Options: The Secret Life of Steve Jobs - A Parody [Hardcover]

Fake Steve Jobs (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 18, 2007

Welcome to the mind, to the world of Fake Steve Jobs. Fake Steve the counterintuitive management guru: “Obviously we can’t literally put our employees’ lives at risk. But we have to make them feel that way.” Fake Steve the political hobnobber: “I can see why they keep Nancy Pelosi under wraps. Wacky as a dime watch.” Fake Steve quoting friend/musician/philosopher Bono on road etiquette: “Tink about dat next toim yer cuttin off some bloke and you don’t know who it is, right? Could be Jay-sus. Or Boutros Boutros-Ghali or sumfin.” And on, yes, himself: “Geniuses have feelings, too.” In the tradition of Thank You for Smoking and in the spirit of The Onion, Options is a novelistic sendup and takedown of Silicon Valley, Hollywood, and Washington, D.C., as viewed by a central character who exists, to his immense self-satisfaction, at the crossroads of all three worlds: “It’s like in one of those movies where a guy realizes he’s got telekinetic powers and it’s just too bad if he doesn’t want them, he’s got them. Likewise, I have this gift. It’s who I am.”

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this tedious parody of the life of Apple founder Steve Jobs, the pseudonymous Fake Steve Jobs (identified in the New York Times this month as Forbes senior editor Daniel Lyons) offers a gleeful sendup of the real Steve Jobs set amid the recent stock options backdating scandal. Throughout, the fake Steve pontificates on everything from his superior management skills (only promote stupid people) to his role in the development of the iPhone (it involves a lot of non-thinking meditation), and is portrayed as a cold, callow narcissist. Blissfully unaware of the legal firestorm raging around him, a mathlexic Fake Steve goes about his daily business, balancing meditation with the firing of employees while the Apple board of directors scrambles to avoid prison time and find a scapegoat. As the fictitious Apple corporation implodes, Fake Steve must decide whether to jump ship or stand by the company. Tech industry watchers who know (or know of) the players will get a kick out of seeing them skewered, but readers who aren't already tuned in to the Silicon Valley technocracy may not quite get it. Fake Steve doesn't really evolve as a character, but as a grotesque caricature, he's fun to watch. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

"A funny send-up of Apple's CEO, the go-go culture of Silicon Valley, and the cult of Mac, iPhone, and iPod." -- Boston Globe, 10/14/07

"A wickedly funny, first-person parody...Politically incorrect and breezy...oPtion$ skewers Silicon Valley, with touches of `Bonfire of the Vanities,' `Dilbert' and `Revenge of the Nerds.'" -- Associated Press

"Just as Tom Wolfe skewered Wall Street in the `80s, Fake Steve lights a mini-Bonfire in Silicon Valley...The narrator of this dead-tree account is so textured and real that even his most idle thoughts amuse...A-." -- Entertainment Weekly, 10/19/07

"Kind of fun, especially if you're a computer geek." -- Kirkus Reviews, 8/15/07

"This over-the-top send-up of Valley excess isn't a best-of anthology. It's a surprisingly cohesive narrative." -- Wired, October 2007

"Tongue-in-cheek and piquantly insiderish...The book weaves the blog's greatest hits into a cohesive narrative that enfolds recent events at Apple...Mr. Lyons's portrait is hilarious and eerily specific; you get the feeling he planted a spycam in one of Mr. Jobs's mock turtles." -- Liesl Schillinger, New York Times, 10/7/07

"I couldn't put it down. Somehow, Fake Steve's--I mean Lyons'--style, is compelling." -- New York Post

"In the establishment-skewering tradition of Voltaire, Cervantes, Jonathan Swift and Laurence Sterne we now have a voice for our own digital age...Mac-slappingly funny...The book is hilarious." -- Newsweek.com

"Lyons inspires our prurient, page-turning fascination with a thoroughly unlikable narrator whose antics are at once unbelievable and vaguely plausible...Readers familiar with the Silicon Valley scene will have fun guessing who the pseudonymous characters represent...The novel is peppered with deft comic touches...Even the real Steve Jobs, who isn't known for his ability to laugh at himself, might want to pick it up for a quick, self-enlightening way to pass some time on the Jobs Jet." -- Katie Hafner, New York Times Book Review

