Playing against the low genres of soap opera and pornography, this postmodern farce takes place in a generic corporate office with two tiers of characters: executive and clerical staff. The executives are generally seeking more power and perks in the company (a room with a view), while the clerical workers are more involved in daily survival and personal rites of passage. / The novel is told in the third person from multiple points of view which are subverted on occasion by an obtrusive narrative perspective. World views clash in a dialogic heteroglossia as characters fight for space, voice and hegemony. The major players are Olga, Administrative Assistant to the Vice President of Finance (Mr. D), Diane from Documentation, the first female "executive hire," and Larry LaRue, the Vice President of Marketing. These are the characters dangled in front of the reader as potential vehicles for identification, while those presented as other through flat caricature are often recuperated with a flip toward empathy-generating personalities. / A plot that seeks to connect the diverse characters concerns Mr. D's plan to implement Interactive Distributed Processing in order to regain power and control over the clerical staff. Another plot evolves around Enormous Norma's feminist agenda. Executive secretary to the Chairman of the Board, Norma harbors a vast hatred of mankind and gradually organizes the women into a self-help group under the auspices of the Goddess. / Olga is the one character who does not participate in the company shenanigans, executive or clerical. Her values, desires and agendas do not coincide with those of the other players. At first mostly isolated, Olga gradually begins to interact with others, primarily through her accentuated sense of touch. Her mission is revealed in a carnivalesque final chapter. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 53-11, Section: A, page: 3913. / Co-Directors: Janet G. Burroway; Ralph M. Berry. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1992.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_76798 |
| Contributors | Taetzsch, Lynne., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 237 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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