Authors: Max Barry
Company (43 page)
Acknowledgments
I AM ETERNALLY
grateful to those people who read my crappy first drafts and told me what they think. I know it's not easy to read three hundred pages of unbelievable characters and inexplicable plot developments, then craft an insightful, helpful response that doesn't also make me want to jump off a bridge. But somehow these people did it, and it's thanks to them that I managed to claw my way toward something that finally resembled a novel: Beth English, Roxanne Jones, Gregory Lister, Lindsay Lyon, and Dennis Widmyer.
Charles Thiesen, my mentor (or I'm his, I forget), read more drafts than I can remember and played cheerleader when I needed encouragement, and oracle when I needed advice.
Kassy Humphreys gave me a ton of great ideas exactly when I needed them, and, as if this wasn't enough, let me plunder huge tracts of her career for inclusion in the book. As she said, “It
would
be funny if it wasn't my life.”
Luke Janklow, my agent, continues to be the most dependable, supportive, and all-round awesome guy in the Universe.
It's thanks to Bill Thomas, my editor, that the final version of this book bears little resemblance to the one I sold him. That's a good thing, trust me. He helped turn a book I was happy with into one I loved.
And Jen, my wife, is perfect. Always.
ALSO BY MAX BARRY
Syrup
Jennifer Government
FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, MARCH 2007
Copyright � 2006 by Max Barry.
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 2006.
Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows:
Barry, Max.
Company :
a novel / by Max Barry.
p. cm.
1. Young men—Fiction. 2. Corporation—Fiction. 3. Business ethics—Fiction. 4. Work environment—Fiction. 5. Corporate culture—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3552.A7424C66 2005
813'.54�dc22
2005048498
eISBN: 978-0-307-27966-8
v3.0
