightning Rods is humorous and certainly not for weak stomachs. Many have suggested the book is a critique of corporate culture and capital. Perhaps, but Lightning Rods goes beyond business-as-usual to the darkest chambers of our beings, namely: the restroom and sex. Not just sex, but masturbation. Not just masturbation, but common fantasies. Not just common fantasies, but the fantasies people couldn't possibly admit in public for fear of guilt. Not just guilt, but sexual harassment, but she gets there by the most controversial way: many if not most people love being sexually harassed by the people from which they wish to be sexually harassed--which makes it not sexual harassment but consensual. And tons of people feel guilty about these sorts of things. And why? And how do we reduce sexual harassment/guilt?

Lightning Rods examines these problems with humor (and from a masculine perspective), but if you feel too guilty, chances are, you will immediately put the book down and stomp off in the most hi-falootin' way.

This book should be read with 50 Shades of Grey. Or at least a 50 Shades' outline. Dewitt's first book The Last Samurai was considered a bit academic, and Lightning Rod's style isn't quite so daunting, and my guess is, it wasn't necessarily written for academics. However, the themes are similar(with different subjects): "we're scared humans who have the biggest problem dealing with other humans." With all the hullabaloo about 50 shades, Lightning Rods is probably more controversial, because it gets at the heart of the society producing 50 Shades of Grey, making it a perfect companion book.

The premise of the novel is clear in the first couple chapters. Hold on for the roller coaster as the book has a point. Yes, it's patently offensive, heteronormative, sexist, racist, and classist... so are the people you recognize in the novel as you and your heroes.

I'm trying to decide whether to give this 5 stars to offset the unfair low ratings or to give it four. I'd probably give it 4 and a half.(less)

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Nov 11, 2011 Tracy rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: ebook, fiction, kindle

Ugh.

The only thing redeeming about this book was the fact that DeWitt can write an amazing sentence. So it was very easy to finish it. But it was a book peopled by cardboard cutouts (with the same cutout recycled to multiple people - pretty impressive in a cast of almost none) - there was no personality.

As a supposed satirical take on corporate america, it failed utterly satire - it wasn't biting, it wasn't amusing, it wasn't even fresh or new or innovative. There were no new ideas here, nothin...more

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Oct 24, 2011 Aquavit rated it 4 of 5 stars

I feel almost as though this novel was a clever, gut-punchingly satirical distillation of the general sentiment about women, race and politics that you can find on places like reddit.

What Renee realized was that exactly the same thing applied to the country as a whole. It was set up from scratch by people who managed to overlook minor details like slavery and a whole sex. Naturally enough, with that level of glaring oversight to fix, it was easy for people to overlook the faults that remained. B

...more

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Jan 16, 2013 Lauren rated it 3 of 5 stars

What a strange book.

I'm almost embarrassed to give the plot synopsis, but here goes. Joe, the protagonist of this book, is a failed door-to-door vacuum-cleaner salesman. When he isn't out selling vacuum cleaners, he's at home, in bed, spinning elaborate (and admittedly amusing) fantasies largely about anonymous sex with the lower half of a beautiful woman -- while her upper half remains hidden from view. He then decides to market this idea, and the story describes his rise to success through the...more

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May 01, 2012 Kyle rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book was the runner-up in the Morning News Tournament of Books. Its premise is delightfully absurd. A former Encyclopedia/vacuum cleaner salesman creates the perfect solution (at least he thinks it is) to sexual harassment in the workplace: Lightning Rods. A Lightning Rod is a woman, who in addition to fulfilling her normal job functions, agrees to have anonymous sex with high performing male employees through a partition between the men and women's bathrooms in order to keep their work per...more

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Mar 18, 2012 Peter rated it 3 of 5 stars

The following review is actually just a hastily patched-together conversation I had with my wife while I was finishing this book. It took place on the first nice day of an early Minnesotan spring, as we strolled around a lake with nice Midwestern families, dodging puddles from snow melt.

Me: You know that book I've been reading all the time lately?
Wife: Yeah.
Me: Have I told you how crazy it is?
Wife: Not really. What's crazy about it?
Me: Well it's this really odd satire of sexual harassment in t...more

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Nov 14, 2011 Paul rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011

