L.K. Rawles

The history behind the little pink packets my grandmother used to lift from restaurants is a strange one, and Rich Cohen is a strange narrator for the story. As the disinherited grandson of Sweet ‘n Low inventors Ben and Betty Eisenstadt, “all they have left me is this story.”

The memoir follows Grandpa Ben as he invents the sugar packet (only to be screwed over by the Domino Sugar Company) then Sweet ‘n Low, weathers the anti-saccharine campaign by the FDA in the ’70s, only to be busted for mob corruption in the ’90s. Yes! Sweet ‘n Low was under federal investigation. Think about that the next time you’re sweetening your coffee. The final section of the book deals with the disinheritance of Cohen’s mother, the once-favorite daughter, for reasons that seem unclear even to the participants. “To be disinherited is to be set free,” writes Cohen.

It’s a theme he returns to several times during the book, that to be without family is to be free. To be encumbered by family is to be trapped, tied down, smothered to death by loving arms.

It’s the five-mile-walk-to-school-uphill-both ways story that your grandfather tells to make you feel weak and lazy….I sometimes think a family is no more than a collection of such stories, a chronicle that locks you down like the safety bar that crosses your lap before the roller-coaster leaves the platform, without which you would fly away in the turns.

But his memoir isn’t filled with bitterness as much as it’s filled with exasperated love for family members fantastic in their weirdness.

When I was briefing my brother-in-law on his new family and told him that [Aunt] Gladys had not left the house since the Nixon administration, he said, “You mean mostly she stays in the house but now and then she leaves the house to go to the store?” I said, “I mean mostly she stays in her room but now and then she leaves her room to go to the bathroom.”

Or his grandmother Betty:

[Her brother’s] birth taught Betty lessons she would follow for the rest of her life: that boys are better than girls, that love is finite, that love is coal, and there is a shortage, and there will never be enough to go around.

And his uncle Marvin (or, as he insisted on being called, “Marvelous”):

He said he had been prescribed a pill for fading memory, but told me he forgets to take it. He does remember that he forgets, which struck me as suspicious.

It’s also a love letter to Brooklyn. I was born without the New York City gene. It’s never been my dream to live there, nor have I ever bothered to visit friends while they were living there. The only part of NYC I’ve set foot in is the JFK airport. I spent a summer during college in Ireland with a group of NYU students, and I was left with the impression that the only topic of interest for people from New York is New York restaurants.

But a lot of Midwestern kids (especially in their high school years) have a dream, a longing, an infatuation with New York City that borders on the pathological. Rich Cohen is one of these. He was born and grew up in Illinois, but his extended family lived in Brooklyn. Brooklyn is another character, another quirky family member who helped shape the trajectory of the company. Even I grew to have some affection for it.

Verdict: 8.5 out of 10 for lyrical prose and funny-from-the-outside family drama.

It’s a dicey business to write non-fiction about people who are still alive to refute everything you’ve said about them. Cohen wrote an article on Slate.com called Just Screw It: How I told my family I was writing about our feud over the Sweet ‘n Low fortune that’s well worth a read.

I’m plugging away on a book about the Crimean War (what? I’m totally normal!), but I picked this novel up a few weeks ago when I was at that seminar that I said I’d write about but then totally didn’t. With me so far?

So, “Company.” Our hero Jones has just come out of school, and he begins work at the Zephyr Corporation, a depressing amalgam of workplace archetypes we’ve all met at one time or another.

For example:

“On level 14, Elizabeth is falling in love. This is what makes her such a good sales rep, and an emotional basket case: she falls in love with her customers. It’s hard to convey just how wretchedly, boot-lickingly draining it is to be a salesperson. Sales is a business of relationships, and you must cultivate customers with tenderness and love, like cabbages in winter, even when the customer is an egomaniacal asshole you want to hit with a shovel. There is something wrong with the kind of person who becomes a sales rep, or if not, there is something wrong after six months.”

Or:

“Freddy has been a sales assistant for five years. He is quick-witted, inventive, and full of ideas, so long as that’s okay with everyone else. Freddy is a participant. A member. He is happiest when he’s blending in with a crowd. In any group of people, the one you can’t remember is Freddy.”

The thing is, even though this company seems like any other, Jones can’t find out what exactly it is that Zephyr does. None of his co-workers can supply anything more detailed than that it’s a “holdings company.” But when he finally finds out the answer, it sends him up the corporate ladder and through the looking glass. (Spoiler Alert: No, soylent green is not made out of people.)

The plot is very clever, and it made me see some of the companies I’ve worked for in a fresh light. But I think what cinched it for me were the dead-on details about office life, and how hundreds of years of civilization can break down in a room with seven people and six donuts.

Verdict: If you’ve ever worked in a corporate setting, 8 out of 10. If you went to med school instead, 6.5.

Barry is also the author of “Jennifer Government,” a book which had a little more madcap zaniness and a lot more guns. What happens when the free market takes over the free world, corporate sponsors replace last names, Nike’s viral marketing takes a deadly turn and the police start sub-contracting with the NRA? Well, hilarity ensues, of course.