Well, I am a little befuddled by this whole system here Mr. V, so if I did this wrong just go ahead and email me or whatever. Okay, now on to the task at hand! I have been reading The King of Torts by John Grisham. It opened up with some guy with the name Tequila (TEQUILA!) shooting a kid named Pumpkin. So a guy named after a drink and some vegetable guy shot each other or something. Well, they go on to introduce Clay Carter, who turns out to be a poor criminal defense lawyer at OPD (Office of the Public Defender). How noble of him...not. If you put ‘not’ at the end of any phrase, it negates everything that came before it. I do this here because, as it turns out, everyone in OPD is there with dreams of serving poor criminals in bare-knuckled court cases so that they’ll get experience and eventually get picked up by a bigger firm. Well, back to the case of Tequila. Clay gets stuck with it (though not by choice). Basically this doesn’t get too far as he hits a bunch of dead ends, so that’s no good. Clay ends up going to dinner with his girlfriend and meeting her parents, gets offered a political position of some sort by her father, who he absolutely detests. Yeah, that pretty much sucks, so Clay turns him down and his girlfriend dumps him. Ouch. Things aren’t exactly on the upside for our friend Clay, are they?
Things seem to pick up for Clay in these chapters. This is due to his meeting of a guy named Max Pace, a supposed scout for some big law firm offering Clay a job. As it turns out, the guy is working for an unnamed pharmaceutical company, and is offering Clay a job in the form of a favor. This is pretty funny as Clay just recently turned down Rebecca’s dad for a position on the grounds that it was a favor. It would seem that every man has his price, and Clay’s is ten million dollars. Basically, the deal is that Clay would dump Tequila as his client, quit OPD, and accept the job of settling all of these families who had relatives that were injured by young men under some illegal secret drug testing. Sounds a little shady, right? It’s a pretty sweet deal though, and it of course requires the counsel of his ex-lawyer dad who was made to flee the country as some political deal or another. The guy doesn’t offer much help, and instead gets drunk and plays poker, so Clay heads home. Upon his return to D.C., Clay pretty much puts his ethics to the curb and takes the job. For the job he gets ten million dollars and his own law-firm, and it would seem the every thing is all right. But of course, everything is not all right, as it turns out that Rebecca is marrying some prick. Yeah...that sucks.
During this portion of the book, Clay’s new firm is off to a promising start. They begin by spending several million dollars on ads to find Dyloft patients for some mass tort litigation case or something like that. I enjoy the fact that the employees quickly developed an anything goes policy with the dress-code. That would be the kind of law firm I’d run, just walk on wearing blue jeans and a t-shirt, make a fat salary. Now that’s the life, man. As the rest the story goes on, Clay meets with one of the more famous mass tort lawyers, Patton French. At first, Clay thought the idea of all of the mass tort lawyers spending enormous amounts of money on planes and boats and cars, but as he got to know French, he was obviously becoming envious. Clay wants the big money, and he wants to spend it, too. In the end, the Dyloft case ends up going off without a hitch. Clay, being the great guy he is, decides to share profits with his employees/friends from OPD, ten million dollars, to be exact. I’d do just about anything for that amount of money. Just kidding…but not really. Or am I? Towards the end of this section of the book, Clay contacts Julia about the wedding. They have a brief, stiff conversation about everything that had been going on. The exchange didn’t last more than a few words here and there before Clay took a few weak jabs at insulting Julia’s fiancée. She ends up hanging up, leaving Clay obviously disappointed. Poor guy.
Now, I could go on and recap that chapter and be all lame and boring like that, but I’m really not feeling it for this post. Rather, I feel like writing about a topic of chapter 23 that really struck me. That chapter was all about Clay’s instant success and what he did with all that fat cash. Of course, the first thing the guy does is runs off on vacation to the Bahamas, leaving someone else to mop up after him at the office. While there, he meets up with his rogue-lawyer father again. As they talk, Clay asks his dad to return to the States again to ‘litigate and kick ass again,’ a father-son partnership, every sons dream. Unfortunately, Clay’s father has given up the idea of work and planning for the future and such. To him, schedules and calendars are extra baggage. This, I feel, would be a great lifestyle to lead, sailing the Bahamas, eating seafood and getting drunk, without a care in the world. It gives me tingles just thinking about it. That would be the life.
