Lightning Rods takes aim at salesmanship generally. Corporate culture is an easy satirical target, however, and the novel lacks the specificity to really skewer it in a surprising way. We never find out what this major company does or how exactly its top performers (the ones first entitled to lightning rod access) have demonstrated their impressive earning power. The subtle absurdities and indignities of office life don’t interest Ms. Dewitt. It’s the always-selling, all-American, self-perpetuating love of innovation that Lightning Rods more effectively mocks. A culture that devises “Freedom” from the Internet is a culture that would consider hiring guaranteed-non-sex-worker temps from the man who brought them the sex-worker temps in the first place.
Lightning Rods narrates Joe’s journey in the manner of a motivational speaker, folksy and relentlessly encouraging. “When you’re a kid you always think you’re going to be an astronaut, or a quarterback, or something like that,” Joe thinks. “You can’t understand why so many grown-ups spend their lives doing boring things like selling vacuum cleaners.” But in Lightning Rods everyone is always reminding himself that he too can make a contribution to a better society, that he too has special skills to offer. “A good personnel officer knows there are times when you don’t know exactly how to respond,” we’re told at one point. “A good FBI agent knows when his words have struck home,” we learn at another. Sometimes this motivational chorus sounds loud enough for a conference full of aspiring sex salesmen; sometimes it sounds like the internal pep talk of a peon jollying herself through a long day at the office. “If you can get through something potentially unpleasant without letting it interfere with your peace of mind, that tells you something about yourself,” one lightning rod thinks about her job. “No matter what happens, nothing is going to drag you down. That’s an incredibly strong position to be in. You don’t get to that position by shrinking from a little unpleasantness.”
The most successful of the lightning rods maintain a brisk sense of efficiency about their duties. They are impervious to desire, but this appears to be an advantage: men’s needs must be appeased because men have needs to begin with. Rather than closing her eyes and thinking of England, a lightning rod puts on her P.V.C. leggings and reads Proust in the original French. She might realize, by gritting her teeth and giving an executive the whipping he demands, that she has the “killer instinct” it takes to be a litigator. She does not realize that she likes to whip.
“Normal men could be in an office full of women without finding an outlet,” Joe thinks as inspiration first strikes. “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.” We see Joe make plenty of mistakes, but nothing ever suggests he is mistaken in this initial assumption. It’s hard to tell how exactly Ms. Dewitt intends the reader to receive such statements. On one hand, it would take a poor sport to get offended; on the other, it seems like the author has dodged solving the most interesting of the problems she created. It doesn’t take much interest in feminism to wonder how Joe would have reacted if some little go-getter had demanded a facility for lusty ladies. Or if she got a little too excited about anonymous boning.
Nicholson Baker’s latest novel, House of Holes, also courted controversy by imagining a special institution for the safe performance of sexual fantasies, a venue where desire could be openly enacted shame-free. Mr. Baker’s world, however, was populated with “delightful fuckers,” all of whom were miraculously compatible in their insatiability—women included. That, more than its explicit content, seemed adventurous. But then again, it didn’t leave anyone free for À la recherche du temps perdu.
