Lighting Rods (2011) by Helen DeWitt
I missed this novel when it was first published, but it was recommended as one of “22 of the Funniest Novels Since ‘Catch-22’”. We’ll set aside the question of how amusing Catch-22 was or is–I could use a laugh.
The premise seems timely enough. This is the first person story of an entrepreneur’s disruptive innovation: in order to proactively prevent sexual harassment and resulting problems, he deploys employees with an additional assignment to anonymously service high testosterone male employees. These “lightning rods” are paid to take one for the company, draining off the damaging build up of uncontrollable lust in the workplace.
Part of the joke is that, in the story, this preposterous concept actually works. Complaints goes away, morale improves, productivity improves. It’s worth every penny to the company.
DeWitt also makes fun of corporate gobbledygook, not to mention office culture and gender politics.
But honestly, it’s not really that funny.
For one thing, it’s grievously out of date. Written sometime before 2011, it’s not only pre-Trump, it’s pre-Internet, fer goodness sake. So much of it makes absolutely no sense today. Behavior that was once secret and shameful, if ubiquitous; is now openly performed as political theater.
For another, gender politics have become w-a-a-y more complicated. The whole concept underlying the Lightning Rods is so-o-o twentieth century.
In short, this is a novel of ideas, and the ideas are so anachronistic as to render it stupid rather than ironic. Sorry.
And please let me short-circuit the Elons of this world who like to propose this kind of “innovation” in order to “own the libs” by advocating the stupidest possible behaviors.
I feel obligated to point out that the fictional procedures are so silly they could never be implemented. But if you could implement them, they wouldn’t work anywhere near the way it does in the story, because this isn’t how people actually behave.
Sexual harassment has nothing to do with excess libido, and providing Lightning Rods would most likely increase inappropriate behavior rather than decrease it.
So don’t try this at home.
Overall, if you missed this novel, you didn’t miss much.
- Helen DeWitt, Lighting Rods, New York, New Directions, 2011.
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