Book Reviews

by Janis Wildy and Wendy Blake

Have you ever considered the life of a foreign correspondent? Imagine chasing leads through the streets of exotic countries, breaking news stories that could affect the world, or just meeting normal people living under extraordinary conditions.

Christopher Wren's book, The Cat Who Covered the World, takes a look at the life of one New York Times foreign correspondent and his family, including the family cat, Henrietta. It is through Henrietta's exploits that Wren reveals the wonders of working in Moscow, Cairo, Beijing, Ottawa, and Johannesburg.

Sometimes Henrietta proves to be a great advantage in these countries. While crossing into Moscow, for instance, a Russian border veterinarian takes a liking to Henrietta that expedites their entry into the country and allows Wren to cover an important breaking story the next day.

At other times, Henrietta complicates things. In Cairo, Henrietta goes missing for several weeks. Wren finds himself purchasing a birdcage in Tunis, hoping that getting another animal might ease the heartache of his kids. But Wren doesn't get home right away as expected. He is required on an urgent assignment in Damascus. He brings the cage there, amid the snickers of other reporters. The story heats up and Wren follows his leads to Jerusalem by car, through Lebanon past Syrian and Palestinian roadblocks. Wren goes with the birdcage, and is teased at one roadblock after another. He makes it, gets the story, and in Jerusalem, gets some very good news. Sometime during Wren's 17 hours of travel and 1,200 by air and road with the birdcage, Henrietta has been found. Wren, in his wonderful writing style, wraps up the incident by saying he still has the birdcage. It is hanging in his New York City apartment, waiting to be filled with ferns.

In the book, Henrietta often puts foreign diplomats at ease, making it more likely they'll share interesting details about their government's political activities. Wren and his family delight in rewarding Henrietta with caviar or local fish, and even something as simple as kitty litter. Wren describes when he brought the kitty litter into Hong Kong and inspectors x-rayed the sack, insisting on opening it. Wren resorted to mewing and mimicking a cat busy in its litter box. His attempts won over the guards and he was waived on.

It is in Beijing that Wren first filed a story about Henrietta to the Times with a request that the foreign editors find somewhere to run it. The published story resulted in more mail to Wren than the most momentous political events he had covered in his 18 years as a correspondent.

Henrietta's national popularity eventually sparked the bones of this book. Wren is the author of other works, with one specifically written about the lives of foreign correspondents called Hacks. However, I think The Cat Who Covered the World is the one to start out with if you want to get a lighter taste of life on the road with the essentials: a pen, a news story, and a cat.

Janis Wildy is a writer and editor living in Seattle. She is currently revising her novel, Backstage Pass.

Sustainable Orbit: A Review of Gordon MacKenzie's Orbiting the Giant Hairball

Reviewed by Wendy Blake

Gordon MacKenzie breaks rules, takes risks, and manages success when he offers readers the insight, humanity, and colorful fun of his 1996 corporate autobiography, Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool's Guide to Surviving with Grace. Filled with fanciful marginalia, vivid full-page illustrations, and a dizzying assortment of fonts, this diminutive text pushes the limits of mass-market publication design in a bold attempt to free the minds of cubicle-dwellers to "reclaim their creative genius" and apply it to workplace success.

A quick glance through the book's pages reveals a creative mischief that's inviting, playful, and accessible. The facing pages of the table of contents are strewn with illustrated subtitles: "Pink Buddha," "Containers Contain," "The Power of Paradox," and so on. Whimsical doodles including a chicken, a chair, and a barking dog behind an eight ball twice its size marry quirky chapter titles with imaginative images. The text itself is a collage of varied fonts, spilled ink, handwriting, cartoons, and full-color spreads using crayon, watercolor, and photographs. Visually, Orbiting expresses a confluence of inspiration, spontaneity, and fluidity. Textually, it offers anecdotal wisdom, convivial philosophy, and abstract advice.

Sounds eclectic? Perhaps, but understandably so, coming from a man with thirty years of experience in creative development at Hallmark Cards. In the spirit of any truly great greeting card, MacKenzie's book invites us to imagine a metaphor: A company—any company—is a Giant Hairball. What begins as a delightful spark of newness evolves, over time or under pressure of prior experience, into an intricate mass of gluey fibers. MacKenzie calls this the Hairball, but we might better understand it as the process of "making business decision after business decision, creating procedures and generating policies." A company takes refuge in its policies, "creating a Gordian knot of Corporate Normalcy (i.e., conformity with the 'accepted model, pattern or standard' of the corporate mindset)."

With his glib yet sagacious descriptions of job experiences we've all endured, MacKenzie draws us easily into following his suggestion that there is a better way. Tracing human existence from failures of the educational system through creative epiphany, and stopping along the way to visit innovative workplaces and training workshops, the book encourages us to learn to orbit the Hairball. MacKenzie teaches us that "Orbiting is responsible creativity: vigorously exploring and operating beyond the Hairball of the corporate mindset…all the while remaining connected to the spirit of the corporate mission."

Orbiting doesn't offer specific techniques for breaking away from the gravity of particular corporate Hairballs—how could it? Orbiting is a creative process unique to every person's individual position. But MacKenzie's observations of mythology, psychology, and philosophy inspire us to find our own ways to launch into orbit—to fly above the inane layers of corporate paradox and reawaken the original enthusiasm of a company mission. This book offers something special to the workday approach: Hope. Empowered by the knowledge that "Orville Wright didn't have a pilot's license," we leave the text ready to embrace the words of Rumi that open it: "Little by little, wean yourself. / This is the gist of what I have to say."

Wendy Blake spends a full one-third of her time as the Purveyor of Precision at a successful Seattle game company that supports Gordon MacKenzie's teachings. A lifelong poet and former college instructor, Wendy revels in observational learning moments. For more information, visit www.taopoet.net.