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November 1, 2007

geekery

MU Book Review: oPtion$: The Secret Life of Steve Jobs

Posted Nov. 1, ’07, 4:14 PM PT by Dan Pourhadi
Category | Geekery

options1.jpgDan and Derik — and much of the Macworld staff — may have received a copy of Leopard a week before it went on sale, and selfishly refused to let me in on the spotted goodness…but I’ve one-upped them. I got an advance copy of something even better: Fake Steve Jobs’ new book, oPtion$: The Secret Life of Steve Jobs, which goes on sale today.

And no, I didn’t share. Which is unfortunate for them because, honestly: this is one funny book.

Not that I didn’t want to share. They just don’t live near me, and I’d have to ship it out — but I couldn’t do that because I needed it to write this review, and I didn’t have much time and what with shipping costs and the amount of time it takes for mail to get from A to B (unless you pay like a million bucks for expedited shipping which totally isn’t worth it) and hell, maybe one of the mail people would’ve seen it and thought, “Oh. My. God. It’s Fake Steve’s book! I have to steal it and read it!” Yeah. Then what?

Besides, they didn’t share Leopard. Bastards.

Anyway, I’m totally over that, so let’s get to the good stuff: Click on to read my pseudo-review of Fake Steve’s hi-larious novel.

Since I’m a tech writer and have never written a book review in my life (and I don’t think book “reports” count, since I never actually read the books and always relied on SparkNotes anyway), I’m going to write this in the style with which I’m most familiar, and seems most fitting: I’m going to write it like an Apple product review.

Hardware

“Why does that book look like an iPod?” asked a friend.

And that wasn’t an uncommon or unexpected question. The book really does look like an iPod: white on one side, shiny silver on the other — and oPtion$ spelled in iPod font, dead-center on the cover. Only thing missing was “Designed by Apple in California” on the bottom.

The hard-cover design of the book makes it pretty durable, and it feels just right in the hand. Normally when I’m reading a book it’s either too big or too small or hard to keep open or a pain in the ass to flip through pages — but oPtion$ is just the right size, and the pages flip beautifully.

But, like iPods, the shiny silver front-cover sleeve is easily susceptible to finger-prints and smudges — not hard to imagine this being an intentional attribute, and a nice touch. Not only that: but opposite the iPods, the white is on the back of the book, with the shiny silver on the front, emphasizing the obvious parodical nature of the book.

But they say never judge a book by its cover (loons), so let’s get to the good stuff:

Plot

In oPtion$, Steve Jobs battles the now-diminished-but-then-dramatic Apple stock options “scandal,” where there was speculation that several Apple execs received illegally back-dated shares. At the time, dozens of Silicon Valley companies were being investigated, and the book makes it sound like a witch-hunt: in one instance, federal agents bust into the private-jet airport where the Valley big-shots keep their planes and perp-walk high-profile software company execs out the door. Jobs, his best friend Larry Ellison (CEO of Oracle), and the rest of the digital big-wigs sit watching, horrified.

Jobs’ entire life is torn to pieces when the Apple Board hires outside counsel to investigate the backdating, disrupting Apple product development and Steve’s natural creative processes. So consumed and distracted by the now-unbalanced world in which he works, Jobs spirals out of his tranquil, almost-surreal state of being, and is forced to deal not only with the looming threat of prison and a Board of Directors which seems on the brink of repeating the mistakes of Apple’s past, but also with deep childhood issues that dig at the very core of Jobs’ personality.

The plot itself exaggerates and dramatizes the entire situation — the perp walks, the underwear-wetting Board, ESPN news guys talking about the SEC investigation, other CEOs encouraging Jobs to flee the country, etc. — but gives the book a good structure and story. Instead of just reading about Steve Jobs’ every-day life, we see him battle a difficult, stressful situation, experiencing both ups and downs, and revealing virtually every aspect of his character.

But the exaggerated plot really makes the book a winner: If you’re a follower of Apple news, you’ll see all the little parallels and allusions to actual Apple/Mac events, explained and detailed through Fake Steve’s outrageously outlandish — yet strangely logical, which makes it even funnier — tunnel-view perspective.

But the plot is not what we care about when we read this book: We want Jobs. And boy, do we get him.

Characters

Steve Jobs is a god. At least, that’s how he’s portrayed in oPtion$: Almost every character, from Jobs’ personal assistant Ja’red, to stock-analyst Cramer (who says Jobs should be elected “president of the world”) to California Governor Arnold Schwar…to the California Governor, praises Jobs as a world-changer, a legend — an infallible titan among men. “This is not a normal human being,” says Arnold to a cop who threw Jobs in jail for referring to him as “sugar tits.” “This is an enlightened being.” Arnold expresses shame in the state of California, and even offers to back Jobs in a lawsuit against the state for his unfair imprisonment.

