Diary of a Company Man: Losing a Job, Finding a Life
The funny, insightful, and inspiring story of a 1960s campus radical turned corporate PR man who finds himself, along with his fellow baby boomers, in a place called “Too Young to Retire and Too Old to Hire”
James S. Kunen—author of The Strawberry Statement, an account of the 1968 student uprising at Columbia University—chronicles his adventures on the road to finding meaning in work and life. He traces his evolution from a rebellious youth who sees working as a kind of death, to a laid-off corporate executive who experiences not working as a kind of death, to a reinvented and reinvigorated individual who discovers something important and meaningful to do.
The experience of falling victim to America’s recession-ravaged economy (and the people who run it) leads him along a career path far different from anything he had planned. After years of making a living, Kunen finally learns how to make a life. Diary of a Company Man will be a revelation not only to baby boomers but to young people trying to figure out what to do with their lives.
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James Kunen has done it again!,
James Kunen has done it again!
After waiting over 40 years for a worthy successor to his blockbuster, “The Strawberry Statement: Notes of a College Revolutionary”, Jim has produced another fabulously readable memoir, “Diary of a Company Man: Losing a Job, Finding a Life” that answers the question, “I wonder what ever happened to that guy?”
Jim and I were bookends to the revolution in the 1960′s. From being classmates at Andover, Jim went on to drape black bunting over Alma Mater while occupying the Columbia University administration building. I, on the other hand, was in Vietnam finishing my 6th month of combat with the United States Marine Corps. It was April of 1968.
From there, incredibly, we both eventually sold out to corporate America and pursued not dissimilar paths up the ladder – Jim with Time Life/Time Warner/AOL Time Warner/to whatever it’s called now. I went into the insurance brokerage business.
Eventually Kunen got fired, having survived (and having had a front row seat for) all of the craziness at Time that ensued. He’d been there 18 years (O.K., really 20 if you read the book…) Eventually I got fired as well after a comparatively paltry 16 years.
I went on to write “Loon: A Marine Story” (Random House 2009), a memoir about my time in the 1960′s. Jim was a most helpful and willing guide to me when I began to write. He was the only published author that I knew. He also plays a role in my story (please see “Loon” page 138).
For those of us who watched the Time/Warner saga, and all of the other corporate shenanigans of the past 20 years, unfold from afar, “Diary of a Company Man” provides a cat-bird’s seat to the inner workings of a company desperate to adapt while while clinging to its Luce roots. Far from a corporate tell-all, “Dairy” is thoughtful, insightful and – for you thirsty Kunen fans – a beautifully written account of his experience at Time/Warner. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, etc.
In one of my favorite reviews of “The Strawberry Statement”, Kunen was labeled a “radical with a sense of humor.” In “Loon” I wrote that “the mass market was ready for anybody who had a sense of humor.”
Kunen has now brought his masterfully gifted eye (along with every bit of his sense of humor) back to us.
A corporate castoff with a sense of humor? Wow! Are we ever ready for that!
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|From Strawberry Statement to Company Man: Another Movie (I hope),
I bought and started James Kunen’s DIARY OF A COMPANY MAN yesterday, thinking I would read it over the next month or so. I just finished it because I couldn’t put it down. The first part of the book is about Kunen’s experience in corporate America. I laughed out loud (and chuckled to myself) as he turned a sardonic wit on his climb, his colleagues and bosses. I also felt queasy when he described the day he lost his job and was denied access to the computer he had used to promote the company. In the next part of the book, I felt awe and affection for the ways he refashioned himself and came to adore and inspire his immigrant students. His love for, and playfulness with, the English language made it a little difficult to write this review. I kept wondering how he would write this sentence or that. And I did feel a little guilty while reading the book –next time I stay In a hotel, I will leave a bigger tip for the immigrant woman who cleans the room; next time, I hear a speech from a CEO explaining layoffs, I will attend more carefully to the prose that makes it all sound so efficient and wonder which words were added and which deleted (and consider whether or when that speechwriter will lose her job); next time an immigrant doorman opens a door for me in an apartment building, I will wonder if he was a doctor or engineer back home. This is a special book– lucid, witty, wise,imaginative, politically conscious, and insightful.
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