Floyd Kemske

I discovered Floyd Kemske back in the early nineties by way of David Warsh, the former Boston Globe business columnist, who championed Kemske's work every chance he got. His latest at the time, Human Resources was the first Kemske I read, and I quickly moved on to all his other works.

Kemske is unique in another way, in that he can lay claim to something few authors can, that he invented a whole new genre of fiction, one that came to be known as "the corporate nightmare," in which employees find themselves in bizarre (and often too real for comfort) situations in the corporate environment. Consider this blurb for Human Resources:

"Corporate management is the use of humans as resources. So is vampirism. What would happen if a vampire were to take over a company and reorganize it? And if that vampire were to feed not only on fresh blood, but also on fresh ideas?"

I learned only later that Human Resources is further distinguished by the fact that much of it was written and edited in the early days of the Internet via crowdsourcing (before there even was such a word) on Usenet. I'll bet if you look really hard, you can still find the archive.

At any rate, Kemske wrote five or six of these corporate nightmares, the last of which was titled Labor Day, in which the white collar workers at the corporate offices of a labor union move to unionize, and union management is forced to call in a famous union buster to ensure that doesn't happen.

The last Kemske I read was a departure for him, a fictional account of Talleyrand, the French revolutionary and survivor. After that, Kemske appears to have ridden off into the sunset. But don't worry about him. For in addition to brilliant fiction and creating a whole new genre, Kemske appears to be one of the most in-demand marketers in existence, one who literally wrote the book that is even today considered the marketing bible.

So, wherever you are, Mr. Kemske, I hope all is well, and thanks for all the laughs.… (meer)