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[...] I talked on as if I had still some prospect of putting everything right again by my talk, by the advantageous offers I made--I was myself alarmed by the concessions I granted, concessions that had not even been asked for. [...]
the salesman trying to sell to a man whose son is ill, possibly dying, right next to them
Then I descended the stairs: The descent was more tiring than the ascent had been, and not even that had been easy. Oh, how many business calls come to nothing, and yet one must keep going.
Albert Camus once said that 'the whole of Kafka's art consists in compelling the reader to re-read him.' Since the interpretations of Kafka are many and the search for the meaning of his stories seemingly endless, the reader will return to the story itself in the hope of finding guidance from within. Thus a second reading will--hopefully--become a commentary on the first, and subsequent readings will--again hopefully--shed light on the preceding ones. [...]
[...] yes, throwing parties for money was somewhat cynical, and presumed that young people cared about progress only insofar as they could still have fun. Did people think it was enough to "be liberal"? To feel bad but do nothing? That was of a piece with America's double exceptionalism: how you judged your nation as the most godblessed or goddamned on earth, but also stood apart from it. The body politic had become so fat, so lumpen, that it needed morality incentivized.
pretty funny imo (though maybe not in the way the author was going for)
[...] For that, Cory was promoted from promoter to outreach manager, and all at once she was proud of her cleverness, relieved that the company was solvent, and furiously disappointed in humanity.
after adding joints to her promotion flyers
In October, Cory was promoted again, because her boss died.
I both love and hate the deus-ex-machina way this is presented at the same time (it also--irrationally--makes me feel like I've been sniped)
[...] At the beginning, they threw $5,000-a-plate fundraising dinners that failed completely ("For some reason I expected big gives from the very echelon of society I was trying to eliminate") [...]
Taren explaining how he founded Socialize. pretty funny
[...] "[...] I spent hours driving down Highway 1, not to relax, just to depreciate the car before my wife took half."
Taren again
[...] She took out the hummus and the soy milk and put the hummus back in and borrowed a nectarine from Jonnie's shelf, and then took the hummus out again, jogging it in her hands to ponder its mass, its lipids and carbs, though she already knew all the numbers to the tenth decimal.
Cory. again feeling sniped cus this is kind of what I had in mind for the intern character
[...] Her efforts to research the housing market crisis ended in page-crumpling fury--credit default swaps? Mortgage-backed securities? Collateralized debt obligations? How could people be moral when morality obliged you to know everything? It was her fault for not studying econ in college, but she'd had so much contempt for the future ibankers that it had seemed principled not to.
Cory. an example of what NOT to do