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The Boss is Dead

The Boss is Dead: A Novel
Ron Pullins

2005 • 1-58510-177-X • paper • 128 pages • 5 ½ x 8 ½ • $9.95

| About the Author |  Reviews |

Interested in purchasing a copy?
     In the Newburyport area it is carried at the Jabberwocky Bookstore at the Tannery
     Or, your local bookstore can order it through Baker and Taylor (unless they already carry it!)
     Or, through www.Amazon.com or through www.bn.com (Barnes and Noble on line).
     Or, purchase directly from Focus by clicking here.

See Reviews on Amazon.com

For the author's press release as a pdf download, click here.

 Description                                             

The first in a series of short books and plays published by Focus. And the first by the boss.

 Author                                                    

Ron Pullins is a publisher and writer. His work has appeared in several journals. This novella first appeared as a stage play.
 

 Reviews                                                  

"What's the play about? It's all about expectations. Don't have 'em."

-- An insightful 11 year old speaking about the stage version of The Boss Is Dead

      Chris Mann, underachiever, occasional poet, and night manager of Burger Bear, is a kind of American Everyman. You can almost see Tom Hanks in the role. At one time or another, most of us have had that job slinging hash, driving delivery trucks, or bagging groceries. For that matter, is management really more than a pay-raise for the same humiliation and meaninglessness just farther up the food chain?

      The Boss is Dead packs a lot of ideas into a 124-page novella. It gets us to look at the many ways we compromise ourselves, how easily we succumb to petty hatreds, how readily we will oppress as we complain about our oppression. While Pullins recreates that familiar rogues gallery of temporary coworkers and creepy managers who insist upon taking the ridiculous seriously, he also makes us look at how willingly we will plot the downfall of others and how much self-loathing we will endure for the comfort of even the most miserable employment.

      Pullins avoids the convenient "post-modern" dodge of easy irony or affecting that anomie that flattens so much contemporary fiction. The Boss is Dead walks a tightrope between the brutal and vacant realism of Camus and the farcical absurdities of Kafka and Becket. Yet America, being what it is, supports the conceit. It's alternately funny and close to the bone. If Ron Pullins first novel has a few flaws, it definitely takes risks and sets its sights on the truth.

-- Brian Kologe, from Amazon.com review

      Chris, the night manager of a fast food restaurant, pulls the reader into his own alienation as he gradually tells us what it is like to work in this industry: extreme competition among the stores in the neighborhood and the chain to sell as much unhealthy, grease laden food as they can, cooked and served by a cadre of teenagers whose anomie is laced with that of the customers who are hypnotized by the cheap food and lured by a cheap thrill (someone dressed up as Burger Bear).

      Chris, who wants out of the industry as badly as he want to please Keith, his manager, or Wackoff, the district manager, is somehow unable to please either. He hangs with the teenager help in vacant parking lots after hours drinking and having no-nothing conversations. While he struggles with his own lack of acceptance in the fascist managerial environment, he in turn meets out the same savage humiliation on young Sorenson, who manages to keep a smile on his face even when told to crawl under the grill and clean up every speck of grease on the wall and floor.

      As Chris attempts to move up the food chain of management, he uncovers a company illegality - stealing the used grease and selling it - that he is sure will have his boss fired and the store (at last) will be his. The reader is caught in the wonderment of why Chris wants to continue working at the store, more or less dedicating his life to being manager, and Chris' obvious loathing for the entire operation. The last few pages give a relief of fresh air that maybe Chris will do something else with his life - although the reader will not be able to step into a fast-food restaurant again without carrying the images Pullins has created - anomie, fascism, humiliation - all to give us the cheap food we think we need and deserve.

-- Pam Burris, Stonybrook NY
On The Boss is Dead, the play

Published last month, "The Boss is Dead" is a kind-of "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" for the "want-fries-with-that?" generation, but without the 2,000 years of Western philosophy with which to contend. The burger joint is a machine like any other and, to function properly - to feed the people and corporate beancounters - has to be properly maintained. And, with all apologies to Pirsig, the larger point is that the burger you're working on is a burger called yourself.      Not that our hero actually understands this. He's so caught up in Orwellian double-think and, perhaps, unacknowledged Oedipal frustrations, it's all he can do to keep up with the evening rush. He wants the Boss dead because he wants to replace him, and he will do whatever it takes - even becoming him -- to make that happen. It is the story of burgers, of society and of us. It's a battle for life and for sanity.        The characters will ring true to anyone who has worked in the fast food industry. And who hasn't? It is, for many of us, a rite of passage. Most of us walk away from it. Who needs that kind of ... well, special sauce? Some, however, try to get ahead and, in the process, sell their souls - without even knowing it. Oh, good evening, Mr. Mann. Would you like fries with that? Perhaps a clue as well?      To be fair, Chris knows what's going on. He knows he's at a dead end. He acknowledges it whenever he runs into or speaks with Davidson, who got bounced from Interburger and holds a similar job at the burger joint up the road. Davidson "is me reflected in a cheap mirror a few years from how," he says. "Unless something changes, I will be him, doing what he does and dying." Will he get ahead at Interburger? No. He's already been branded. But you can dream, can't you? -- J.C. Lockwood, Merrimac Valley Current