The Right Man for the Job: A Novel [Paperback]

Mike Magnuson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 14, 1998

Gunnar and Dewy are "repo" men -- one white, one black -- who work for a furniture and appliance rental company in a tough, inner-city neighborhood. Dewy, a foul-mouthed realist, happily takes Gunnar under his wing and tries to teach him how to maneuver safely through the dangers of the Columbus, Ohio, streets. Together they devise increasingly ingenious ways to reclaim properly from their most recalicitrant customers. They become fixated in particular on a woman who will not respond to any of their attempts to repossess her furniture. Both Dewy and the customer refuse to give in. And thus the stage is set for a series of events that send Gunnar's life spiraling out of control.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

This superb first novel, beautifully written in minor keys that reveal the omnipresent sadness of narrator Gunnar Lund, is set on the cash-strapped streets of a rough section of Columbus, Ohio. Gunnar is an alien from Wisconsin, and has a job as a bill collector and repo man for a company that rents home appliances; he's also a white man moving through a largely African American world. Well-told, stark, gritty and realistic, The Right Man for the Job is also an extremely successful study of race in this country. It puts on no sociological airs; it simply talks honestly about white people and black people, and how they treat each other. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Kirkus Reviews

A white Wisconsin factory worker and a black college graduate team up as repo men, working the mean streets of Columbus, Ohio, in this unsettling but always surefooted dark comedy by a first-time Florida writer. Gunnar Lund is a very white man in a very black world, and he doesn't like it much. Having abandoned Sara, his fianc‚e, in northern Wisconsin, to follow neurotic single-mother Margaret to Columbus, where she's getting a master's degree in women's studies, Gunnar supports himself by cruising the city's inner city in a rattletrap Crown Rental van, repossessing local residents' rented TVs, refrigerators, and living room suites. Alienated by Margaret's rants against the male sex, guilty over his abandonment of Sara, and longing for his favorite Wisconsin drinking hole, Gunnar finds consolation only in the presence of Dewy Bishop, a black co-worker and Gunnar's linebacker-sized guardian angel. As the pair travel from one tough job to another, demanding back payments from teenaged mothers, West Virginia ``white-trash'' layabouts, and other marginalized victims of modern America, Dewy encourages Gunnar to delve ever deeper into the sin and degradation to which he seems terminally attracted. Everything Gunnar does in this urban no-man's land is ill-fated: When he tries to go for a bike ride, an increasingly unstable Margaret throws his beloved bike down the stairs; when he tries to do his job like a good repo man, he ends up killing an innocent guard-dog; and when he finally finds the courage to leave Margaret, she pours gasoline over herself and lights a match--leaving Gunnar with her ten-year-old son and a chance, though only a very slim one, to behave responsibly for a change. Just another tale of a white guy lost in a hard, violent world, but Magnuson's arresting prose and perfectly tuned ear for dialogue render the journey unforgettable. (Regional author tour) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial (January 14, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060928956
• ISBN-13: 978-0060928957
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,383,204 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Magnuson is brave in his refusal to avert his gaze, September 4, 2004

By 

Lachlan Murray (Vancouver, BC, Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Right Man for the Job: A Novel (Paperback)

The Right Man for the Job has a lot going for it. The narrative is exciting and fast-paced with an ever-present tension that Mike Magnuson skillfully modulates. White Gunnar Lund and black Dewy Bishop are two repo men trying to extract overdue furniture and appliance rental payments from mostly poor black women in Columbus, Ohio. As I followed Gunnar and Dewy's miserable exploits, I was dreading the moment when their trademark five raps on the door were answered with a gun. Extorting inflated payments, or repossessing the crap merchandise in which their employer Crown Rental traffics, is a dangerous business in the Columbus ghetto, especially for Gunnar, but also for Dewy. Gunnar worships his streetwise partner, a giant ex-football player, and Dewy enjoys taking the small-town boy from Wisconsin under his wing. He introduces him to the best fish sandwich in the hood, loads up the Crown Rental van with malt liquor, pork rinds, and cheap cigars to fuel their trips around town, and regularly dispenses repo wisdom -- the underhanded tricks of the trade. But three-quarters of the way through the novel Dewy tells 'Cheese', his nickname for Gunnar: "See, everywhere we go you gonna be the white guy. And that's cool with me. But it adds me another stress to the job, covering your white ass."

