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Ego
It's never been done before, so Saul Weissman decides to do it. The century's greatest retailer is going to create the first ever male supermodel to launch his new cologne.
All that employee Miles Jensen has to do is go and find the perfect man.
Two weeks, twenty-four time zones and countless agencies and nightclubs later, Miles returns to New York with six possibles - among them an Italian playboy, a British ex-army officer and a Brazilian Casanova.
They may be worlds apart but they're all hungry for the six million dollar contract. Some of them want it more badly than others. One will stop at nothing to get it.
All that employee Miles Jensen has to do is go and find the perfect man.
Two weeks, twenty-four time zones and countless agencies and nightclubs later, Miles returns to New York with six possibles - among them an Italian playboy, a British ex-army officer and a Brazilian Casanova.
They may be worlds apart but they're all hungry for the six million dollar contract. Some of them want it more badly than others. One will stop at nothing to get it.
552 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1994
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14 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
June 24, 2015
Hoo boy. Trying to write a review for this book is really tough. Usually I know immediately whether I really liked a book, really disliked it, or felt meh about the whole thing. Ego doesn't really fit any of those categories.
Did I enjoy it? Yes and no. I found it riveting, it enthralled me to the last page, and it also left a slight icky feeling in my stomach.
Did I think it was well-written? Yes and no. It read like trashy beach-literature, yet at the same time it was full of fleshed-out characters with strong voices.
Did I like the characters? Yes and no. Miles, the protagonist, is both infuriating and easy to empathise with. He does some crummy things (most of them to his long-suffering girlfriend), but it's easy to get into his head and understand why. Kristina, the villain, is an ice-cold bitch, and very easy to hate, which is both good and bad - while I don't much like books that make me angry, I have respect for any writer who can write a decent villain without making them either campy or too simpatico.
Did I feel happy afterwards? Yes and no. I was happy that the right guy (IMO) won the contract. I was heartbroken about poor Chester. I wanted an epilogue that told us where the rest of the guys ended up. (I imagine Fernando finding a successful career in commercial modelling while he carries on with school, Fabio becoming a spokesman for gay rights and domestic violence awareness, and Steve selling his memoirs and making a mint. None of this happened though.) I was irritated at Poppy for forgiving Miles and falling back into their dysfunctional relationship.
I loved the different locations, and am impressed at how well Tim Geary did his homework as far as nightlife, food and social customs are concerned. Probably he's been to all those places as a model himself, but he still gets bonus points for research. I don't know much about Paris, but portrayals of Milan and Tokyo seemed spot on. (Even if I can't understand why so many people find Tokyo ugly - Tokyo is beautiful!)
Casual racism, misogyny and homophobia are present throughout - nothing huge (except from villainess Kristina, and she's quickly put in her place) but enough little things to make me wrinkle my nose. But it's an old book, and I try not to judge things written twenty years ago by today's standards. I do feel that a bigger deal should have been made of the suicide of one of the characters - after a couple pages it was just kind of brushed off, which hurt.
I guess this was a pretty good book - it just wasn't a good book for me. Sometimes it happens that I read books that I can see are good but that just aren't a good fit for me personally. Reading this made me feel like an amazon trying to dress like a waif-girl - like I was stepping into the skin of someone else that I wasn't entirely comfortable with. That can be a good thing, though. It's good to expand your horizons sometimes. :) 4 stars...I think.
Did I enjoy it? Yes and no. I found it riveting, it enthralled me to the last page, and it also left a slight icky feeling in my stomach.
Did I think it was well-written? Yes and no. It read like trashy beach-literature, yet at the same time it was full of fleshed-out characters with strong voices.
Did I like the characters? Yes and no. Miles, the protagonist, is both infuriating and easy to empathise with. He does some crummy things (most of them to his long-suffering girlfriend), but it's easy to get into his head and understand why. Kristina, the villain, is an ice-cold bitch, and very easy to hate, which is both good and bad - while I don't much like books that make me angry, I have respect for any writer who can write a decent villain without making them either campy or too simpatico.
Did I feel happy afterwards? Yes and no. I was happy that the right guy (IMO) won the contract. I was heartbroken about poor Chester. I wanted an epilogue that told us where the rest of the guys ended up. (I imagine Fernando finding a successful career in commercial modelling while he carries on with school, Fabio becoming a spokesman for gay rights and domestic violence awareness, and Steve selling his memoirs and making a mint. None of this happened though.) I was irritated at Poppy for forgiving Miles and falling back into their dysfunctional relationship.
