In these days of weblog humor, political satire sites, ham-handed political satire done by left- and right-wing talk show hosts, ascending Mad TV and descending Saturday Live, it’s hard to find a truly DELICIOUS and laugh-out-loud piece of satire — especially one that’s in book form.
One does exist: it’s Anonymous Lawyer by Jeremy Blachman. How good is it?
(1) If I had to rate it on a scale of one to 10 stars I’d give it a 100.
(2) I read it and literally could not put it down. I told a law student/co-blogger about it and promised to gift it to him. But I love it so much that I’m going to buy another copy in a few months and will NOT part with it.
Blachman’s fast-paced, delectable, screamingly funny and perceptive satire can be found on his blog Anonymous Lawyer. But fortunately he found a publisher who realized the one-of-a-kind satire gems he publishes on his blog could be spun off and expanded into a novel so good that hopefully Hollywood will wise up and turn it into a movie or a TV series.
The plot is simple and “high concept enough,” one with which any lawyer, blogger or anyone with a compulsion or who’s enmeshed in political office can relate.
The Anonymous Lawyer is a hiring lawyer at a big, wealthy New York law firm, but he becomes addicted to blogging. By day, his passion is surviving and consolidating his power base at his law firm. By night, his passion is writing his blog with a hidden identity, doing thinly-veiled and devastating posts about his self-important and self-indulgent co-workers. The book contains his narrative, some parts of what Anonymous Lawyer puts on his blog and emails to his niece Anonymous Niece, student at Yale Law School.
He shares lots of office gossip with his blog readers and writes brutal portraits of his coworkers and bosses. Will anyone who read his blog find out who he is? You guessed it. He’s involved in a huge battle for control of his firm with his prime rival “The Jerk.” There are many other characters. The Suck Up. The One Who Dresses Like A Slut. Black Guy. Lives With His Mom. And others.
The meaty plot about him trying to manipulate his way to top of his law firm comes amid belly-laugh producing passages culminating in a major plot payoff at the end that makes this can’t-put-it-down read supremely satisfying.
What’s most fun are his blunt and searing observations about office policies, law firm life, life in general — and about the joys of being in a position to exercise office power and control over other people’s lives.
Here are a few paragraphs that are so good they were NOT copied by computer or scanned but typed out by yours truly by hand:
We do all sorts of things to the associates to exert our power, sometimes for good reasons and sometimes just because we feel like it….
….We should ban the whole Internet. Let them find the cases in the books, like we did. Spending six hours in the library is character building. Spending six hours playing solitaire is lazy, mind-numbing, and insulting to the partnership that pays them. I spread around the news about which associate was to blame for solitaire being removed. It got him ostracized by his colleagues, and he quit six months later. Apparently he’s working for a public interest organization now. They probably don’t even have computers there. He couldn’t get a job at another firm. Not after I blackballed him.
I also wish I could ban this game that an associate showed me a couple of weeks ago called Snood. It’s a computer game where they all sit there and click on symbols for hours at a time to get them to disappear. I wish I could click on the associates who are wasting company resources playing it and get them to disappear too.
I’d also like to ban associates from putting pictures of their family on their desks. I’ve thought about this for a while. It’s harder to yell at someone when you’re looking at pictures of his kids. I’d like to ban tuna fish sandwiches. They make the hallway smell. I’d like to ban the shoes that click when people walk down the hall. I have a whole list. Chewing gum. Personal phone calls from the office phones. Whistling in the halls. Double-dipping dumplings into the dumpling sauce at firm receptions…Kettle corn. It’s deceptive. You expect salty and you get sweet…. Talking about your elderly parents and which nursing home you’re going to put them in. Debating the merits of the 401K program. It’s not that hard. Just pick a fund. Stop talking about it. Lamenting the fact that you’re working on Easter. The list goes on. And on.
It doesn’t matter if you’re a lawyer. Anonymous Lawyer is great satire, fun to read, a commentary on working in any office and required reading for anyone who’s interested in good writing.
Blachman is a major writing talent and could apply his satirical powers to other subjects as well. His blog is one of the most original and best-written on the Internet. But the book Anonymous Lawyer is something you can take with you as you travel so you can read it…again and are sure again.
PS: No billable hours were submitted in the writing of this post.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.