Slab Rat

I found it an hilarious, compulsively readable and wickedly funny take on corporate America. If I had to describe this book it would be a hybrid between the movie THE SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS, the Kingsley Amis book LUCKY JIM with a dash of Martin Amis' MONEY thrown in with a shake of Hornby's HIGH FIDELITY and a side order of Robert Altman's THE PLAYER. If those movies and books are to your liking, then this book will be to your liking too.Having worked in advertising and been around people just like this (self-important hoo-ha's hellbent on destroying each other while clawing their way to the top) I can say that Heller's pitch-perfect descriptions and hair-trigger style fits the hairpin turns of most people's workaday existences. Everyone is bored or pretending to be busy or worried about who's going to be promoted or fired. The machinations of who has the power and what they're doing with it are the important things in their lives while the product itself (in the book's case IT magazine, in my case advertising) are mere by-products, also-rans--Miss Congeniality as it were to the really important issues like who gets you coffee or do you fetch someone else's coffee for them.There were lots of scenes where I was frantic with laughter--because the scenario I'd just read was either so implausible as to be true or because I'd done something or thought something like Zach had done myself at some other time. (Liz's goodbye party was perfect. Dead-on, perfect. I have lived that moment as a matter of fact and when she tells the people she worked with how she thought they were all "really, really mean" I was bowled over.) Corporate Americans are heinous, ugly creatures and Mr. Heller's acidic, depiction of them felt accurate, real and true. When the quote from ON THE WATERFRONT is used ("I think a man can live longer without ambition") I cheered. No more ambition. More niceness. And three cheers for Ted Heller!

Inventive, fast-paced and hysterically funny, Slab Rat traces the Machiavellian office antics of Zachery Post, an editor (and senior-editor wannabe) at a glitzy NY-based mag (It). Although the author has obviously kicked around the publishing biz, It magazine is a brilliantly-rendered any-job. The monthly editorial meetings that author Heller describes will remind you of your own job, no matter where you work: backstabbing, brown-nosing and other essential human charms are all on riotous display (sound familiar?). Meanwhile, brief excerpts from various of It magazine's stories and columns will have you in stitches. Protagonist Post is an imposter in the literary tradition of Gatsby (but, as Post himself notes, without the mansion); passing himself off, by virtue of a heavily trumped-up resume, as one of the well-educated, moneyed young people that seem to succeed at It--a place where Euro-pretensions are an apparent prerequisite to advancement. Post's blatant (and hilariously contemptible) office and bedroom politicking, coupled with his own self-doubt and laughable failures, make him one of the most memorable anti-heroes of the last ten years. The minor characters that populate It's hallways and conference rooms are diabolically drawn and scathingly funny. This book packs a terrific one-two punch: the plot will have you up way past your bedtime and Heller's hilarious writing will have you howling.

Ambitious smartass Zachary Post is the morally challenged narrator of "Slab Rat," Ted Heller's darkly hilarious take on sex and office politics in the ripe-for-satire world of magazine publishing. (The title refers to the young professionals working in New York City skyscrapers.) Post is a sex-obsessed, wisecracking cynic. For years he's been an associate editor at It, a Versailles Publishing magazine. Versailles also publishes magazines with titles like Here, Him, She, Boy, and Ego. Post landed the job with a puffed-up resume that masks his very humble background. He wants to move up; he also wants to bag Leslie, the mag's British graphic designer. The only thing standing in his way is a new editor named Mark Larkin. Larkin makes life hell for Post and his pal, Willie Lister. This being a dark comedy, Post and Lister see only one way out of their predicament: kill Larkin. Post really doesn't want to commit murder, but he comes up with an ingenious way to rid himself of Larkin without getting blood on his hands. Heller, a magazine writer and photo editor himself, does a nice job of conveying the dynamics of a workplace crawling with the young and clever. He successfully aims for funny, while creating central characters who are quite human. Some may fault him for an overly nasty villain - Larkin is an arrogant, conniving racist and anti-Semite who is not above from money from a corpse. "Slab Rat" skewers the backstabbing, image-obsessed men and women of the magazine world. (One editor hires Richard Avedon to take her passport photo.) It also boasts some very entertaining sex scenes, including one involving Post's efforts to ditch a spent condom. It's only February, but "Slab Rat" may end up being the funniest book of the year.

Smart, sexy, and slick...this is an urban tale of publishing peril that sends you into satirical heaven. I was so sad to reach the end that I read it again and found it even smarter the second time around. Heller is smooth and clever, creating characters of moral disrepute that find warm and fuzzy places in your heart. You find yourself rooting for the reprehensible, sympathizing with the sinister, and, if you live in NY and work in publishing, wondering if this might not be better classified as non-fiction. If this is his first novel, I can't wait for the next...anyone this sharp and smooth has more to give.

Slab Rat is getting a rap as a media insider's novel, which isn't entirely true: The story within is relevant to anyone who has ever worked in an office, wanted to get ahead, and wasn't sure how far he or she would go to get there.It's also hysterical. Gags slip by, you laugh, and then a couple of days later you see something that reminds you of the book and you find yourself cracking up all over again.