The chronicles of doodah

by George Lee Walker

Genres: Fiction

246 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1985

Reviews

[Holly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Disturbing little bizarre satire about corporate culture. A series of strange things happen to our protagonist, a speechwriter, who lives in a constant state of fear - fear of getting fired, fear of incompetence, fear of the boss, fear of not getting promoted. He finds a dog sitting in his chair. When he brings his friend in to check it out, the dog has disappeared. He sees pigeons fly from behind the Chairman's guard desk while he is waiting for a report - birds that the guards apparently do not see. He understands, bitterly, the corporate culture. On a random, spontaneous business trip with the Chairman, he drinks too much, blacks out, and ends up naked. His psychiatrist questions whether it actually happened. He sees people invisible to others. He has a glimpse of a screaming woman being pushed into a doorway by two uniformed men. He loses moments of time.

*spoiler alert*
Walker posits that corporations generate split personality employees who can pick up a personality at will based on what is needed at the time. Leaders are too busy to meet the eyes of their employees. Employees walk a fine line between showing just enough respect and just enough subservience. Language between employees is devoid of emotion, opinion, human experience. They push employees to the point of total psychic breakdown. Our protagonist is referred to the Troubled Employee Department. He is not allowed to tell anyone where he is going. In lonely basement room 111, our nameless corporate employee is taught how to alter his personality to fit corporate norms. The Department has studied POWs and determined that tolerance of pain aids the employee in inevitable mental/emotional suffering that is an inherent part of corporate culture. They literally strap our hero to a torture rack for hours. Evenings are spent learning small talk (football stats, details of driveway resurfacing). This book is the corporate version of the Stepford Wives - it is insane and hilarious and creepy.

[Danny · Rating 3 out of 5]

Entertaining. Also depressing. Anyone who has spent time working in a corporate organization will chuckle some and cringe a lot. This is too similar to my experiences with consulting and consulting “leaders.”

[Stephanie R. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Except for the indoor smoking and lack of computers and email, this book could have been written today. It's about a nameless protagonist who has a dead-end job writing content-less speeches for a nameless car corporation. He and his friend Conrad complain together and the way they describe things that the Company does (e.g. The Executive Smile) is kind of funny, though I wouldn't describe this as a humorous book like some reviewers do. I did like the first half.

Then, Nameless Guy is sent to the Troubled Employee Department in Room 111, and undergoes brainwashing and various torture devices to make him a better employee. Suddenly this is a completely different genre of book. He is deeply traumatized by the conditioning but is on the fast-track to promotion. There is some interesting psychological drama in which he wants to fight back and save other employees from having to go through the same thing, but another part of him wants to believe that he imagined Room 111 and his whole ordeal because he's afraid of what else the Company might do to him if he talks or tries to run, and then he's also tempted by the nice things the Company is offering him now that he's "one of them." I won't spoil this, but at the end, the Company makes him make a choice. Based on the previous characterization of Nameless Guy, I really thought he should have chosen the other option, and the ending is very disappointing because of that. You feel like you didn't really learn anything. But maybe other people will like the whole book.

[Ruth · Rating 3 out of 5]

246 pages. Donated 2010 May.

"A brilliant satire of corporate executive culture is rare enough in American literature to be a major event. This is what George Lee Walker has accomplished in "The Chronicles of Doodah." Animated throughout by caricature and farce, it is delightfully humorous anthropology about the beharior, expectations, and interpersonal relationships up and down the corporate hierarchy. The pages on the Troubled Employee Department, with its descriptions of the Executive Smile, Executive Voice, Executive Posture, and Executive Stride approach classic status. To read this brilliant satire is to laugh and to learn or, if you are a company insider, to nod with recognition." -Ralph Nader

A truly horrifying story of the advanced corporate culture, which I much enjoyed." - John Kenneth Galbraith

[Synnøve · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this up in an airport bookstore while waiting on a flight in May 1987...and the story is anything but funny. Satire, sure, but the story itself is dark, demoralizing...and terrifying.

I was reminded of it recently while watching the AppleTv show, 'Severance'. Not the same story...but it makes me wonder if the creators read this book...

[Elliott · Rating 2 out of 5]

The title of this book is terrible, and the book itself only slightly better, BUT, I sense the potential for a wildly successful interpretation via a different medium...

[Patricia Foxall · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brilliant look at Corporatism taken to it's extreme logical conclusion. I picture Steve Martin as the lead in my head, even though it's not a strict comedic work.

[Derek Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

The most intriguing thing about this book is the anonymity of the author. Searching the web, the only reference I found to him is this one novel. Beyond that, he seems to have vanished without a trace – no word on whether he is alive or dead.
The back author notes in the book list him as a speechwriter for most major auto CEOs in Detroit, which sounds like a big deal – until you read Doodah, a dark fantasy about the debilitating life of a corporate speech writer. And you wonder: If corporate life was an inner ring of hell then, what must it be like now?
The nameless narrator sneers (inwardly) at the lockstep pseudo confidence of his fellow junior executives and their mind-cleansed bosses. But he's also drawn to the protective aspect of their faceless homogeneity, a formalized existence that approaches ritual.
Caught between these opposing pulls, he oversteps the bounds of corporate acceptability and becomes an at first unwilling candidate for retraining in the Troubled Employee Department. There he experiences a range of physical and psychic tortures fashioned to not just enforce a code of conduct but standardize the most minute aspects of corporate behavior – increasingly grotesque, fantastic and dehumanizing manipulation "for his own good." His spirit must be broken to establish the perfect Corporate Man.
There's Swiftian exaggeration here, but not, to my mind, Swiftian humor. That isn't a complaint. The setting is horrific and the extremes of maltreatment, though far from realistic, somehow present an accurate reflection of the true hive mind.
In 21st century times, the novel embodies an even more sinister realism of mind than when published in 1985. And I can't help wondering if author Walker's "disappearance" was as final and pointless as that of his narrator's friend Conrad, the ultimate victim of a doodah existence.