Mr B's Reading Year - Part 3: And Then We Came To The End

We had these sudden revelations that employment, the daily nine-to-five, was driving us far from our better selves.

From sexy, smoky Guatemala to a Chicago advertising agency for the next instalment of my Reading Year: Joshua Ferris' And Then We Came to the End (2007). Mr B warned me in his recommendation that the novel, filled with wry observations like the one above about the soul-destroying nature of office life and Twenty-first Century Capitalism, can be "toxic", but this impressive début is nonetheless an incredibly engaging read.

The novel is told almost entirely in the first person plural, evoking the group who know and control everything. While individual characters do emerge, as in any office - the know-it-all, the clown, the desperate to be cool, the man on the edge of a mental breakdown - they are subsumed into the group, which will continue to exist regardless of how many individuals "walk Spanish down the hall". The one exception is brief introspective interludes from the agency's boss, Lynn, who is coming to terms with breast cancer; the contrast between the single and plural here accentuates the isolation resulting from such a deeply personal situation.

Ferris juxtaposes real tragedies, like Lynn's cancer and the murder of a co-worker's young daughter, with mundane concerns, highlighting how the tiny daily irritations come to dominate working life. Despite their objections, however, the group acknowledges the impossibility of living without work.

Yet for all the depression no one ever quit. When someone quit, we couldn't believe it. 'I'm becoming a rafting instructor on the Colorado River,' they said. 'I'm touring college towns with my garage band.' We were dumbfounded. It was like they were from another planet. Where had they found the derring-do? What would they do about car payments? We got together for going away drinks on their final day and tried to hide our envy while reminding ourselves that we still had the freedom and luxury to shop indiscriminately.

Ferris' catalogue of human failings could easily have been unbearably bleak, yet it is saved by a constant sardonic, incredibly dark humour, which makes it an unnervingly fun read. We shouldn't be laughing at people abandoning their individuality, their morality, to the desire for money, or the chronic depression resulting from the daily grind, or the terrible suffering of those dying or in mourning, but Ferris makes it impossible not to. Toxic is therefore a good word for And Then We Came To The End: like some kind of narcotic, it will leave you feeling spent and disturbed, but you will enjoy the ride.

Learn more about Mr B's Reading Year and how to get one for yourself here.

Surrealism and advertising

Hello again, blogosphere, I've missed you. The Cardiff culture blogging will resume shortly, but in the mean time, I thought I'd share something I love with you. Browsing just now, I came across Bibble Babble's (@sighnomoree) collection of the Best of Fast Food Advertising. I've always been a huge fan of clever adverts, especially those that show some knowledge of art history. My favourite of all are those inspired by surrealism.

Surrealism and advertising's love-affair is a long one. Surrealists, especially writers like André Breton and Louis Aragon, liked to incorporate real-life adverts into their work, for example this picture in Breton's Nadja: 

Beyond incorporating advertisements into their work, surrealists also profited from advertising, and no-one more so than Salvador Dalí. Breton famously remarked that 'Avida Dollars' (avida meaning eager or greedy for in Spanish) was a fitting anagram of Dalí's name. 

His advertising legacy lives on in the Chupa Chups logo, but perhaps my favourite example of Dalí's willingness to give up his integrity for advertising dollars is this TV spot for Lanvin chocolate:

Dalí wasn't alone, of course. If you go to any Spanish high-street, for example, you'll spot the logo for La Caixa bank, designed by Miró.

Beau comme la rencontre fortuite sur une table de dissection d'une machine à coudre et d'un parapluie: Surrealist concepts in modern advertising

Moving towards today, it's clear that advertising executives have studied their art history, especially those who worked in the tobacco market. Obviously I don't condone smoking, and especially not trying to make cigarettes attractive, but they did make some brilliant adverts.

In the 1970s Benson & Hedges campaign, for example, all the surrealist staples are present, from Dalí's ants to the guiding principle that bringing two incongruous things together will create something beautiful.

Other adverts also followed the surrealists in their obsession with and exploration of Eros and Thanatos (Freud's sex and death drives). Particularly striking is the 1980s Silk Cuts campaign.

This brings me to my favourite advert of all time (although the Compare the Meerkat series do come close ;) )  I remember seeing this on TV years and years ago, and it's stuck with me, even though it never seems to appear on Best Ever Adverts lists. I'm surprised it didn't give me nightmares! I love that it's so magnificently weird, referencing classic moments from Dalí and Buñuel's L'Age d'or and Un Chien Andalou, among other early surrealist films, from the eggs and the ants to the clouds cutting across the moon.

More recently, the 2007 Gorilla marketing (hehe, pun!) campaign that saved Cadbury's once again brought surrealist principles to the small screen. The gorilla on the drums was as unexpected and beautiful 'as the encounter between a sewing machine and an umbrella on an operating table'.

These are just a few examples of recent surrealist advertising, but I'd love to see more. Please comment with your favourites!

PS: I love how surrealist works are put on just about everything to make money. This is one of my favourites:

Ceci n'est pas un Powerbook.