I loved the different locations, and am impressed at how well Tim Geary did his homework as far as nightlife, food and social customs are concerned. Probably he's been to all those places as a model himself, but he still gets bonus points for research. I don't know much about Paris, but portrayals of Milan and Tokyo seemed spot on. (Even if I can't understand why so many people find Tokyo ugly - Tokyo is beautiful!)
Casual racism, misogyny and homophobia are present throughout - nothing huge (except from villainess Kristina, and she's quickly put in her place) but enough little things to make me wrinkle my nose. But it's an old book, and I try not to judge things written twenty years ago by today's standards. I do feel that a bigger deal should have been made of the suicide of one of the characters - after a couple pages it was just kind of brushed off, which hurt.
I guess this was a pretty good book - it just wasn't a good book for me. Sometimes it happens that I read books that I can see are good but that just aren't a good fit for me personally. Reading this made me feel like an amazon trying to dress like a waif-girl - like I was stepping into the skin of someone else that I wasn't entirely comfortable with. That can be a good thing, though. It's good to expand your horizons sometimes. :) 4 stars...I think.
December 26, 2023
3.5 rounded up to 4
"I think it’s exciting to see someone beautiful. […] Who’s to say you need more than that?” (p.228)
This was definitely a 'don't judge a book by its cover' situation. The cover image and tagline especially would typically put me off and I'd assume 'Ego' was a tawdry Harlequin-style romance (not that there's anything wrong with a good old-fashioned bodice ripper), but it is not.
In fact, it's a novel that I think would do much better now than when it was published in the early '90s. What with 80s and 90s nostalgia at fever pitch and the backdrop of the novel being the glitzy, sleazy age of the supermodel, 'Ego' would not be out of place if released as a Netflix original series (hint, hint, nudge, nudge).
If you have any interest at all in the behind the scenes of the modeling industry, you'd really, really get a kick out of 'Ego' because you not only get to peek behind fashion magazine images and billboard ads, you also get a surprisingly complex and (correctly) cynical corporate intrigue plot.
Our protagonist, Miles, gets plucked out of obscurity working as a secret shopper at a high-end department store by the owner who happened to see him working at some point. The owner, Weissmann, is planning on launching a cologne called 'Eden' and he wants to take advantage of the popularity of supermodels to create an ad that will get everyone talking. This is the 90s, so you've got your Cindy Crawfords, your Naomi Campbells, your Linda Evangelistas. But no big-name male models. Weissmann wants to change that, so he hires Miles to travel to several modelling hubs around the world to search out 6 amateur male models so he can be responsible for 'creating' the world's first male supermodel, the 'Adam' for his 'Eden.'
Miles is delighted to have the opportunity for such sudden upward mobility dropped in his lap and gleefully sets out despite knowing nothing about modeling and with only the barest notion of what type of man he's even looking for.
Given that 'Ego' was published in the early '90s, I was incredibly surprised by how progressive Tim Geary's point of view was on the subject of the fashion industry. The casual racism and homophobia of many of the people the protagonist works with is worked in very mindfully to develop a sense of how common such attitudes were at the time (and sadly still are) and framed in such a way as to show how dehumanizing that is. For instance, one of the plot points involves the inclusion of a Black model in the competition and everyone in management positions at this company refer to him as just that: 'the Black model', an optics gimmick, a nod to how forward thinking the company is. But none of them take him seriously as a competitor; to them he's just a prop. Even to Miles himself, who puts this model forward, he's just a chess piece to secure his own position at the company.
But then we actually meet 'the Black model', Reuben, and he has a fairly substantiated personality: we visit his apartment, we meet his girlfriend, we hear him talk about his work on local community gardens; he becomes a real person to the reader, and so then when we cut back to Weissmann or Kristina or even protagonist Miles moving him around the figurative chess board of their own personal agendas, it feels wrong.
This is a tactic that Geary employs throughout the narrative. Sometimes it's a little bit on the nose and he'll have characters push back directly against various types of prejudice in the dialogue, but mostly he just lets it unfold (much as it likely did when he himself was a working model) while more subtly pushing back against it. For instance, there's a plotline where Miles is instructed to find a young homeless woman as an accessory for the main photoshoot since 'heroin chic' is all the rage in the industry, but that if he can't find someone authentic that looks good enough he should just hire a model who could 'pass' as a homeless person. Miles feels a bit weird about the assignment, but ultimately does as he's told.
