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Succession PDF Print E-mail
Written by Webmaster   
Wednesday, 21 May 2008

Succession: A Story of Corporate Past

Reviewed By Stuart Nachbar


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Succession
I chose to review Herbert Lobsenz’ Succession because I believed that I could relate to the author as well as the story. Succession is Lobsenz’ first novel in 47 years, his previous work, Vangel Griffin, won a literary prize and appeared on the New York Times best seller list. Lobsenz had to put his writing career on hold, in favor of a business career as a necessity to support a growing family.

Succession has a shorter timeframe than the author’s career, but it is based on the same idea. Jake Garrison, an aspiring Civil War fiction novelist has a pregnant wife and sick father and he must return to a career of handling undercover due diligence for investors who want to purchase businesses.

The business in Succession is a large, struggling typewriter manufacturer that has been merged into an even larger corporate conglomerate, as was the practice during the 1960’s when the novel takes place. The company, Kensington has been in a losing battle on price, sales practices and technology; IBM has fast become a dominant player in the business-to-business with the Selectric and it is feared that they will enter the consumer market as well under their label or someone else’s. Some Kensington executives want that someone else to be Kensington, though Garrison’s client is not one of them.

To make matters worse, Garrison’s client has supposedly impregnated his wife. However, needing money, he follows a lesson he has lived by his whole life: show no pain. Succession in some ways reminded me of the AMC show Mad Men which depicts the New York advertising scene in 1960; in fact, the very beginning of the very first episode showed the Selectric as the very latest office technology. Like Man Men, Succession does a good job of depicting big business in the sixties as a man’s domain, although women are starting to achieve executive rank in small numbers, and like the show, there is daytime drinking as a common business practice, though Succession has none of the corporate debauchery you see in the TV show. The executives in this story work under a cloud of fear and uncertainty, and near the end. They start talking with pride about “their” product, and its role in business history. However, they become willing to throw all of that away to survive---and throw thousands of workers under the bus---just as top executives do today.

The corporate scenes in Succession, however, appear darker than I’ve read in other corporate thrillers such as Joseph Finder’s novels. That might be deliberate on Lobsenz’ part. Garrison is working “cloak and dagger,” playing the role of an advertising copywriter to collect inside information on a much bigger picture; he’s an outsider playing an insider, while in Finder’s novel’s a corporate insider who’s on the outs becomes the hero at the end. Succession is less a story of corporate intrigue than it is about a person who slowly gains trust of people far more senior to him. This story, unlike Finder’s thrillers, does not end with a heroic resolution, but it ties together nicely.

If there’s a lesson to take from this story, it is that technology and politics may change business conditions, but the human solutions are the same. It’s the rare person, like Jake Garrison, who gets to walk away on their own terms. And, in the corporate world, that’s often the best person to be.

Contact Stuart Nachbar at http://www.EducatedQuest.com , a blog on education politics, policy and technology or read about his first book, The Sex Ed Chronicle, a novel on education and politics in 1980 New Jersey, at http://www.SexEdChronicles.com .
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 21 May 2008 )
 
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