Why Paul's wife, Anita? That's the question that popped into my head during this chapter where Anita won't let Paul sleep because she's anxious that he's going to lose the promotion to Pittsburgh and he doesn't seem to care. She's seen how Finnerty's arrival has done something to her husband that she doesn't like. The sad thing is that what Finnerty has done has uplifted Paul in some way; Finnerty's allowed Paul to see that he doesn't have to live the enervating simulacrum of a life he's been living. He's given Paul a glimpse that maybe life doesn't have to be the life everybody expects from you, and maybe the life you've always felt obligated to live. And maybe that's what Anita fears most. She isn't just worried about their social standing and Paul's lack of ambition; she realizes that she is also part of that life Paul felt forced into. She's losing him.
Anita comes off as a shrew and maybe that's a stereotypical wife trope that's lived way longer than it should have. I blame the Adam and Eve myth that generally puts the wait of the sin on Eve and allows Adam to be a passive instrument in her nagging and temptation. But Vonnegut's twisting the myth somewhat here. In this case, Finnerty is the snake in the garden tempting Adam. Eve desperately doesn't want her helpmeet to lose his innocence. She wants the lie of Eden to survive. Mankind has built a sham Garden of Eden where everybody is supposedly cared for and happy and Finnerty has just slithered on in to tear it all down.
This short chapter also deals with some of Paul's father issues which crept up last chapter concerning Kroner. He's the patriarch and mentor of the organization, so much so that everybody calls his wife "Mom." Paul feels inadequate around him and has an innate need to please him. But that need is what has driven Paul's life, that need to make his own father proud. I've always said that the reason I lack ambition is that I don't give a fuck what my father thinks of me. It's apparently a pretty serious driving force in a young man's life. Anita has tried to use this against Paul (or to help him succeed which is sort of the same thing since Paul doesn't really care about the idea of "succeeding"). Early in their marriage, she framed a picture of Paul's father to place in the bedroom. This is a man she had never met. But she admired his success and his drive and projected all of that onto Paul (as has Kroner and probably everybody else in Paul's orbit). So now he has to live up to that picture of his father in the bedroom too! Ghastly!
If Paul eventually tries to embezzle from the company and smashes some of its machines and winds up being happier on the Reconstruction and Reclamation Crew, I'm going to assume Mike Judge's Office Space is the movie version of Player Piano. Except for the wife part. Even in the late 20th Century, comedies, for some reason, needed to also be romantic meet cute films so Peter needed to be single. But we still get a brief glimpse of the Anita role when the movie begins and his Anita (whose name is Anne! So close!) spends a short amount of screen time in the movie trying to get Peter to care more about success and eventually breaking up with him when he stops caring about work completely. His obligatory drive to succeed didn't need a wife anyway because he lives in America where the Garden of Eden illusion of safety and happiness is built around the capitalist idea of making more and more money, no matter how unhappy you are. In this chapter, Paul wonders at Finnerty's ability to quit his job, a quality that seems so foreign to him. How does one simply upend one's life so easily? What kind of courage must that take?
When I saw Office Space, I was like, "Yep. That's the world!" But I don't remember having the same feeling after reading Player Piano. I'm fairly certain I've read a lot of books in my life where I just enjoyed them without thinking too much about them. Or, and this is probably more true, I just forgot how much I thought about them because I just moved on to other things without writing any of my thoughts down. Which is why I've begun all these blogs in my 40s. I need to remember this crap! Office Space was so viscerally true and yet I'd never had an office job. But what I had learned and understood (thanks to my Grandfather, no doubt) was that a person in debt was never actually free. I always avoided debt (and, yes, I was privileged in many ways to be able to avoid debt, having no accidents, a strong family safety net, and a state college degree from the early 90s (so inexpensive! Sorry, Millennials and those who came after. Us Gen Xers maybe haven't been granted the resources and capital of the greedy Boomers but we, at least, lived in a world where we could be apathetic bean bag sitters and not have to worry too much overall) mostly because I wanted the freedom to say "I quit" to any job that made me feel like, and ultimately expected me to just take it because I had to, a corporate wage slave.