Geary's real background in modelling really helps him build much of the backbone of the plot; you can tell by the level of detail how well he understands the industry he's writing about and is therefore in a position to critique accurately.
Pretty much everyone we meet is stunningly attractive, and we do spend time just watching beautiful people lolling around feeling their oats. But we're also let in on just how hollow and shallow the modelling industry forces their lives to be. One of the models has a panic attack when he gets a pimple on his nose the day before a photoshoot and as a result he starts sweating on set and is chastised for how inconvenient this is for the production team -- chastised for just being a real human with real human skin and sweat glands. An underage model is preyed on by a manager from one of the modelling agencies while Miles is scouting in Tokyo, and she talks about how she's used to 'dating' men much older than she is. During their interactions it's clear she already has issues with drugs and alcohol even though she's only 15.
And then there are the models who seem fairly well-adjusted, but we can see how most of them live pay-check to paycheck because of how unstable modelling work can be, and how many people just go, go, go until they run out of money or age out of the industry. Miles falls prey to the allure while travelling around, swept up in the Potemkin veneer while hanging out with models who are the exception; the 'I don't get out of bed for less than $10,000' types. However, even he seems to realize right at the very end that the incredibly unlikely chance of getting to be one of the handful living like that isn't worth staring down the reality of scrounging for poorly-paid one-off jobs.
I will say that given the length of the novel and the fact that Miles is our POV character for at least 90% of it, you do have to be on board with him being kind of a jerk. And by 'kind of a jerk' I mean a total ass. He's incredibly self-absorbed, self-aggrandizing, and never lets a prick of conscience spoil a good time. His character journey is less "power corrupts" and more "power reveals" (a twist on the famous power corrupts quote by Lyndon B. Johnson biographer Robert Caro). His newfound power doesn't make him a bad person; it reveals that he already was.
I personally like characters like this when constructed by self-aware authors, and Tim Geary definitely knew what he was doing. This is a tale that allows luck and logic rather than an internal moral compass pass judgement on each character. Who rises to the top and who goes down in flames in the end (and along the way) doesn't depend on how good they are, it depends on a combination of luck, privilege, and how useful they are to someone more powerful.
There's also a strong anti-capitalism undercurrent to the whole thing, and boy is the modeling industry the perfect industry to use as a vessel for how malevolent capitalism-enabled consumerism is. *chef's kiss*
Give it a shot; it really did deserve better.
"I think it’s exciting to see someone beautiful. […] Who’s to say you need more than that?” (p.228)
This was definitely a 'don't judge a book by its cover' situation. The cover image and tagline especially would typically put me off and I'd assume 'Ego' was a tawdry Harlequin-style romance (not that there's anything wrong with a good old-fashioned bodice ripper), but it is not.
In fact, it's a novel that I think would do much better now than when it was published in the early '90s. What with 80s and 90s nostalgia at fever pitch and the backdrop of the novel being the glitzy, sleazy age of the supermodel, 'Ego' would not be out of place if released as a Netflix original series (hint, hint, nudge, nudge).
If you have any interest at all in the behind the scenes of the modeling industry, you'd really, really get a kick out of 'Ego' because you not only get to peek behind fashion magazine images and billboard ads, you also get a surprisingly complex and (correctly) cynical corporate intrigue plot.
Our protagonist, Miles, gets plucked out of obscurity working as a secret shopper at a high-end department store by the owner who happened to see him working at some point. The owner, Weissmann, is planning on launching a cologne called 'Eden' and he wants to take advantage of the popularity of supermodels to create an ad that will get everyone talking. This is the 90s, so you've got your Cindy Crawfords, your Naomi Campbells, your Linda Evangelistas. But no big-name male models. Weissmann wants to change that, so he hires Miles to travel to several modelling hubs around the world to search out 6 amateur male models so he can be responsible for 'creating' the world's first male supermodel, the 'Adam' for his 'Eden.'
Miles is delighted to have the opportunity for such sudden upward mobility dropped in his lap and gleefully sets out despite knowing nothing about modeling and with only the barest notion of what type of man he's even looking for.