An all-around disappointment. After The Last Samurai, which was sprawling, eclectic, scattered, developed, and most importantly moving, DeWitt goes in a completely different direction with Lightning Rods, which is short and almost parable-esque. We begin with an intriguing protagonist, a down-on-his-luck and masturbatory salesman. What follows is . . . interesting, in a quirky, DeWitt sort of way, but it quickly becomes fairly tired. DeWitt never really ramps up the tension, but instead fills th...more An all-around disappointment. After The Last Samurai, which was sprawling, eclectic, scattered, developed, and most importantly moving, DeWitt goes in a completely different direction with Lightning Rods, which is short and almost parable-esque. We begin with an intriguing protagonist, a down-on-his-luck and masturbatory salesman. What follows is . . . interesting, in a quirky, DeWitt sort of way, but it quickly becomes fairly tired. DeWitt never really ramps up the tension, but instead fills the book with philosophical (well, maybe) ramblings which are, again, somewhat interesting to read, but do they make for a satisfying novel? Not here they don't, even if they did in Last Samurai. What this novel is missing that Samurai excelled in was an emotional connection to the characters. Are we supposed to care about Joe the salesman? I didn't. None of the characters seemed real, nor do I think they're meant to me. Rather, they're types, but I'm not really sure what DeWitt is getting at. Clearly this is satirical, but, like, what exactly is being satirized? The American Businessman? (Both via Joe's ridiculous idea and via the people who purchase, install, and utilize it?) The last line, "In America anything is possible" is an appropriate one in that displays the sort of lazy, blanket philosophy contained herein. In fact, the entire last chapter is a casual and odd summing-up of the story, which left a pretty bad taste in my mouth.

Many of the short chapters end on cheap cliffhangers, e.g. "But, despite his relief, his problems weren't over. In fact, they were only beginning." Which is annoying, sure, but most of the troubles hinted at aren't even covered. Things float along pretty smoothly for Joe, who keeps tweaking his invention bit by bit, becomes rich, buys a penthouse, but never really develops as a character. He invites a girl over to his place, and finally we have a chance to see him interact with another human on a non-business level. But, rather than going anywhere with the scene, DeWitt meanders into Joe's head again, and in the next chapter he's off on another business deal.

DeWitt makes a lot of effort to make this whole thing seem real, though the product is patently ridiculous. Which is fine, except if you're going to account for certain bits of verisimilitude, don't you need to account for all of them? I kept thinking, "But wait." This isn't magical realism. I'm not sure if it's supposed to be realism at all, but plenty of signposts point to it. Thus, I had trouble buying the premise. Which DeWitt may be fine with. If she's going for full-on satire, and is satirizing sexual inequalities . . . I've heard this before. The novel is certainly a new approach, but what comes of it is nothing new.

An interesting premise, but my interest faded quick, as the novel never really went anywhere, aside from the linear story.(less)

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Nov 11, 2011 Mike Alcock rated it 3 of 5 stars

A satirical take on sexual harassment/tension in the workplace, from an author who isn't afraid to tell you a different kind of story than you're used to. The global recession and corresponding corporate culture of corruption is not the setting per se, but the idea that America is the penultimate "standard bearer" when it comes to blending - or perhaps diluting - what's good for business with what's in the best interests of free people, is ever-present. Much of the book explores how well we know...more

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Apr 19, 2012 Marsha rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: literature-fiction

Fed up with trying to sell vacuum cleaners in a dead-end district, Joe the salesman looks out at a bunch of herons and gets an epiphany. Thinking back on the vivid sexual fantasies he’s been having, he decides on a revolutionary idea for the workplace. His idea has far-reaching consequences and ramifications even he couldn’t have predicted.

This novel is filled with humorous and caustic notions of morality, sexuality, workplace ethics and a perceptive look at human nature that is unflinching, un...more

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Mar 07, 2012 Kathy rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012, t-o-b-2012

This book seemed like it was trying to win the reader’s admiration mainly based on its shock factor. But like the main character, Joe, this book was not a good salesperson for itself.

Once I got past some of the more vivid accounts of Joe’s sexual fantasies and the product he develops based on them, I was even able to laugh out loud a bit. But, I’m left to wonder, what is this satire a satire about? Corporate America? Political-correctness gone awry? The male gaze? Sexual harassment policies? Ma...more

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About Helen DeWitt

Helen DeWitt (born 1957 in Takoma Park, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, D.C.) is a novelist.

DeWitt grew up primarily in South America (Mexico, Brazil, Colombia and Ecuador), as her parents worked in the United States diplomatic service. After a year at Northfield Mount Hermon School and two short periods at Smith College, DeWitt studied classics at the University of Oxford, first at Lady Margare...more

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Quotes from Lightning Rods

“If you’re a salesman, you have to deal with yourself the way you are. Not how you’d like to be.

If you don’t have what it takes, you can waste a lot of time asking yourself “How can I get what it takes?” The question you should be asking yourself is, “Is there something else that takes what I have to offer?” Because if there’s something you can succeed at, just the way you are, you won’t have to waste a lot of time trying to change yourself. Which you’re never going to be able to do, anyway.” — 1 person liked it

“[...] and unfortunately most women did not seem to have the same urges. Or if they did, they wouldn't admit it. They probably didn't, anyway. But if they did they wouldn't admit it.” — 1 person liked it

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