Word: fictions
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...science and psychology at Carnegie-Mellon, sees no restrictions on the science and believes that human intelligence will one day be recreated. Yet if an understanding is what onlookers seek, they had best concentrate on the reeasoning that spawned such efforts rather than on the possible realization of science fiction folklore...
...RECENT article in the New York Times Book Review, the author expressed surprise at the fact that American writers have for the most part overlooked the world of business when considering material for their fiction. The theatre of human drama, the article noted, remains outside the office and the dilemmas of career choice and advancement rarely figure in the plots of modern novels and short stories. Time and again, characters appear to us as parents, children, lovers or disembodied souls--always with professional identities lodged deep in the background...
...neglect by those who, whether they like it or not, are considered to be the voices of society. As the United States undergoes the transformation from a manufacturing society to a service and information one, one naturally looks for signs of this momentous shift in the pages of recent fiction, But, as a trip to the local bookstore will demonstrate, such is not the case...
There are good enough reasons to explain the incompatibility of fiction and business. While fiction seeks to examine the individual and that which is unique, business very often appears as a standardized mass phenomena. What interests producers and consumers of fiction are personal motives, the dilemmas of choice and the forces impinging on and emanating from individuals. Business, on the other hand, seems deterministic and dryly rational. Because business disdains personality and glorifies the ability to get a job done efficiently, it does not lend itself to fiction. Just try imagining a novel about the life of a venture capitalist...
...trimmed, and more attention given to the woefully rushed moments of tension between parents, lovers and bosses. But paradoxically, these laborious description also redeem the book and make it worth our attention, no matter how much stylistic damage they wreak. Though The Real World fails as a piece of fiction, it offers sobering insight into the white collar world. Revealed in all its stark vacuity is the antiseptic, materialistic world of budget sheets, computers and industry analyses that soaks up precious energy of today's young executives. Any humanist contemplating a business career should read The Real World before entering...