Given that 'Ego' was published in the early '90s, I was incredibly surprised by how progressive Tim Geary's point of view was on the subject of the fashion industry. The casual racism and homophobia of many of the people the protagonist works with is worked in very mindfully to develop a sense of how common such attitudes were at the time (and sadly still are) and framed in such a way as to show how dehumanizing that is. For instance, one of the plot points involves the inclusion of a Black model in the competition and everyone in management positions at this company refer to him as just that: 'the Black model', an optics gimmick, a nod to how forward thinking the company is. But none of them take him seriously as a competitor; to them he's just a prop. Even to Miles himself, who puts this model forward, he's just a chess piece to secure his own position at the company.
But then we actually meet 'the Black model', Reuben, and he has a fairly substantiated personality: we visit his apartment, we meet his girlfriend, we hear him talk about his work on local community gardens; he becomes a real person to the reader, and so then when we cut back to Weissmann or Kristina or even protagonist Miles moving him around the figurative chess board of their own personal agendas, it feels wrong.
This is a tactic that Geary employs throughout the narrative. Sometimes it's a little bit on the nose and he'll have characters push back directly against various types of prejudice in the dialogue, but mostly he just lets it unfold (much as it likely did when he himself was a working model) while more subtly pushing back against it. For instance, there's a plotline where Miles is instructed to find a young homeless woman as an accessory for the main photoshoot since 'heroin chic' is all the rage in the industry, but that if he can't find someone authentic that looks good enough he should just hire a model who could 'pass' as a homeless person. Miles feels a bit weird about the assignment, but ultimately does as he's told.
Geary's real background in modelling really helps him build much of the backbone of the plot; you can tell by the level of detail how well he understands the industry he's writing about and is therefore in a position to critique accurately.
Pretty much everyone we meet is stunningly attractive, and we do spend time just watching beautiful people lolling around feeling their oats. But we're also let in on just how hollow and shallow the modelling industry forces their lives to be. One of the models has a panic attack when he gets a pimple on his nose the day before a photoshoot and as a result he starts sweating on set and is chastised for how inconvenient this is for the production team -- chastised for just being a real human with real human skin and sweat glands. An underage model is preyed on by a manager from one of the modelling agencies while Miles is scouting in Tokyo, and she talks about how she's used to 'dating' men much older than she is. During their interactions it's clear she already has issues with drugs and alcohol even though she's only 15.
And then there are the models who seem fairly well-adjusted, but we can see how most of them live pay-check to paycheck because of how unstable modelling work can be, and how many people just go, go, go until they run out of money or age out of the industry. Miles falls prey to the allure while travelling around, swept up in the Potemkin veneer while hanging out with models who are the exception; the 'I don't get out of bed for less than $10,000' types. However, even he seems to realize right at the very end that the incredibly unlikely chance of getting to be one of the handful living like that isn't worth staring down the reality of scrounging for poorly-paid one-off jobs.
I will say that given the length of the novel and the fact that Miles is our POV character for at least 90% of it, you do have to be on board with him being kind of a jerk. And by 'kind of a jerk' I mean a total ass. He's incredibly self-absorbed, self-aggrandizing, and never lets a prick of conscience spoil a good time. His character journey is less "power corrupts" and more "power reveals" (a twist on the famous power corrupts quote by Lyndon B. Johnson biographer Robert Caro). His newfound power doesn't make him a bad person; it reveals that he already was.
I personally like characters like this when constructed by self-aware authors, and Tim Geary definitely knew what he was doing. This is a tale that allows luck and logic rather than an internal moral compass pass judgement on each character. Who rises to the top and who goes down in flames in the end (and along the way) doesn't depend on how good they are, it depends on a combination of luck, privilege, and how useful they are to someone more powerful.
There's also a strong anti-capitalism undercurrent to the whole thing, and boy is the modeling industry the perfect industry to use as a vessel for how malevolent capitalism-enabled consumerism is. *chef's kiss*
Give it a shot; it really did deserve better.
October 3, 2015
I found this book about the world of male models fascinating. The author was a top model and has brought his experience to bear in this tale of a contest to select the hottest models from around the world to launch a new cologne in America. Female models appear too but the focus is on a journey to find the guy.
Our main character Miles just works in the cologne PR end of matters, so he has to learn about modelling from portfolios to fashion shows in Milan, Tokyo and Paris. His boss is glimpsed at the start as just another cranky, publicity seeking product maker, but by the end we realise he is very human and can reach beyond the endless ego trip to get the best answer. This story is all about well-written characters. The world they inhabit is full of glamour, flaws, tackiness, money and occasional desperation.
