Wanted: Elevator Man

by Joseph G. Peterson

Balladeer of the city’s broken and forgotten men, Joseph G. Peterson looks for inspiration in urban side streets and alleys, where crooked schemes are hatched, where lives end violently, and where pretty much everyone is up to no good. Depicting the lives of people who have woefully lost their way in the world—criminals and victims, the unemployed and unemployable, the neglected and the indigent, the lonely and the alone—Peterson nonetheless brings a poet’s touch to his work, which is redolent with allegory, allusion, and Nabokovian wordplay. His last novel, Beautiful Piece , garnered praise from across the literary spectrum. Enter Elevator Man , his powerful and ambitious new novel and the story of Eliot Barnes Jr., a man at the end of his proverbial rope.
Haunted by the larger-than-life shadow of his father, a scientist who may have helped develop the atomic bomb, twenty-nine-year-old Eliot Barnes, Jr., is an apple that’s fallen far from the tree. Saddled with a useless degree in literature, caged in a rundown apartment he can’t afford, and embittered by his failure to live up to the future’s promise, Barnes, who dreams of a corner office—an aerie roost high above the city, working with the higher-ups—begrudgingly accepts a job as an elevator man in a downtown Chicago skyscraper. Thus begins a profound but comedic meditation on failure in this life, how one comes to terms with not achieving one’s dreams, the nature and origin of such dreams, and, fittingly, the meaning of the American dream itself.
As unflinching as Nelson Algren and as romantic as Saul Bellow, Peterson’s novel boasts wildly surreal plot twists and a lethal wit that frequently erupts into full-on hilarity. Elevator Man is the perfect tale for learning to cope with diminished expectations in these dark and desperate times.

Genres: Fiction

188 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2012

About the author

Joseph G. Peterson is the author of several works of fiction and poetry. He grew up in Wheeling, Illinois, received his B.A. from the University of Chicago, and his MA. from Roosevelt University. The Des Plaines River and the forest preserves surrounding it winds through the town of Wheeling, and through the imaginary territory of many of his books. He currently lives with his family in the Chicago neighborhood, Hyde Park, on the southern shore of Lake Michigan.

Reviews

[Richard Derus · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rating: 3.5* of five

My latest review, WANTED: ELEVATOR MAN by Joseph G. Peterson, is live today at Entropy Magazine. Thanks, Switchgrass Books of Northern Illinois University Press, for sending me the review copy!

[Patricia Morrissey]

I'll begin at the end. When you finish reading THEY'RE CALLING YOU HOME you want more. Here's hoping there's a sequel. Doug Crandell is nothing short of a verbal Van Gogh as he describes the environments in which his principal characters move. But he's more than that. You hear and smell things too. The story is a tale of family shame and struggles to move on, repairing of relationships, and sometime, torturous self-discovery. It all works. You're drawn in and keep page turning. The two main characters do that to you. Try it. It's a keeper.

[Paula Schumm · Rating 4 out of 5]

I couldn't put this I one down, and at the end I wanted more. More answers, more philosophical conclusions, the end of the story. On the other hand, the abrupt ending leads me to ponder the ongoing-ness of real life and how a story never really does end. A great read!

[Lori · Rating 3 out of 5]

review to come

[Steve Karas · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed Joseph Peterson’s Wanted: Elevator Man, an allegorical/absurdist novel in which, Barnes, a major institution-graduate turned waiter settles for an elevator job in a big city high rise with the hope that he’ll land a corner office gig after impressing the suits. Elevator Man is, foremost, a meditation on mortality (which I’m always a sucker for), the quest for Barnes to understand and come to terms with his father’s life and death, and make meaning of his own existence. Barnes is weighed down by the belief that his father was a “highly brilliant” scientist who died after traveling to Hiroshima to study the effects of nuclear radiation on the survivors, and that there’s little chance anything he does with his life can ever compare. Peterson writes: “[Barnes]…felt that his pedigree was such that he could never—and should never, for that matter—settle for the crumbs. To do so was to fail.” A near-death experience for Barnes during the kinda-sorta-rescue of a woman stuck in the elevator seems to shake him from his stupor and propel him out of his father’s shadow. Barnes muses to his cat: “My first day on the job, and I almost died. Yes, I almost died. And it wasn’t nearly so bad as I thought.” Peterson raises some interesting questions for me. Does self-preservation keep us from truly living? Does it prevent us from being able to fully give love? If we don’t sacrifice our own well-being for others, can we ever really feel good about ourselves? Can we ever feel pride?

To me, a secondary theme in this book is the power of language. Its power to sway our emotions this way or that. Barnes initially decides to take the elevator job after being inspired by self-help pamphlets. “Admit you’re a loser.” “Think downward!” And not only the power of words, but punctuation too (“My advice to you, if you ever write advice…use the exclamation point! Use it liberally!”)! Peterson also touches on the power of the words we use to ourselves, the self-defeating things people say on repeat that become truth. After his first day on the job, Barnes thinks, “…I’m burdened with vain hopes. Where the hell did I get these hopes anyway? And why does my life have to be pestered with them? …But you certainly don’t have what it takes to fulfill your hopes. You don’t have what it takes to cut the mustard in the real world.”

Peterson writes tight, clean prose. And the book is so well-edited and nicely bound. Thumbs up all around.

[Ben]

A commentary* certainly on those left behind by an economy, and a body politic, that no longer exists to serve the little, or is it common man and woman. Assuming it ever did.

*Which remains as contemporary as it ever was.

[Matthew Borgh · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was okay. Kind of a random plot. A quick read though.

[Logan · Rating 5 out of 5]

WANTED: ELEVATOR MAN is an absurdist comedy centered around Eliot Barnes, a hapless, unemployed layabout that can only dream of one day getting in with those elusive "higher-ups" of the business world. The style of this short novel is that of classic storytelling, which creates a nostalgic and warm feeling fitting of Eliot's tale of how working for the Elevator Commission changes his life. The style is reminiscent of Vonnegut, and Eliot's character is a kind of mish-mash of T.S. Eliot's Prufrock, Melville's Bartleby, and the Everyman. Anyway, it all makes for a quick and engaging read filled with ridiculous and funny things such as women with "mouse-taupe" eyes and phones built as sturdy as "Eisenhower tanks". Good times. There's also Eliot's boss, Coneybeare, a hard-drinking purveyor of advice and observations such as "I know the dirty little secret... writers are writers because they don't know what else to do with themselves... show me a writer and I'll show you somebody who doesn't know what the hell they want out of life..."

Yep.

[Becky Diamond · Rating 4 out of 5]

Peterson's prose leaps off the page, immediately capturing the reader and drawing them into Barnes' dreamlike world. Interesting character backstories combine with insight into this modern everyman who faces the dual dilemma "who am I really?" and "who do I want to be?"