OPTIONS
The Secret Life of Steve Jobs,
a Parody by Fake Steve Jobs.
256 pp. Da Capo Press.
$22.95.
I AM AMERICA (AND SO CAN YOU!)
By Stephen Colbert.
240 pp. Grand Central Publishing.
$26.99.
THIS is an unusually satisfying autumn if you’re someone who has an unholy obsession with megalomaniacs named Stephen (or Steven). Not one, but two new books worship at this altar: “Options: The Secret Life of Steve Jobs, a Parody” and “I Am America (And So Can You!),” written by the country’s (nay, the world’s) loudest Stephen, Stephen Colbert of “The Colbert Report.”
“Options,” written by Fake Steve Jobs (also known as Daniel Lyons), could have been called “The Devil Wears Mock Turtlenecks.” Tongue-in-cheek and piquantly insiderish, it paints a funhouse portrait of Steven P. Jobs, the multibillionaire eminence of Apple, supposedly in his own words. Mr. Lyons’s parody presents a man given to vertiginous mood swings, ruthless managerial decisions and hippie-ish hankerings for smoothies.
Unfazed by the terror he inspires, he says blithely: “The world needs sociopaths. Who else ever gets anything done?”
Fake Steve Jobs is a perfectionist who is as insistent that his chai latte be served at 165 degrees as that his iMacs, iPods and iPhones be exactly the right noncolor. (“You can’t imagine how many shades of black there are. And white,” he fusses.) In between high colonics and meditation sessions, he likes to muse on the standards that make Apple products a continuing source of “childlike wonder.”
His M.O. is simple: “Hold people to an impossibly high standard, but here’s the twist — don’t tell them what that standard is. And fire them if they fall short. You know what that does to people? Makes them crazy. And guess what? Crazy people are more creative.” Think different, indeed.
“Options” is the outgrowth of a blog that Mr. Lyons, a senior editor at Forbes and a novelist, started in the summer of 2006, at fakesteve.blogspot.com. The book weaves the blog’s greatest hits into a cohesive narrative that enfolds recent events at Apple, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission investigation into alleged accounting irregularities (backdated options), and the release of the iPhone.
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. “I’m told all the time that I seem like a narcissistic egomaniac,” Fake Steve Jobs says. “You know what I say? I say, ‘Look, wouldn’t you be an egomaniac if you woke up one day and found out you were me?’ You know you would.”
What does the Real Steve think of the book? In an article in The New York Times this year, Mr. Jobs told a reporter he had no interest in reading it.
BEFORE you conclude that Fake Steve Jobs has cornered the market on solipsism, you’d better take a gander at the exploding hydrogen bomb of self-congratulation that Stephen Colbert has unleashed with his meta-meta-spoof, “I Am America: (And So Can You!).” The book is side-splitting — if you are a fan of Mr. Colbert’s faux-patriotic neo-kook shtick. If not, you may want to take cover until the gags stop screaming from the sky.
Mr. Colbert’s book is a heroes’ parade jammed between two covers — shiny stickers, a red-and-gilt streamer, and an American flag at the outset of each chapter, marked off in seven stripes of bold red type (squint, you’ll see.)
Amid the heraldry are photos of the Hollywood “apoca-left” (Sean Penn, Barbra Streisand and Kirsten Dunst, “tormenting us with their portrayals of the perfect yet unattainable hometown girl”), graphs and flowcharts on “Gaydar,” higher education, and social class, and a racial-slur seek-and-find puzzle. There are also frank essays on senility (“Old folks can’t read anything that’s not printed in a 30-point font or above,” he notes, so “I can say whatever I want about them: They look like lizards.”) and religion. “Here’s an easy way to figure out if you’re in a cult,” Mr. Colbert writes. “If you’re wondering whether you’re in a cult, the answer is yes.”
The book includes a red-bordered cut-out sign that readers are ordered to post on their front doors: “Attention Firefighters: There are _____copies of ‘I Am America (And So Can You!)’ in this home. PLEASE RESCUE!” If you notice that precious little has been said about the writing in this volume, don’t think that is an oversight: it is a form of tribute to Mr. Colbert’s wishes.
“I’m no fan of books” he writes in his introduction. “And chances are, if you’re reading this, you and I share a healthy skepticism about the printed word. I hope it’s the first book you’ve ever read. Don’t make a habit of it.”