This is an eventful section of the book, as it would seem that things are starting to get a little rough for Clay. He has 20,000 Maxitail cases signed up, but won’t be able to pull them off unless a trial goes through in Arizona. Meanwhile, people are starting to die from the use of Dyloft, the other drug case he had, and people are raising hell about that. On top of that, people are accusing Clay of stiffing them on the settlements by charging too much in fees. Pretty much everything looks like it’s going down the drain for Clay. Well, that is until Rebecca pops in to say hi to him. He was pumped about that. But then the Feds show up and give Clay hell about cheating on the stock market and getting stolen documents from his friend Max. Luckily, his pal Mel covered for him and didn’t say anything incriminating. Looks like Clay has dodged a bullet for the moment.
The last leg of Clay’s quick climb to success and of his tremendous fall to bankruptcy is finally here. In this portion things grow continually stickier for Clay. The Dyloft users dying and suing him for compensation, Maxatail won the case in Arizona, so his 20,000 cases are to be thrown out the window, and Clay was also mugged by some guys from the small town cement company he had forced into bankruptcy through settlements. Backed against a wall, Clay is forced to declare bankruptcy, give up his license to practice law, and flee the country, leaving it all behind. It may seem pretty bad, but in the process of all this Rebecca left her husband to be with Clay. So, united with his lady, Clay tells the dark side of his explosion onto the mass tort litigation scene. Surprisingly though, Clay does not mention the name of Max, his inside source for all of the cases, throughout his entire story to the reporter. This is the loyalty a favor will earn you, which in a roundabout way, brings me to what I believe the theme of this entire book is, that being the theme of favors and the loyalty that comes up with them. Clay wouldn’t become Rebecca’s father’s lapdog, so instead he accepts the help from Max. However, Clay signs away his integrity, as he is no longer practicing law to protect people, but to make money. In the end however, he protects the chance granted by Max, by not selling him out to the press/police. This would be the theme, I guess.
Okay, so check this out. I completely forgot how I had originally planned to section off the book, so I kind of sort of really messed up and only got 6 posts for the entire book. So yeah, I goofed up. Instead of having a real section of chapters to write about, I’m going to give a brief little synopsis of the book. First off, I didn’t really like the book. The plot started out pretty nicely with that mysterious murder and then the corrupt pharmaceutical company releasing the mysterious drug into the public. That was all pretty awesome. Then it just went downhill into Clay making money and messing up and then losing his money and leaving the country. It was pretty lame. Besides my disapproval of the plot, I just didn’t really dig the theme. In my last post I said it was all favors and debts and loyalty. For the most part, that seemed to fit for me. But sadly, as soon as I put that up I saw another interpretation and thought it was worth half a thought. This mysterious second theme was that of greed and how it leads to people’s downfalls. I realize this is a tired old theme, but it warrants a glance. Seeing as how Clay started out saying he’d make his own way without the help of his father, it was pretty obvious he had his greed in check. But then he got the job from Max, and suddenly Clay’s integrity had a $10 million dollar price tag. Still, Clay climbed the ladder of wealth, promising himself he wouldn’t let it get out of hand. Instead he got a super-model girlfriend to make Rebecca jealous, leased a jet, and bought a boat for his dad, a nice house, and a badass car. Sounds to me like things got quite out of hand with Clay. Finally, his greed leads to his downfall as he accepts a couple bad cases from Max, and gets in trouble with the Feds. Clay declares bankruptcy when he’s got nowhere else to go. So in the end, he lost it all…except for his friends. They all offer him part of their money he gave them, and he also gets Rebecca back, and it all turns out okay for the guy. He wins. So there’s my alternative theme, all laid out for you.
Didn't the passage of background information say that Antigone was a victim of Creon's hubris? Some of you are suggesting that Antigone is the tragic hero. Thoughts on that.
