Company Man

by Brent Wade

Book Overview

An African-American novel probes the interior of corporate America and reveals malice and mistrust behind the smiles, handshakes, and pats on the back. Reprint. Tour. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0385425635
• ISBN13: 9780385425636
• Release Date: February 1993
• Publisher: Anchor Books
• Length: 219 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.2" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Worth your time...a good book

I bought this book after reading a review about it in a black entertainment magazine. That was about 18 yrs ago. I read the book; I enjoyed it...then put it away. I recently moved. Going thru my book collection; I rediscovered this book and decided to reread it. I was not disappointed. In this book, we get a chance to follow the career of the fictional character, William Covington. When I read this book the first time, I'd begun my corporate career. Unlike the character's career, I didn't quite advance like I'd hope. So this book provided me with an interesting "flashback" to my own early career thoughts and ambitions. Perhaps I was lucky not to succeed. It certainly didn't bode well for William Covington. I do know that I've learned to tell white co-workers when I've think they've been out-of-line with some racially inappropriate comment. I didn't do this early in my career; I had a southern co-worker take me aside and tell me to "quit" overly catering to white folks. He was right. And I learned. Maybe this book will help others to do the same thing. Your career is important, but your own self-respect is worth more...at least that's what I decided. Good luck, standtall

WOW! (Women Of the Word) Book Club

This is a brilliant rendition of the disintegration of an individual's mind. It is particularly significant because the disintegration is based upon racism as its primary etiology. This is an important contrast to what is usually written by the predominant writing members of a racist society who refuse to acknowledge that practicing racism is a mental health disease and that the pyschological damage that the recipients of racism experience, can be and often times is, extremely severe and profound.(Note: The National Association of Black Psychologists has for years taken the position that racism per se is a mental health disease and those who practice "racism" are mentally ill. Needless to say, the American Psychological Association, a predominantly white organization, refuses to support this assertion.).It is written eloquently by a young Black man who provides much needed insight into some of the possible psychological injuries that can be sustained when one is subjected to the conflictual circumstances of racist behavior. Yes, it takes a recipient of racism-- that daily denigrating assault on all of an individual's senses-- to be able to truly define, enunciate and then relate to everyone else just how damaging and devastating such an assault can be (an most often is).This is a painful story fraught with easily identifiable (for the reader) common examples of unsolicited daily attacks directed against a young, intelligent, ambitious African American man who "just wants to make a living, support his wife/family" and because he is college educated and this is America, he chooses to attempt to do so in the corporate world. That Corporate World that he finds is based upon years of being separate and unequal in regard to African Americans.So "Bill" Covington, known by his friends as "Billy", is ill prepared to daily face the deadly game playing, the subtle and not so subtle gibes, the racist jokes expressed for his own growth and development or his own good. But always the growth and development occurs at the expense of his own sense of being; that is, his own sense of who he really is and most importantly, his sense of self respect and honor.A split in his Psyche is inevitable: when the Superego ceases to exist and the Ego is lost, the Id takes over. The internal conflict is that he hears voices from the past admonishing him to respond to the present day external pressures by following his grandmother's verbalizations. Verbalizations she spoke to him as he was growing up, out of her profound sincere effort to teach him how to live and be safe in that hostile, sick, unpredictable, aggressive, emasculating "white world".Her efforts to prepare him for that "white world" by advising him "not to be niggerish" is the negative that he recalls when faced with a major conflict in the white corporate world-- but he does not have a positive course of action, because as he grew up there was no one exposed to the white America available to him to teach

interesting take on corporate life

Brent Wade's first novel is a pretty good book. You can see that the author still has a lot to learn about dialogue and pacing, but overall, it's a good first effort. It takes a look at corporate life from a black perspective and reveals the hidden racism and innuendo that is played out daily in corporation boardrooms. It's worth a look. Also check-out "High Cotton" by Darryl Pinckney