The Corporate Reading Room

Things I was paid to read this week:

1. Two chapters of Italo Calvino's If on a winter's night a traveler

2. 60 pages of The Four Fundamental Concepts of Pyschoanalysis by Jacques Lacan

3. 25 pages of Cartesian Meditations by Edmund Husserl

4. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner, in its entirety

5. The Radical LEAP: a Personal Lesson in Extreme Leadership (a corporate leadership book [that quotes Bukowski and Michael Cunningham (for some reason, because who reads those things for their literary validity? [and let's not forget that you are, indeed, utilizing the transitive property of literary validity, Bukowski and Cunningham aren't necessarily your best variables . . .])]) by Steve Farber, in its entirety ( . . . and really the saddest thing is that Farber uses the majority of Bukowski's "Artistic Selfishness," which runs thusly:

what's genius?
I don't know
but I do know that
the difference between a madman and a
professional is
that
a pro does as well as he can within what
he has set out to do
and a madman
does exceptionally well at what
he can't help
doing.

and then has either the balls or the obliviousness to compare himself to the poem's "madman." Yes, Stephen Farber, leadership consultant, once divorced, beachfront San Diego living yuppie, you certainly are a madman.)

6. The Tuesday edition of The Chicago Sun-Times in its entirety

7. The Thursday edition of The New York Times (everything except the Thursday fashion section)