Again, I want to boldface this: I was lucky enough to choose to not go into debt. Many, many people simply have it forced on them because of capitalism. My grandparents, who lived three houses down from my mom's house (more privilege, really!), were instrumental in showing me how to live, and allowing me in many supportive ways, my best life. They were the best people I've ever known and I was lucky enough to be related to them.
Anita comes off as a shrew and maybe that's a stereotypical wife trope that's lived way longer than it should have. I blame the Adam and Eve myth that generally puts the wait of the sin on Eve and allows Adam to be a passive instrument in her nagging and temptation. But Vonnegut's twisting the myth somewhat here. In this case, Finnerty is the snake in the garden tempting Adam. Eve desperately doesn't want her helpmeet to lose his innocence. She wants the lie of Eden to survive. Mankind has built a sham Garden of Eden where everybody is supposedly cared for and happy and Finnerty has just slithered on in to tear it all down.
This short chapter also deals with some of Paul's father issues which crept up last chapter concerning Kroner. He's the patriarch and mentor of the organization, so much so that everybody calls his wife "Mom." Paul feels inadequate around him and has an innate need to please him. But that need is what has driven Paul's life, that need to make his own father proud. I've always said that the reason I lack ambition is that I don't give a fuck what my father thinks of me. It's apparently a pretty serious driving force in a young man's life. Anita has tried to use this against Paul (or to help him succeed which is sort of the same thing since Paul doesn't really care about the idea of "succeeding"). Early in their marriage, she framed a picture of Paul's father to place in the bedroom. This is a man she had never met. But she admired his success and his drive and projected all of that onto Paul (as has Kroner and probably everybody else in Paul's orbit). So now he has to live up to that picture of his father in the bedroom too! Ghastly!
If Paul eventually tries to embezzle from the company and smashes some of its machines and winds up being happier on the Reconstruction and Reclamation Crew, I'm going to assume Mike Judge's Office Space is the movie version of Player Piano. Except for the wife part. Even in the late 20th Century, comedies, for some reason, needed to also be romantic meet cute films so Peter needed to be single. But we still get a brief glimpse of the Anita role when the movie begins and his Anita (whose name is Anne! So close!) spends a short amount of screen time in the movie trying to get Peter to care more about success and eventually breaking up with him when he stops caring about work completely. His obligatory drive to succeed didn't need a wife anyway because he lives in America where the Garden of Eden illusion of safety and happiness is built around the capitalist idea of making more and more money, no matter how unhappy you are. In this chapter, Paul wonders at Finnerty's ability to quit his job, a quality that seems so foreign to him. How does one simply upend one's life so easily? What kind of courage must that take?
When I saw Office Space, I was like, "Yep. That's the world!" But I don't remember having the same feeling after reading Player Piano. I'm fairly certain I've read a lot of books in my life where I just enjoyed them without thinking too much about them. Or, and this is probably more true, I just forgot how much I thought about them because I just moved on to other things without writing any of my thoughts down. Which is why I've begun all these blogs in my 40s. I need to remember this crap! Office Space was so viscerally true and yet I'd never had an office job. But what I had learned and understood (thanks to my Grandfather, no doubt) was that a person in debt was never actually free. I always avoided debt (and, yes, I was privileged in many ways to be able to avoid debt, having no accidents, a strong family safety net, and a state college degree from the early 90s (so inexpensive! Sorry, Millennials and those who came after. Us Gen Xers maybe haven't been granted the resources and capital of the greedy Boomers but we, at least, lived in a world where we could be apathetic bean bag sitters and not have to worry too much overall) mostly because I wanted the freedom to say "I quit" to any job that made me feel like, and ultimately expected me to just take it because I had to, a corporate wage slave.
Again, I want to boldface this: I was lucky enough to choose to not go into debt. Many, many people simply have it forced on them because of capitalism. My grandparents, who lived three houses down from my mom's house (more privilege, really!), were instrumental in showing me how to live, and allowing me in many supportive ways, my best life. They were the best people I've ever known and I was lucky enough to be related to them.
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