Dave Eggers' 2012 novel 'A hologram for the king' is the story of Alan Clay, an American representative of a high tech company, sent to Saudi Arabia to obtain a contract for IT services.   The plan is to travel to the new 'King Abdullah Economic City' (KAEC for short), for a sales presentation which includes an interview with a London executive who appears as a holographic figure on the stage.  Alan, who has confidence in sales going back to early days in the Fuller Brush Company and then as an executive in Schwinn Bicycles, has confidence he can sell anything, and has the additional advantage of having briefly known one of the king's nephews many years earlier.  
Alas, he is in for a surprise.  It turns out that the fabled Economic City is a mostly empty construction site far away in the desert, consisting of a black office building, a pink condo building and an information center.  He and his staff are placed in an un-air conditioned tent with only intermittent wifi with which to create their high tech presentation. He wonders when he can expect the king:  
'—So days, weeks? he asked. —Yes, they said.'
       As Alan waits day after day, we learn much more about him.  It turns out that he is in bad shape financially.  As an executive of Schwinn Bicycles, he had pushed for moving the manufacturing overseas, only to ultimately find himself without a job.  He is in debt after a subsequent ill-fated effort to build custom bicycles near Boston, and can't find the money to pay for his daughter's forthcoming college tuition.   
Throughout the seemingly endless waiting, Alan keeps up hope, ignoring hints about the growing economic ties between Saudia Arabia and the Chinese.  One day the King arrives.  He watches the holographic presentation, and leaves without a comment, not even giving Alan a chance to mention his knowing the royal nephew. Alan watches the King go to the black office building, in front of which are vans with Chinese lettering. Shortly afterwards, the King emerges with some Chinese businessmen, shakes hands warmly, and departs in the royal limousine. The Chinese, who did not have to wait in the desert tent, and had known just when the king would arrive, have gotten the contract.
Throughout this time, two inter-related themes have been dominant-- waiting, and hope.  The reader is inevitably reminded of Samuel Beckett's 1953 absurdist play 'Waiting for Godot', and just to make sure, Eggers quotes it in the epigraph: 'It is not every day that we are needed.'  But of course, part of waiting is hope, and Alan Clay is the champion of hope.  Even after the King has left, Alan is reluctant to go home.  He  talks to the Saudi representative, saying perhaps there are other services he could provide, other companies whose services he could present.  The representative says this is possible and that he will look into it.
   'He wasn’t being sent away, after all, and he couldn’t go home yet, not empty handed like this. So he would stay. He had to. Otherwise who would be here when the King came again?'
Like any good book, this one can be read on many different levels.  One way of seeing it is as a commentary on the naïveté of the American businessmen, who think that the lights and sounds of a fancy holographic show will be all it takes to wow the more innocent Saudis.  In reality, the Saudis are not so easily manipulated, have controlled the game from the beginning, and have have achieved the end they wanted.
Another level on which I'd like to focus is the persistence of Alan's hopefulness, which seems both impressive and sad at the same time. Thornton Wilder captured both aspects of it in 'The Eighth Day': 'Hope, like faith, is nothing if it is not courageous; it is nothing if it is not ridiculous.'  Alan has been compared to the hapless Willy Loman in Arthur Miller's 'Death of a salesman'. But Willy's unrealistic expectations lead only to a sad death, while Alan's hopes sustain him, even in the face of overwhelmingly poor odds.  My own reading is that this flawed man's faith that if only he tries hard enough, one day things will get better, is an important part of being human, and even heroic

 


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