SALON

Monday, Feb 11, 2013 3:15 PM UTC

Novel set in ad world offers laughs, lessons

By

Topics: From the Wires,

“Truth in Advertising” (Touchstone), by John Kenney

A hilarious op-ed column on politics appeared in The New York Times as the 2012 presidential election was winding down — in other words, just when we desperately needed comic relief. The off-the-wall columnist was identified as John Kenney, “author of the forthcoming novel, ‘Truth in Advertising.’” Better keep an eye out for that book, I figured.

As expected, this debut novel reads at times like a laugh-out-loud standup routine. What sustains it, though, is much more substantial: an engaging, believable plot, a fascinating if jaundiced view inside the contemporary world of New York advertising, and most of all, a lead character you’re glad you get to know, even if doing so becomes infuriating at times.

Kenney, who spent many years as an ad copywriter, introduces us to Finbar Dolan, a longtime toiler in those same vineyards. Encouraged to “make his mark” with promotions for assorted banal products — including the creation of a Super Bowl ad for a “revolutionary” brand of disposable diapers, which drives a central part of the plot — Dolan expresses ambivalence. On the one hand, he wants a promotion and sometimes even catches a whiff of the creative rush that drew him to advertising in the first place, but basically he’s a 39-year-old who knows too much, a realist even in the midst of his natural escapism.

“How do you see the world?” Dolan muses at one point. “Is there music underscoring scenes of your life? Do you slow things down for intensity and drama? Speed them up for comedy? Do you rewrite dialogue, if, say, you’ve had a fight with your boss or your wife or some jackass who cut the line at Dunkin’ Donuts? In the rewrites are you far wittier, far more bold? I do and I am. It makes life more interesting for me, gives me a wonderful sense of false empowerment. And yet I know I miss the far more interesting narratives, the narratives I will never know, of strangers …”

Likable, clever, complex Fin Dolan — a guy anybody would love to have in the office — is also, we gradually learn, dragging around a major demon: a shattering story of his family life growing up in Boston that he has been trying to leave behind for decades. It forces its way to the surface when he learns that his estranged father is dying and realizes that only he, among the man’s children, each damaged in a different way, feels anything like obligation to get involved.

It’s a measure of Kenney’s writing talent that the regular gusts of delicious, smart-alecky ad agency banter among Dolan and his witty comrades and the painful-to-read scenes depicting the toxic relations among siblings feel equally real in this novel.

Another measure is the sophistication of Kenney’s commentary, through Dolan, on modern life.

“I read somewhere,” Dolan soliloquizes at one point, “that on average each of us is exposed to something like 5,000 advertising messages a day. If you sleep for eight hours that’s something like 312 messages — commercials, print ads, web banners, T-shirt logos, coffee cup sleeves, sneaker swooshes — an hour. … Logos everywhere. What do they mean? Is anyone listening? While you’re thinking about that, have a Coke and a smile.”

Oh, and there’s a love story tucked into this novel, too. You like Phoebe as much as you like Fin, you root for them, and it drives you nuts when — no, that would be telling too much. Suffice it to say that the progress of their relationship, like the other plotlines, encounters abrupt, unforeseen turns — but ones you can believe as this smart, cinematic story carries you along.

More By Christopher Sullivan.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 0 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
FBI reportedly joins Bachmann campaign finance probe
220 points221 points | 13 comments
vote
Jon Karl makes things worse: He regrets “inaccurate” Benghazi email but says his story based on it “still entirely stands.” Really. ABC News?
193 points194 points | 29 comments
vote
Paul Krugman’s right: Austerity kills. "In an economy where we’re all in the same boat, one person’s spending is another person’s income. So when the government cuts spending, it reduces people’s income, leading to less business, more unemployment, and a vicious spiral of slowing down the economy."
187 points188 points | 117 comments
vote
“Jodorowsky’s Dune”: The sci-fi classic that never was.
78 points79 points | 16 comments
vote
Doug Henwood: Capitalism Thrives on Class Exploitation
41 points42 points | 5 comments

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations