I am a huge fan of Steve Martin. His standup routines are excellent. His films are funny. I also enjoyed his autobiography, Born Standing Up. I was not impressed, however, with Martin's novella, Shopgirl. I found it to be lacking in substance, not very funny or entertaining, and unmemorable. The Pleasure of My Company has caused me to re-think Martin's ability to write fiction. The Pleasure of My Company is entertaining, funny, and heartwarming. The ending may be a bit sappy and too much of a "TV ending" wrapped up far too quickly and neatly, but the narrator makes the book well worth reading.
Daniel Cambridge, the novel's main character and narrator is a jobless, mensa-level-IQ neurotic who can not bear to cross the street over a curb, must maintain an exact level of light wattage on in his apartment at all time, and has ambitions to be with the women in his environment, but seems to prefer the thought of being with those women more than the reality of being with them.
Martin presents Daniel Cambridge in a very comical way. Cambridge is crazy, but admits it to himself. He has an awareness of the silliness of his neuroses, but is unable to overcome them despite his knowledge of their lack of foundation. During the course of the novel, inspired first by the dimwitted boyfriend of a neighbor and later by the young son of his therapist-in-training (a woman studying to obtain her psychology degree) he eventually overcomes his inability to cross the street over a curb and loses some of his other strange habits.
The novel does come to a very neat finish with an ending one would not expect upon meeting Cambridge in the beginning, but it's not totally outlandish. Perhaps the story is weak, but there are some extremely funny scenes in the novel and I think Martin's writing is brilliant in those scenes. He sets things up perfectly and delivers the punchline subtly, but impossible to miss.
Other Reviews
- Read my review of Malcolm Gladwell's Blink here.
- Read some of my thoughts on the implications of Blink which came to me while reading Moore's Watchmen here.
- Read some of my thoughts on Alan Moore's Watchmen here.
- Read my review of Harvey Pekar's The Quitter here.
- Read my review of Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers here.
- Read my review of Michael Crichton's Airframe here.
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