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Lloyd: What Happened: A Novel of Business
Celebrated columnist Stanley Bing is an anthropologist of corporate culture, a satirist of corporate greed, a comedian of the libido. In his remarkable first novel, What Happened, Bing gives us the last word on business in America.
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Brazenly honest and wildly funny, Lloyd shows us one crucial year in the life of an upwardly mobile executive for whom pain and gain walk hand in hand. Lloyd is a pretty decent guy. He has an assortment of flaws. He's married, a little chunky, well into the mid-six
figures, which sounds great but means only that he has to work harder every day just to stay where he is. He can see through the corporate veil of stupidity and brutality whenÌýÌýhe wants to, which is not very often. He loves his wife and children and, suddenly, a senior financial officer named Mona.
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Reeling toward the millennium in the era of gross, global consolidation, the corporation is on the verge of launching the most audacious transaction in the history of capitalism. They call it Moby Deal, and Lloyd is put in charge of making it all happen, a mandate he receives early one morning through the miasma of a let-me-die-now hangover. The good news is that Lloyd is perfectly suited to the he looks okay in a suit, can drink or eat just about anything that's put in front of him, and has a strong value system that has never stopped him from accomplishing any assigned duty.
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Can Lloyd achieve Productivity? Can he get lean without being mean? Can he inspire increasingly greater numbers of people to do more for less while he himself does less for more? Can he gain the world without losing his soul? Can he keep his hands off a valued and extremely attractive associate?
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What Happened is brilliantly and comically annotated with color bar graphs, pie charts, diagrams, and illustrated flourishes. It is the iconographic equivalent of an illuminated manuscript for the modern world, with a story that will make readers laugh out loud and cringe with recognition of every character and situation. Bing is a master storyteller and has written what is sure to be a classic of our time.
From the Hardcover edition.
ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý
Brazenly honest and wildly funny, Lloyd shows us one crucial year in the life of an upwardly mobile executive for whom pain and gain walk hand in hand. Lloyd is a pretty decent guy. He has an assortment of flaws. He's married, a little chunky, well into the mid-six
figures, which sounds great but means only that he has to work harder every day just to stay where he is. He can see through the corporate veil of stupidity and brutality whenÌýÌýhe wants to, which is not very often. He loves his wife and children and, suddenly, a senior financial officer named Mona.
ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý
Reeling toward the millennium in the era of gross, global consolidation, the corporation is on the verge of launching the most audacious transaction in the history of capitalism. They call it Moby Deal, and Lloyd is put in charge of making it all happen, a mandate he receives early one morning through the miasma of a let-me-die-now hangover. The good news is that Lloyd is perfectly suited to the he looks okay in a suit, can drink or eat just about anything that's put in front of him, and has a strong value system that has never stopped him from accomplishing any assigned duty.
ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý
Can Lloyd achieve Productivity? Can he get lean without being mean? Can he inspire increasingly greater numbers of people to do more for less while he himself does less for more? Can he gain the world without losing his soul? Can he keep his hands off a valued and extremely attractive associate?
ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý
What Happened is brilliantly and comically annotated with color bar graphs, pie charts, diagrams, and illustrated flourishes. It is the iconographic equivalent of an illuminated manuscript for the modern world, with a story that will make readers laugh out loud and cringe with recognition of every character and situation. Bing is a master storyteller and has written what is sure to be a classic of our time.
From the Hardcover edition.
- GenresFiction
432 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1998
62 people want to read
About the author
Stanley Bing
50Ìýbooks42Ìýfollowers Gil Schwartz, known by his pen name Stanley Bing, was an American business humorist and novelist. He wrote a column for Fortune magazine for more than twenty years after a decade at Esquire magazine. He was the author of thirteen books, including What Would Machiavelli Do? and The Curriculum, a satirical textbook for a business school that also offers lessons on the web. Schwartz was senior executive vice president of corporate communications and Chief Communications Officer for CBS.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
February 8, 2021
I picked the book up because I wanted a window into the era; I think it served that purpose very well. I stuck through it because the humor was still fresh and because the internal thoughts of the trainwreck lead character (and show-stealing side character Ron) are compelling.
January 22, 2008
A decent book; very clever, well written, and overall entertaining. The problem that I ran into was with connecting with any of the characters, not because they were unsympathetic, but rather in that the situations they found themselves in were just beyond the grasp of my mind. Clearly this is based on real-life type environments found in super-high echelons of business, but even my brief stint in restaurant management lent virtually zero relatability to anything that happened in this book. I think that when I am middle-aged and if I have kids by then, I may find this a more relatable read, but until then it will live as a fun read that in the end kind of left me a little bit flat--and when I say, "in the end" I do mean the very end of the book; the conclusion left me with a strange feeling... flat is the only way I can describe it.
The overall negativity of what I have just written is misleading though, it is a fun book to read, and I did enjoy it. I just feel that I was missing something important.
The overall negativity of what I have just written is misleading though, it is a fun book to read, and I did enjoy it. I just feel that I was missing something important.
April 23, 2016
- I really enjoyed the unique style of this quirky, pop-fiction novel. It is the story of a businessman, and it is told using the business tools of pie-charts, graphs, cost-analysis, and power-point presentations. A wonderful satire of upper-management corporate goings-on, woven into the life of executive Stanley Bing, whose life is being stretched thin by domestic crisis, a marital infidelity, and impossible work expectations.
October 4, 2007
This book is totally hilarious so far. It's about a bunch of executives at a large corporation; very funny.
December 16, 2007
Hilarious sendup of corporate world from somebody who knows: "Bing'' is pseudonym for heavyweight p.r. guy at CBS. Or maybe it's the other way around. Anyhow, this is great stuff.
February 22, 2008
Loved the concept, but just couldn't get into this one.
August 17, 2009
The powerpoint graphics in the book are priceless. I have the hardback so I don't know if they are included in the paperback.
February 19, 2016
Not as entertaining as his column in FORTUNE.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
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