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Email Address: Follow The Agency Review The Agency Review Pages 2012 – The Year in (The Agency) Review 2013 – The Year in (The Agency) Review 2014 – The Year in (The Agency) Review 2015 – The Year in (The Agency) Review 2016 – The Year in (The Agency) Review 2017 – The Year in (The Agency) Review 2018 – The Year in (The Agency) Review 2019 – The Year in (The Agency) Review 2020 – The Year in (The Agency) Review 2021 – The Year in (The Agency) Review 60 Minute Brand Strategist A Beautiful Constraint A Big Life (In Advertising) A Double Scotch A Generation of Sociopaths A Technique for Producing Ideas About Ad Nauseam Ad Nomad Adland Admen, Mad Men and the Real World of Advertising Aerotropolis: The Way We’ll Live Next Agency: Starting a Creative Firm in the Age of Digital Marketing All The Single Ladies An Interview with Ajaz Ahmed An Interview with Dan Goldgeier An Interview with Dave Marinaccio An Interview with Dominik Imseng An Interview with Earl Swift An Interview with Fritz Grobe & Stephen Voltz An Interview with George Lois An Interview with Gideon Amichay An Interview with Grant McCracken An interview with Idris Mootee An Interview with Jane Maas An Interview with Jim Walls An Interview with Joe Boyd An Interview with Ken Segall An Interview with Kevin Roberts An Interview with Lisa Cron An Interview with Luke Sullivan An Interview with Marc Levinson An Interview with Michael Moss An Interview with Nigel Hollis An Interview with Pat Pujolas An Interview with Randall Rothenberg An Interview with Richard L. 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Wired for Story Women Want More Work Wise World Changers £9.99 Twitter Updates Why are advertising agencies so bad at selling themselves? And how can they get better at it? Karl Sakas offers a p… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 40 minutes ago Imagine if #PaulKinsey and #StanRizzo had gotten together and written a light little look at how everyone sorta hat… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 50 minutes ago Why the events of 1606 have a lot more to do with you than you think they do. (they’d kind of have to, right?) We r… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 58 minutes ago Why there’s a fine line between confidence and madness and how to not cross it. Unless, of course, you want to. We… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 1 hour ago Sometimes if you look over the shoulder of @JeffPassan you might see @BenLindbergh & @SamMillerBB’s book… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 1 hour ago Follow @theagencyreview Blogroll Ads of the World http://dingosbreakfast.wordpress.com The Devil's Work Recent Posts New Review Archives January 2012 Categories Reviews Dr. Samuel Johnson once said “He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.” Some of us know this because Hunter S. Thompson used it as a sort of touchstone in his classic “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”. And it is well to reference Dr. Thompson at the beginning of this review, not simply because Mr. Beigbeder uses another line from the good doctor to kick off the fifth section of his novel-cum-memoir-cum-roman-a-clef. Nor simply because Mr. Beigbeder namechecks from the opening pages with the rapid-fire desperation of a coked-up rapper in a hostile room. Aldous Huxley, Charles Bukowski, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Marcel Proust, Tom Ford and Unabomber Ted Kaczynski all drop in at some point. No, the most important reason for launching this review of Frédéric Beigbeder’s (in)famous book with Dr. Johnson’s thoughts about the unreasonable behaviour of men is because it sums up in about sixteen words what it would appear Mr. Beigbeder is trying to get at in nearly 85,000 and yet which he never quite seems to arrive at. £9.99, which was originally published in Mr. Beigbeder’s native France under the title “99 Francs”, ostensibly tells the story of how the narrator, Octave Parengo, a creative allegedly based on Mr. Beigbeder who works at an agency allegedly based on Y&R Paris, rises through the ranks over the course of a few weeks even as he is hell bent on getting himself fired. How is he going to get himself fired? By writing a book exposing all the stupid things he does – and is forced to do – as a creative at an agency. Like what? Like deal with unreasonable clients. Like dodge the slings and arrows of petty office politics. Like endure the soul-crushing misery of being ridiculously overpaid to sell meaningless products in a world where there is misery and pain and duplicity and mendacity. Why, it’s enough to make a guy fly private… For example, here’s Frédéric – er, Octave – cataloguing all the things he has in his absurdly large apartment, on page 92. And 93. And 94. And 95. From Berluti shoes to an Eames chair to a fridge filled with Petrossian caviar to pictures of himself with Jude Law and Naomi Campbell and Posh & Becks. And here is Mr. Beigbeder – oops, Mr. Parengo – describing the sex he has had, or will have, or wants to have with any number of starlets, super models, co-workers, prostitutes, and/or teenagers, either consecutively or concurrently. And here’s poor Frédéric – sorry again, Octave – complaining that “This whole civilization rests on the false longings that you dream up. It’s going to die. Our way of life is a big suicide.” And then here he is (which one? I’ve forgotten…) showing us his deeper side, comparing his life to a nightmare and asking the reader “How exactly do you wake yourself up when you’re not sleeping?” Bitch, please. What the hell is wrong with the people in our industry that they feel compelled to produce these superficial, poorly plotted, and abysmally written exercises which paint us as spoiled, superficial, asinine prats who piss away ridiculous amounts of money doing nothing of any value and who then have the audacity to whine about it from the comfort of their first class airplane seats and glass tower office blocks? Don’t get me wrong – a lot of us are. Maybe even most of us. But I would be willing to bet that most people in every industry are. I am willing to believe that advertising is not the only industry in which every person is not a nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize. It’s the law of averages, mate – or, to paraphrase William S. Burroughs, it’s because 99% of everything is crap and that includes human beings. The difference, it would seem is that people in other industries don’t feel compelled to publish the feces of the most annoying of their ilk. And yet here we are, with another nominally talented embarrassment embarrassing us with his self-pitying ruminations on why he’s so self-pitying. Why he can’t fall in love. Why he does so much coke. Why he isn’t fulfilled. Is this business difficult? Of course it is. Are we often misunderstood? Of course we are. Is it exhausting, heartbreaking, and disappointing? Do we often find ourselves ranting about things that in the grand scheme of things don’t matter at all? You mean like this book? Sigh. Yes, I’m afraid we do. £9.99 by Frédéric Beigbeder was published by Macmillan UK on 07/05/02 – order it from Amazon here or from Barnes & Noble here – or pick it up at your local bookseller (find one here). Please be advised that The Agency Review is an Amazon Associate and as such earns a commission from qualifying purchases You May Also Want to Read: Adland by Mark Tungate Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor by Jerry Della Femina Share this: Twitter Facebook LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Like this: Like Loading... Leave a Reply Cancel reply Enter your comment here... Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: Email (required) (Address never made public) Name (required) Website You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out / Change ) You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out / Change ) You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out / Change ) Cancel Connecting to %s Notify me of new comments via email. Notify me of new posts via email. 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