i can't remember how i found out about "truth in advertising", i want to say it was featured in a barnes and noble email or maybe a goodreads one. but i do remember that nick hornby was referenced in one of the reviews. (its actually a publishers weekly quote, i found it on the back cover: "a comic tour de force; fans of nick hornby and jonathan tropper will have a new author to watch for.") since i love, nick hornby, i had to check it out. figured it would be the "high fidelity" of advertising. and it kinda was.
*this entry will contain some spoilers. if you plan on reading the book, read it first than read this blog.
"the truth in advertising" is the story of finbar dolan, the name is odd but i like it, though he goes by fin (love the nickname too, reminds me of "adventure time" . . . and i just realized . . . "glee", hmm maybe not so cute, after all). fin works in advertising (duh?) and is going through a mid-life crisis. though mid-life crisis seems like a misnomer, he is only 40, but if you think about it, if the average man lives til 80, than 40 is mid-life. it's weird because when i think mid-life crisis, i think kevin spacey "american beauty", but i didn't think of fin as that old. it could be that i was in high school when i first saw "american beauty" and far from 40 and now that i'm a closer to it, think of it as young. i imagined fin as someone younger, like a not-as-hot-bradley-cooper (though i just googled and cooper is only 38).
anyway, back to fin's mid-life crisis. it's not so much a mid-life crisis, but a "what i'm a doing with my life" funk, which i feel is not a product of age, but a side effect of being born after 1970. i feel like my friends and i are constantly in this funk, not so much because of how old we are, but because we are part of that "everyone gets a gold star" generation. (this is what klosterman discussed in "the visible man" if you read that entry.) as kids we were never really awarded for hard work but were constantly given positive reinforcement, as a result our work ethic isn't the greatest. plus we have always been taught that work should make us happy but the fact of the matter work should just pays the bills. as a result we end up on this search for work that makes us happy but this search is frivolous because work is never fun no matter how much you think you love your job. so though fin is in advertising, he is questioning, "is advertising really for me?"
so normally if your work life isn't stellar, it's okay because you can fault your home life. however, fin's home life is non-existent. he was engaged but he got cold feet. about eight months prior to when we meet him in the novel, he had just called off his wedding. it's kinda sad but really not that horrible because better cold feet than a nasty divorce. there is also a beautiful story about him calling off his wedding and a gravy boat. it was sad and lovely and could be a great short story on its own.
so this is fin when we meet him. i would like to say that things get better for him, but since this is a novel, it gets worse before it all sorts out in the end.
lets start with the advertising, because the title includes the word advertising. fin is a copywriter and his big account is diapers, think huggies but not cos kenney prolly couldn't get the rights to use their name so came up with "snugglies" to use. so the big news is that snugglies designed the first flushable, biodegradable diaper and decided to launch this new product with . . . a SUPERBOWL COMMERICAL!!!! this is exciting for fin, cos it is the superbowl. however, he has a family emergency that makes this even more of a challenge. but before that, a word on superbowl commercials.
superbowl commercials used to be great but now they kinda suck. they used to be clever and funny and now they are just lame. in the novel, they came up with two pitches. the pitch i liked most was based on "an inconvenient truth". the commercial would show babies being born all over the world but with al gore heads, to show how green they were. i thought that was clever. the other commerical, the one they went with, i thought was a horrible idea and would have never worked in real life. it was based on the apple 1984 ad. i mean why even try to mess with that? that ad is classic and any kind of spoof or parody would be bad and should never be attempted. i know this was novel but still no one in their right mind fictional or non-fictional would ever give this commerical the green light. (do you green light commericals, like show?)
back to fin's family emergency, sadly his father dies. well not really that sad because fin hadn't spoken to his father for about 28 years. without giving too much away, the father was abusive and there was an incident with his mother. but the bottom line is that fin does not view his father as his father. to add to this, fin and his siblings are not that close. this actually broke my heart, i have my ups and downs with my family but i can't imagine being in contact with none of my family members. it must be really lonely.
so fin's father's dying request was to have his ashes spread in pearl harbor, near the spot where he was when the war ended. fin's siblings nor fin himself, want to do it because they all hate him. and i hate to sound heartless, but i get it. i found it odd how all of fin's friends kept telling him that he needed to do it because it was dad. but the fact is, it wasn't his dad. i think it's hard for people who grew up with both parents to grasp how it is to have an absent parent. that person is a stranger. the only connection you have to that person is your DNA and maybe some facial features. that man is not your dad. he didn't look under your bed for monsters, or taught you how to ride a bike or took you to your first baseball game. he is not a dad that was there to help you when scraped your knee or had your heart broken. he is not that dad from the google ad that always makes me cry, a dad who sends his daughter encouraging emails when times get tough. he is simply a man who helped create you but didn't really want much to do with you after, kinda like god in the old testament. he is essentailly a stranger? would you do it for stranger? probably not. or you would but not out of love but respect for a person's dying wish. but you get my point. (please note i'm not bitter about living in a single parent home, i think i'm better for it. but i just feel it's unfair to assume that i owe my dad something when he was never really there for me.)
to not spoil one of the main themes of the book, i will not tell you what fin ends up doing. you have to read to find out. i'm also not going to tell you how the superbowl ad went. you have to read that for yourself.
when i first started reading, i thought fin would become one of my book crushes. he is witty and has a great sense of humor. he also did this cute thing when he first moved to new york. he read "here is new york" and "traced the steps". he then "reread 'catcher in the rye' and did the same." this was kinda perfect cos the last time i went to new york i read books with famous new yorkers (i found a list online). i read "franny and zooey", "stuart little", and "from the mixed up files of mrs. basil e. frankweiler." i also read "extremely loud & incredibly close" because it was set in new york. so totally fell in love with him for that. (i plan on retracing "catcher" on my next nyc trip.). however i didn't fall complete. sure he was hip, he referenced a bunch of cool things but he was weird at times. like i hated his sarcasm. i was annoyed reading it so i could only imagine having to deal with it in real life. and i'm sure it was some defensive mechanism but still would be a dealbreaker for me. also his whole internal dialogues of convos with talk show host was not attractive either. though i loved how he framed life like a commercial and how he scanned through life. like on his first date he goes through a whole life with her. it's a lot to type out here but if you read it, i'm allison to page 145. he also flashbacks about his dad and sister, he sees them doing all of these mundane things but realizing the beauty and simplicity of each thing. it reminded me of charlie from "the perks of being a wallflower".
though those last two things just really mean that i enjoyed kenney's writing. how he captured life in an instant he was clever and had excellent pop culture references. i mean he called gwyneth paltrow, mrs. coldplay, kinda cool. he also quoted f. scott fitzgerald. there were some other references that made me smile but didn't mark them so can't share them but i am sure kenney and i could be friends in real life.
also if you are in advertising you should read this. you will prolly get a kick out of the rundown of fin's agency.
oh last but not least, in the story there is a character keita, who i adore. he is the son of this super rich japanese shipping company owner and in charge of fin's agency. he was sweet and kind and for some odd reason i pictured him in my head as PSY. lol
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