View

Just felt like dropping a quick blog off. I've been reading this book. It's by Theodore H. White, and it's called "The View From the Fortieth Floor." In short, it's about a guy named John "Ridge" Warren who inherits Presidency over a media organization centered around two magazines named "Trumpet" and "Gentlewoman", who are being run down the drain by a board of directors and the daughters of its creator who don't really know how to properly run the business. Takes place in the late 1950s.

I'm a little over halfway through, and I've been pleasantly surprised by how it has developed. Part One is all set in one day - the day everything starts to fall apart for Warren fiscally. The day he realizes that he may be facing bankruptcy, or worse - fraud charges brought against himself - if he doesn't either fold the magazines or somehow raise enough money to get them going again. Big gamble.

But that's not all. Where it was at first all about the numbers, which marginally interest me as I work for a bank - now it's starting to inject the personal drama. And it's good personal drama too... it has to deal with his own choices in life, the hard things he's had to do that he's starting to see revisited in this situation, and he doesn't want to screw up again, especially with the lives of hundreds of employees at his hands.

I'll let you know how I feel about it when it ends, but right now, it has me feeling very introspective, as I can see a lot of my own history in this guy's life. Whether it be that he's divorced, or that he once and now again holds power in an organization that he feels very deeply charmed with. Or, perhaps, that feeling that if you don't make things work right now, you may end up on the streets. That one isn't exactly something I register with directly, but I know that feeling - that feeling of hoping you can make something work, whether it be a job, a hobby, a marriage, whatever - yet knowing that you are staring into the barrel of a loaded six-shooter without any way of knowing if the next chamber is loaded.

Good stuff, good capture of emotion. I can't wait to finish it!