"Lyons, using the same hilarious voice he created for the blog, tells the story of a Fortune 500 chief executive hippie Reed College dropout...Sheer hubris, seemingly never ending, is what makes this novel such a romp. You know he's going down, and it just makes you feel, well, happy." -- Los Angeles Times

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press (October 18, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0306815842
• ISBN-13: 978-0306815843
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (34 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #930,769 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It Seems Too Real to be Fake!, December 3, 2007

By 

Joe Wikert "[e-mail]" (Fishers, IN) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Options: The Secret Life of Steve Jobs - A Parody (Hardcover)

Looking for the perfect gift for the Apple fan in your life? If so, your search is over. Get them a copy of Options by Fake Steve Jobs, AKA Daniel Lyons. If you're not already aware, Lyons has been writing a blog called The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs for quite awhile and it features some of the best sarcasm and wit on the planet. He leveraged that fame and fortune to write Options, which takes a fictitious and hilarious look at the Apple stock option backdating scandal.

The Fake Steve blog is a treat to read but I couldn't help wonder whether the style and approach would get old in a book length work. Boy, was I wrong. Daniel Lyons is a genius. He describes events in such fascinating detail that you not only feel you're there but you assume they actually occurred!

My personal favorite is the point towards the end of the book when Jobs meets with Yoko Ono to discuss reselling The Beatles library on iTunes. I won't spoil it by divulging too much here but I laughed out loud more than once while picturing this meeting in my head. There's also a funny twist to the ending, which again, I won't spill the beans on here.

Still not sold? Read this piece from the back cover and tell me it doesn't hit the nail on the head:

"Sometimes I feel like a great chef who has devoted his entire life to monastic study of the art of cooking. I've gathered the finest ingredients, built the most advanced kitchen and prepared the most exquisite meal. So perfect, so delicious, so extraordinary. More astounding than any meal ever created. Yet each day I stand in my window and watch 97% of the world walk past my restaurant into the McDonald's across the street."

11 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Works better as a blog, November 1, 2007

By 

Neurasthenic "neurasthenic" (New York City, New York) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

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This review is from: Options: The Secret Life of Steve Jobs - A Parody (Hardcover)

Most people considering this book should already been familiar with Fake Steve Jobs in his original blogging form. His writing works better in that medium than in this novel -- Fake Steve Jobs is funny when commenting briefly on events in the news, but he's too thin to support an entire novel. The book is episodic, as FSJ deals with various groups though a period corresponding roughly to 2006. We see him dealing with Apple engineers and executives, with lawyers and government prosecutors, rock stars, silicon valley plutocrats, and politicians. With the exception of Larry Ellison, who appears repeatedly, and some fictional lawyers, most of these people get one scene with FSJ then depart the tale.

The funniest parts of the book, in my opinion, relate FSJ's interactions with Hillary Clinton, Yoko Ono, and a fictional retired chip executive named Misho Knedlik. These exchanges all involve nasty insults being launched by characters against each other (FSJ is typically delivering the rockets, though he is sometimes their target as well). Author Daniel Lyons has a gift for amusing nastiness.

8 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Better than Fake!, November 10, 2007

By 

Sean P. Kearney (Castle Rock, CO USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Options: The Secret Life of Steve Jobs - A Parody (Hardcover)

As an occasional reader of the Secret Diary of Steve Jobs blog, I picked up this book thinking that it was a collection of the "best of" entries already published. Instead, I was totally surprised to find a coherent novel that is even more engaging and hilarious than the blog that got it started.

I couldn't help reading whole passages out loud to my amazingly patient wife while trying not to laugh. While the satire gets more ramped up with every chapter, a lot of the outrageousness is especially funny because it seems so close to the truth.

While I doubt that Steve Jobs has ever had Sting spoon him on a dirty floor while both tripping on ayahuasca, it's not hard to imagine Jobs ping-ponging between believing he is an under-appreciated genius and wallowing in self-doubt and isolation, not just as a reflection of El Jobso, but as one of our cultural obsession recapturing a lost sense of "childlike wonder."