This frank pronouncement is a good example of what Magnuson does very well in his novel. He inhabits the core of white-black relations in convincing fashion, in the process articulating and exposing white neurosis regarding race. His character Gunnar is thrust into a threatening black world -- a world of hardship and misery and destructive pleasures created and maintained by the larger white society. The string of parasitic Crown Rental outlets in twenty-six cities epitomizes the rotten heart of unfettered capitalism as it feeds on the weak, who are often poor and black. A particularly pathetic repossession from a destitute new mother crystallizes the situation for Gunnar: "I see that my job, which has nothing to do with what's conspired to make this woman's life miserable, is strictly to take the little extra money this woman has, collect it, and send it on north to Canton, Ohio, where five white men use it to take vacations in the Caribbean or to spend happy Saturday afternoons in Cleveland, with their children, watching the Indians play ball." Most white writers in America would shy away from this kind of material. Magnuson is brave in his refusal to avert his gaze.

Magnuson also directs that same gaze at gender relations but I think the results are less successful. The other part of the novel involves Gunnar's deteriorating relationship with his girlfriend, the financially privileged Margaret, whom he accompanies from Wisconsin when she enrolls in graduate school at Ohio State. The two live together in a condition of mutual antagonism, until Gunnar begins pursuing another woman, one of Crown Rental's few white customers, which gives him the courage to move out. The pattern of flight to another woman, one who seems to offer new possibilities, is a recurring one, and Gunnar knows it -- but doesn't know how to break free of his own compulsions. The male side of the equation is believable, but when it comes to the motivation and psychology of Margaret, Magnuson gets into trouble. Margaret's instability needs a greater narrative foundation if it is not to seem imposed by the author, and her extreme act after Gunnar leaves feels like a male act, and not one I find particularly believable given that Margaret has a ten-year-old son. A feminist reading of the novel would undoubtedly take issue with the implication that women's studies attracts hysterical man-haters, who nevertheless are so emotionally dependent on men that they go to pieces when they're abandoned by one. A particular woman may in fact exhibit just these personality traits, but Magnuson hasn't drawn Margaret's character deeply and empathetically enough to convince me that she is this particular woman. Interestingly, the black women in the novel are more successful characters, perhaps because there are fewer veils of hypocrisy and misunderstanding in the way. A black woman loves Gunnar (for a price), and later hates him because of a foul act he commits. The lines of force are pure and simple. But that clarity and focus is probably the result of distance. When people truly live together, shades of gray are the result, rather than black and white.

A good novel, unflinching in many ways, which makes an honest attempt to engage with some of contemporary society's most charged issues -- the exact ones so many writers are careful to avoid. Magnuson does come off as a very male writer, one who isn't particularly interested in moderating his maleness or his whiteness as he explores their ramifications, but one who is willing to risk himself by venturing into difficult territory.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Book, Great Writer, September 21, 2000

By 

Rebecca Evon Donnell (Carbondale, IL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Right Man for the Job: A Novel (Paperback)

Mike Magnuson possesses a powerful command of language. "The Right Man for the Job" grabs the reader with its stark realism and dark, gusty prose. Gunnar Lund is decidedly an anti-hero, but the reader empathizes with him as he drags along through the sewers of life. The boldness with which racial tensions are explored as this white narrator prowls about through a mostly African-American world rates special praise. Magnuson never falters from his task of bringing us a cruel, intensely real landscape, and he never slows his pace or loses his edge. This book is a fine example of a superbly fresh writer for the new millenium.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful first book by a very talented author, August 23, 1999

By 

Robin Elliott ([e-mail]) (Eugene, Oregon) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Right Man for the Job: A Novel (Paperback)

Mike Magnuson does a wonderful job with this book. The insight he provides us in to the life of the main character, Gunnar Lund, is wonderful and vivid. Gunnar is a simple man, from a simple background, who has followed what he believes to be love to the big city. Having left his job of many years as a factory worker, the only job he is able to obtain in his new life is that of a collector and repo man for a furniture rental business. Buried by the emotional baggage of a job he hates and a somewhat mentally abusive relationship, Gunnar dreams daily of returning home to Wisconsin and the simple, comfortable life he left behind. Mr. Magnuson is a powerful writer, and does a wonderful job capturing the horrible emotional aspects of the job of a repo man, and the affects of the job on Gunnar's life. From page one to the end, when a surprising turn of events allows Gunnar the opportunity he has been hoping for, you will be riveted. Gunnar Lund is a character you will understand and relate to, and not be able to forget.