EGO is one of the rare books which I would read again. I have to think that the reason it's not better known, is because it doesn't involve major crime, which fuelled the Jackie Collins stories of Hollywood wives, husbands etc. Tim Geary has also written another novel called Spin about soap operas.
Our main character Miles just works in the cologne PR end of matters, so he has to learn about modelling from portfolios to fashion shows in Milan, Tokyo and Paris. His boss is glimpsed at the start as just another cranky, publicity seeking product maker, but by the end we realise he is very human and can reach beyond the endless ego trip to get the best answer. This story is all about well-written characters. The world they inhabit is full of glamour, flaws, tackiness, money and occasional desperation.
EGO is one of the rare books which I would read again. I have to think that the reason it's not better known, is because it doesn't involve major crime, which fuelled the Jackie Collins stories of Hollywood wives, husbands etc. Tim Geary has also written another novel called Spin about soap operas.
February 7, 2024
I'd give it fewer than a single star if that were possible. Don't waste your time, unless you're a fan of Harold Robbins or Jaqueline Susan and want to read something inferior in that style. It's not a novel at all and difficult to decide what it's supposed to be. Perhaps a soap opera or an expose of the fashion industry - then read (or watch) 'The Devil Wears Prada' instead. This is entirely humourless.
Published in 1994, it's littered with timely social references and consequently is quite dated. There are no sympathetic characters with whom one might identify and no character development - they're as flawed at the end as at the beginning. The protagonist, Miles, is a prudish immature unfaithful sex addict with delusions of grandeur, a habit of running his fingers through his hair and a heavy smoker and drinker to boot.
The format is that of a quest and the first two-thirds of the overlong book are devoted to the search for six extraordinarily handsome men. This section might easily have been transcribed from the author's own journals for the blurb and cover photo advise of his earlier career as a model. Coincidentally, two of the characters also left school early to pursue modelling careers, much to their father's disquiet. This part of the book is entirely descriptive but 'enlivened' with gratuitous sex scenes treated with a coy, puerile cliched naivete. They seem to be there only to break up the tedium. Later on in a sex scene, intended from the context to be sincere, the sentence 'In time, Miles moved forward his hips to share with Sandy the hard proof of his longing' had me laughing aloud.
The lack of strong, or sufficient, editing is obvious - both structurally but also on a sentence level. There is weird convoluted syntax, idiosyncratic adjectives that had me reaching for the thesaurus, and anglicisms that seemed out of keeping with the American background. The third person perspective hops about considerably with new cardboard characters drafted in as required and subsequently dropped. A story full of incident but with no narrative arc.
There are some rather nasty homophobic allusions. I was surprised to see the author had published further works but will make no attempt to seek them out.
Published in 1994, it's littered with timely social references and consequently is quite dated. There are no sympathetic characters with whom one might identify and no character development - they're as flawed at the end as at the beginning. The protagonist, Miles, is a prudish immature unfaithful sex addict with delusions of grandeur, a habit of running his fingers through his hair and a heavy smoker and drinker to boot.
The format is that of a quest and the first two-thirds of the overlong book are devoted to the search for six extraordinarily handsome men. This section might easily have been transcribed from the author's own journals for the blurb and cover photo advise of his earlier career as a model. Coincidentally, two of the characters also left school early to pursue modelling careers, much to their father's disquiet. This part of the book is entirely descriptive but 'enlivened' with gratuitous sex scenes treated with a coy, puerile cliched naivete. They seem to be there only to break up the tedium. Later on in a sex scene, intended from the context to be sincere, the sentence 'In time, Miles moved forward his hips to share with Sandy the hard proof of his longing' had me laughing aloud.
The lack of strong, or sufficient, editing is obvious - both structurally but also on a sentence level. There is weird convoluted syntax, idiosyncratic adjectives that had me reaching for the thesaurus, and anglicisms that seemed out of keeping with the American background. The third person perspective hops about considerably with new cardboard characters drafted in as required and subsequently dropped. A story full of incident but with no narrative arc.
There are some rather nasty homophobic allusions. I was surprised to see the author had published further works but will make no attempt to seek them out.
July 26, 2024
I just can't. No more.
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