Central Booking

I decided to read Fast Food Nation (suggested by Kat from MagicKat) in its entirety before posting any comments, because I didn't want to post something like "So far, it doesn't sound so bad..." and then get to something truly horrifying in the next chapter. So now that I've read all of it, my verdict is...

It doesn't sound so bad.

Fast Food Nation is a well written, fascinating, and well-researched book. Also a fairly quick read, actually. Schlosser has a very engaging prose style. However, his goal seems to be to shock people into rethinking their affinity for fast food, and in that, he failed, at least in my case.

First of all, I'm a heartless conservative bastard, so his anecdotes about low-paying non-union meatpacking jobs and teenagers slaving away for minimum wage at stultifying, unskilled jobs have no effect on me. Does it bother me that unions can't seem to get any traction at fast food restaurants? Not really. Am I troubled that fast food workers get paid beans for making fries? Again, no. Ditto for the fact that McDonald's is putting traditional restaurants out of business in Germany. Good for them.

I won't go into my reasoning in detail here, but suffice it to say that I think that the enforcement of a minimum wage is a meaningless gesture that probably does more to hurt working class people than help them. It essentially cuts off the bottom rung of the employment ladder, making it harder for unskilled workers to find jobs and increasing the incentive for employers to automate tasks rather than hire people to do them, not to mention send jobs overseas. And who do you think is hurt by the price increases caused by the minimum wage (assuming that the evil fast food companies don't simply absorb the cost out of the goodness of their hearts)? Well, presumably people who spend a large portion of their income at fast food restaurants, grocery stores, gas stations, and other service establishments that pay minimum wage. That's right, the working poor.

As for the unions, they have their place, but if a union can't seem to generate much interest in a particular industry, it's generally because either (a) the working conditions and compensation aren't really that bad or (b) most of the employees don't care much about the job, probably because it's a part time or temporary job for them. Oh sure, the fast food giants and big meatpacking companies do their part to discourage unionization, but so does every industry. If the auto workers can unionize despite the wishes of GM, so can the meatpackers. If they don't care enough to get their act together, why should I?

Yeah, yeah, the workers are illiterate and unskilled, don't speak English, and may not even be legally allowed to work in the U.S., so I should feel really bad for them. And yet... they're pouring over the border looking for meatpacking jobs. Sounds more like a problem with the Mexican economy than with the U.S. meatpacking industry. I'm not sure I see how the meatpacking industry is to blame for the existence of large numbers of unskilled, uneducated people in the world. Oh, and if you were born in the U.S. and you have no job skills, maybe you should have paid more attention in shop class.

That's not to say that working in a meatpacking plant sounds like a good time. It sounds absolutely horrific, to tell you the truth, and it sounds like there are some very greedy, inhuman jerkwads running the places. Buying a Big Mac doesn't make them greedy, inhuman jerkwads though. That's just they way they are. Although I bet they'd rethink their jerkwadness if a lot of people stopped buying Big Macs.

And then of course there's the stuff about how fat we are because we eat too much fast food, and how it's going to give us diabetes and heart disease and kill us. Except that I'm not fat, and I don't let my kids eat tons of junk food, so we're fine. The rest of you can do what you want.

To me, the only really troubling revelations in the book were regarding hamburger meat. Basically what I learned from this book is: Don't eat hamburgers from a fast food place. And for the love of all that's holy, don't eat hamburgers from a school cafeteria. And if you buy hamburger from the store, make sure you cook it really well. Because, well, there's a lot of shit in hamburger.

Next up, The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini suggested by Ann from At Home with Ann.

After several days of being distracted by my consulting work for Galactic Invertebrates, I have finally finished The Gun Seller.

The Gun Seller is a strange book, in a way. The first few chapters are sort of random and whimsical, with at least one laugh-out-loud line on every page. About a quarter of the way in though, it seems like it occurs to Laurie that he actually has some storytelling to do, and sets about doing it. The book grows gradually more serious from that point, until it is close to being a Robert Ludlum-style spy thriller. It also gets rather confusing (at least to me, although that may have something to do with putting the book down for a week in the middle). I had a hard time figuring out the motivations of some of the characters, and what exactly they were trying to accomplish. I suppose this may have been intentional on Laurie's part, but that doesn't make it less frustrating. For that matter, maybe he planned the progression from Comic Novel to Serious Novel.

The last chapter pretty much ties everything together, to my relief; it felt for a while that Laurie didn't know himself where all of this was going. Overall it was an enjoyable and satisfying read, and definitely one of the funniest books I've ever read. As someone who's tried to write humorous fiction in this vein, I can tell you it's not easy to balance this kind of droll, unpredictable humor with linear storytelling. Laurie is obviously one talented guy.

Next up: Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser, suggested by Kat from MagicKat. We went to a local used bookstore last night, and I picked up about 8 more books from my list. They all seem to be from the bottom half of the list, however, which is why I'm jumping around so erratically. Well, that and the three cups of coffee. I'll post my initial thoughts on Fast Food Nation in a day or two.

Mattress Tags: Hugh Laurie The Gun Seller Eric Schlosser Fast Food Nation