Yet at the same time, Jobs is looked at and treated like a child by those involved in the options probe — which isn’t confusing: he acts like one. Apple Board director Tom Bowditch refers to him as “kid,” and rightly so: the book is written in first-person, through Jobs’ eyes — and at times it feels like, instead of reading a book written by the CEO of a major, successful tech company, you’re reading the ramblings of a 15-year-old with ADD. While Bowditch yells at him for not taking the options thing seriously, Jobs barely processes a word, instead wishing he were somewhere else, or commenting on the spit coming out of Bowdith’s mouth, or whining about how stupid the whole situation is. Jobs is there to be creative, not to be a business man — and he acts like the kid who puts his hands over his ears and yells “lalala” when he’s being told something he doesn’t want to hear.

Jobs’ character is, for lack of a better word and at the risk of sounding repetitive, completely and utterly outrageous. His foul mouth, his reverence of psychedelics and hatred for Nancy Reagan because of her “Just Say No” campaign, his shocking-even-for-Jobs narcissism (“Look,” Jobs says to his imaginary critic, “wouldn’t you be an egomaniac if you woke up one day and found out you were me? You know you would”), his child-like antics with Ellison and Bono — it’s hard to imagine anyone like this, much less the battle-hardened CEO of Apple, Inc.

But FSJ plays on the Jobs stereotype. His firing practices are just what Mac geeks joke about for years: firing people for not firing people he asks them to fire, telling people to fire themselves, random firings to keep employees scared, even a game he calls Sniper — make some criteria (in one case, the first person who comes up to Jobs and speaks to him before being spoken to), and whoever meets the criteria: pow, they’re fired.

The other characters are just as wild: Ellison is a promiscuous stoner (“He’s got this incredible collection of bongs,” notes Jobs) who barely works and spends most of his time flying around and pranking others, acting like a twenty-something heir to a billion-dollar fortune without a care in the world. He and Jobs play a game they call Rat Patrol — they drive around the city in a Hummer, and get points for every transvestite hooker they shoot with a super-soaker.

Bono is no better: an over-the-top, cheap-ass, obnoxious, self-righteous drunk who spends hours preaching and crying about the environment and the injustices in Africa. Jobs calls him the only person he knows who’s more self-absorbed than he is.

What’s amazing about all of this, about every character in the book — all of them crazy, exaggerated, insane, outrageous, totally outlandish and incredibly juvenile — is they’re actually imaginable. Jobs is obviously not Jobs, Ellison is obviously not Ellison — but they’re not supposed to be. They’re parodies. And FSJ played on our perceptions of them so well that while you’re reading the book, it’s easy to imagine them as the people they’re supposed to be, as opposed to the fictional characters they are. You won’t throw down the book because Jobs is so fake it’s not worth reading — you’ll become enamored because Jobs is so stereotypically Jobs that you’re willing to play along.

While the book is supposed to be — and unquestionably is — funny, there are brief pauses of subtle seriousness, chapters where Jobs reflects on his childhood: specifically, what it feels like being an orphan, and how it has impacted, even mandated, his successes. His parents abandoned him, so he must not be “good enough,” and therefore all of his successes are achieved because of his desire to prove them wrong, to show them he is worth something. Not only does this add deep emotion to an otherwise humor-driven story, it makes the Jobs character dynamic, real. He calls everyone “frigtard” and fires employees for the hell of it, yet you sympathize with him, you feel for him — he’s more than a talking stereotype, he’s a believable person.

The Conclusion

I wish I could detail every bit of humor in this book — Apple’s Windows Virus Creation Team (WVCT) run by Russian hackers; Moshe, the former Israeli general in charge of Apple security; Apple’s design-the-ads-before-the-products policy; other Ellison stories; Jobs’ brain-washing abilities; his encounter with the Disney board; etc., etc,. etc. But then I’d be reproducing the entire book.

It’s undoubtedly a must-have for all Apple/Steve Jobs fans: the clever deployment of character stereotypes, the humorously outrageous interpretations and explanations of actual Apple events (for example: why the WWDC ‘06 keynote was guided mostly by Apple execs instead of Jobs himself) — it’s Apple and Steve Jobs portrayed exactly as most of us like to imagine: a computer company that’s more a producer of art than tech, with a meditating, Zen-dependent, emotional-yet-ruthless CEO hell-bent on changing the world.

To those unfamiliar with Apple and Steve Jobs, to those who don’t read the Mac blogs and follow Apple news, it’ll be a confusing, maybe tedious read.

But for diehard Mac fans, it’s one of the funniest books you’ll ever buy. Fake Steve Jobs — a.k.a. Daniel Lyons — wrote a real novel based on his own little created Apple world. And I was grinning the entire read.

Worth the purchase; 5 out of 5.

Actually, 6 out of 5, because I got a copy before Dan and Derik. Suckas.

Book: oPtion$: The Secret Life of Steve Jobs, a Parody
Author: Fake Steve Jobs (Daniel Lyons)
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Amazon Price: $15.61


2 Comments

Anonymous said:

Haha, this sounds really awesome :p

Great review...

November 1, 2007 4:49 PM
Andre Da Costa said:

The moment I saw the works Options, Stocks, Scandals. I said, forget it. This ain't worth reading. Steve Jobs should have done something about this guy and drop a big momma iPod revenue size lawsuit on his you know what. Impersonating me and writing garbage about me at the same time, how dare he?

This book is nothing but 15 minutes of fame, text edition.

November 1, 2007 4:50 PM

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