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"Galileo's Daughter" by Dava Sobel
The life of the heretical Italian scientist is told through the loving, protective letters of his illegitimate child.
By Casey Greenfield
[11/11/99]

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Black and right
Thomas Sowell talks about the arrogance of liberal elites and the loneliness of the black conservative.
By Ray Sawhill
[11/10/99]

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"Tupperware: The Promise of Plastic in 1950s America" by Alison J. Clarke
A smart, fun history considers the influence of those indispensable containers on the culture of the nation.
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[11/10/99]

The Writer's Life
A titan of American letters reflects on his timeless art and the sacrifices it exacts.
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[11/09/99]

Dear Mr. Blue
Murder, she wrote
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By Garrison Keillor
[11/09/99]

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Gibberish yes, but not as bad as their grammatical but tasteless attempt to pay tribute to their agent (who also deserves better), with a quote from a notorious pimp: She "is a gifted literary agent and a particularly fine one ... 'Good counselors lack no clients,' Pompey says in 'Measure for Measure.'" Um, yes, Pompey does say that, but his "counselors" are diseased hookers; his "clients" are sleazy johns. But, hey, it's a quotation from Shakespeare, so it's a classy compliment, right? This is the method they use throughout the book, ripping quotations out of context whenever they need some bardic citation to buttress some buy-low-sell-high truism about getting ahead in the corporate world. Repeatedly they seem unable to make the elementary distinction between what "Shakespeare says" and what one of his characters says.

The book is divided into five "Acts," each section devoted to a single play that Augustine and Adelman "analyze" for its go-go biz wisdom, mixing quotations from the play at hand with homilies and anecdotes from various corporate gurus and New Economy poohbahs. It's hard to decide which of the five plays they misrepresent most completely. In "Act I: On Leadership" we get an incredibly simplistic, triumphalist vision of "Henry V" that makes the play all about winning, ignoring those currents of irony (which Kenneth Branagh astutely brought out in his film) that suggest a more complex reading.

Consider, for instance, Shakespeare's decision to focus closely and at length in the first act of "Henry V" on the corrupt bargain the newly crowned Henry makes with the church: sparing it a massive land seizure in return for the bishops' promise to legitimate Henry's ambiguous claim to the French throne. It's a claim Henry uses to justify the prosecution of a completely self-glorifying and unnecessary "Wag the Dog"-type war in which thousands are slaughtered to bolster the monarch's personal prestige and power. Shakespeare's close focus on the corrupt foundations of the war suggests that his play is not merely the simple-minded jingoism some Marxist types (and of course our "Shakespeare in Charge" authors) see it as.

That complexity is lost on Augustine and Adelman. Instead, they treat Henry's corrupt bargain as a really smart move that turned a pointless slaughter into a "holy war." "War offers a great opportunity" for "any new and especially young executive," they advise us. (Aspiring Slobodan Milosevices, take note!) But "only if he wins." There you have it: the Bard reduced to Vince Lom-bard-i. Their uncritical worship of strength and power threatens to cross the line from Foucault to fascist, but it's less Mussolini than Machiavelli: Winning justifies anything. To celebrate Henry's habit of summarily executing former allies and French captives, they throw in a line from "King Lear": "To be tender minded does not become a sword." They are evidently not bothered one bit that this comes from the mouth of one of Shakespeare's most heartless villains, Edmund, a ruthless schemer and murderer who manages to get his own father's eyes gouged out of his head. (Smart executive move -- Dad was in his way.)

It gets worse in "Act II: Confronting Change," when Augustine and Adelman focus on "The Taming of the Shrew" in order to celebrate the stratagems of the loutish Petrucchio, of all people. They fawn over his crude efforts to break the spirit of an independent woman as if these were the brilliant and admirable acts of a master biz whiz. But, hey, no problem with our guys; if it's in Shakespeare, if Petrucchio's the nominal hero, everything he does must be wise and good. He's the very "model for today's corporate executive who must initiate, guide and deal with change."

It's actually fun, after a while, to watch their fawning love of winners above all else lead them (and the poor souls who turn to this book for lead-and-succeed wisdom) deeper into confusion. So eager are they to celebrate success -- no matter by who, no matter by what means or for what ends -- that they start praising the "executive skill" of Cassius, leader of the plot to murder Caesar. They treat the assassination of a head of state as if it were some pep rally: "Cassius and his clique are pumped as they head to the Capitol for their final dealing with Caesar" ("final dealing"?).

But wait, once the tide turns against the assassins, our fair-weather authors jump hastily to the other side ("By now Cassius should be wondering about his CEO's judgment"). Now we are told Mark Antony is the genius management guy. ("Antony avoids three common errors of contemporary corporate communications.") Grasping for quotes or scanning their concordance for lines, they reduce Shakespeare to a mouthpiece for the obvious. They perform a similar about-face on Richard II, at one point praising him for his "forthright manner" (thus twisting that hesitant, indecisive and impractical monarch's character beyond recognition). But then they turn around and savage poor Richard II in another section for failure to be forthright, for being too dreamy and wishy-washy.

Things get positively surreal -- and ugly -- in Act IV, when Augustine and Adelman try to tiptoe around the anti-Semitism in "The Merchant of Venice" in order to mine it for supposedly valuable business lessons about "Risk Management." The Shylock play, they tell us, "explores such volatile issues as anti-Semitism and racial prejudice, ethnic stereotyping and gender restrictions" -- using the weasel word "explore" to make it sound like it's some high-minded after-school special. In fact, for many people this play causes problems not necessarily resolvable with a smiley-faced solution -- not because it "explores" anti-Semitism, but because its leading, most sympathetic characters exemplify it. The distinguished British critic John Gross (former lead daily book reviewer for the New York Times), in "Shylock: A Legend and Its Legacy," argues that anti-Semitism is inextricable, inseparable from the character of the play, not just the characters in the play.

Thoughtful, principled people could disagree, but, hey, our guys don't even give it a second thought. They're all "pumped" to celebrate the brilliant management techniques Portia uses to humiliate the Jew Shylock. And so we get language like this: "Portia clamps the snare [on Shylock] tighter still ... Hearing this the courtroom crowd cheers as Shylock sinks lower ... Beaten Shylock says he'll simply walk away ... In response [Portia utters] another soft but piercing 'Tarry, Jew' ... Shylock slinks away utterly defeated." Way to go, Portia! Way to beat the Jew! What a loser that Shylock is! Let's learn all the management wisdom we can from this heart-warming victory.

Next page | Hamlet's just so whiny, but Claudius -- what a genius at crisis management!