In Company the characters are more breezily conceived. This is not to say that the author's world has lost its warped mystique, just that he has made it more -- yes -- marketable.
Being John Malkovich is one of his favorite films, and its influence is felt when Company, both psychically and literally, lands in the limbo between elevator floors.
Barry has sometimes been compared to Chuck Palahniuk for his rebellious bravado, but he has much more in common with Charlie Kaufman, the screenwriter with such an easy affinity for the Orwellian surreal.
Company eventually faces the problem inherent to paranoid fantasy: once the secrets are revealed, what happens next? Barry is far better equipped to zap Zephyr than to make it a more positive, productive, life-affirming place. He perfectly understands the company's problems. ("If Senior Management captained a ship, it would take twice as long to reach its destination and have been completely rebuilt en route.") But he is less astute about Zephyr's merits, possibly because there aren't any.
The closest he comes to humanizing Zephyr is to make Jones fall reflexively for Barry's favorite type of female character, this time named Eve: a cool, selfish, elusive beauty. "She shouldn't be here," a co-worker confides to Jones. "Her ideal job would be giving lethal injections in San Quentin."
Occasionally, Company is flimsy: its central conceit, about a stolen doughnut that occasions much pouting and sniping (and is seen on the book's cover), isn't worth the attention it's given. And some of the corporate types at Zephyr are slightly generic. But Barry is a deft and focused satirist, and his sense of business ethics is right on the money. "I just want to know that we treat our employees properly," Jones insists. "That we, you know, care about them."
"Honestly?" he is told by one of the real powers at Zephyr. "We don't."
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