7 comments:
Well, I am a little befuddled by this whole system here Mr. V, so if I did this wrong just go ahead and email me or whatever. Okay, now on to the task at hand! I have been reading The King of Torts by John Grisham. It opened up with some guy with the name Tequila (TEQUILA!) shooting a kid named Pumpkin. So a guy named after a drink and some vegetable guy shot each other or something. Well, they go on to introduce Clay Carter, who turns out to be a poor criminal defense lawyer at OPD (Office of the Public Defender). How noble of him...not. If you put ‘not’ at the end of any phrase, it negates everything that came before it. I do this here because, as it turns out, everyone in OPD is there with dreams of serving poor criminals in bare-knuckled court cases so that they’ll get experience and eventually get picked up by a bigger firm. Well, back to the case of Tequila. Clay gets stuck with it (though not by choice). Basically this doesn’t get too far as he hits a bunch of dead ends, so that’s no good. Clay ends up going to dinner with his girlfriend and meeting her parents, gets offered a political position of some sort by her father, who he absolutely detests. Yeah, that pretty much sucks, so Clay turns him down and his girlfriend dumps him. Ouch. Things aren’t exactly on the upside for our friend Clay, are they?
The King of Torts
8-15
Things seem to pick up for Clay in these chapters. This is due to his meeting of a guy named Max Pace, a supposed scout for some big law firm offering Clay a job. As it turns out, the guy is working for an unnamed pharmaceutical company, and is offering Clay a job in the form of a favor. This is pretty funny as Clay just recently turned down Rebecca’s dad for a position on the grounds that it was a favor. It would seem that every man has his price, and Clay’s is ten million dollars. Basically, the deal is that Clay would dump Tequila as his client, quit OPD, and accept the job of settling all of these families who had relatives that were injured by young men under some illegal secret drug testing. Sounds a little shady, right? It’s a pretty sweet deal though, and it of course requires the counsel of his ex-lawyer dad who was made to flee the country as some political deal or another. The guy doesn’t offer much help, and instead gets drunk and plays poker, so Clay heads home. Upon his return to D.C., Clay pretty much puts his ethics to the curb and takes the job. For the job he gets ten million dollars and his own law-firm, and it would seem the every thing is all right. But of course, everything is not all right, as it turns out that Rebecca is marrying some prick. Yeah...that sucks.
King of Torts
16-22
During this portion of the book, Clay’s new firm is off to a promising start. They begin by spending several million dollars on ads to find Dyloft patients for some mass tort litigation case or something like that. I enjoy the fact that the employees quickly developed an anything goes policy with the dress-code. That would be the kind of law firm I’d run, just walk on wearing blue jeans and a t-shirt, make a fat salary. Now that’s the life, man.
As the rest the story goes on, Clay meets with one of the more famous mass tort lawyers, Patton French. At first, Clay thought the idea of all of the mass tort lawyers spending enormous amounts of money on planes and boats and cars, but as he got to know French, he was obviously becoming envious. Clay wants the big money, and he wants to spend it, too.
In the end, the Dyloft case ends up going off without a hitch. Clay, being the great guy he is, decides to share profits with his employees/friends from OPD, ten million dollars, to be exact. I’d do just about anything for that amount of money. Just kidding…but not really. Or am I?
Towards the end of this section of the book, Clay contacts Julia about the wedding. They have a brief, stiff conversation about everything that had been going on. The exchange didn’t last more than a few words here and there before Clay took a few weak jabs at insulting Julia’s fiancée. She ends up hanging up, leaving Clay obviously disappointed. Poor guy.
The King of Torts
23-29
Now, I could go on and recap that chapter and be all lame and boring like that, but I’m really not feeling it for this post. Rather, I feel like writing about a topic of chapter 23 that really struck me. That chapter was all about Clay’s instant success and what he did with all that fat cash. Of course, the first thing the guy does is runs off on vacation to the Bahamas, leaving someone else to mop up after him at the office. While there, he meets up with his rogue-lawyer father again. As they talk, Clay asks his dad to return to the States again to ‘litigate and kick ass again,’ a father-son partnership, every sons dream. Unfortunately, Clay’s father has given up the idea of work and planning for the future and such. To him, schedules and calendars are extra baggage. This, I feel, would be a great lifestyle to lead, sailing the Bahamas, eating seafood and getting drunk, without a care in the world. It gives me tingles just thinking about it. That would be the life.
The King of Torts
30-36
This is an eventful section of the book, as it would seem that things are starting to get a little rough for Clay. He has 20,000 Maxitail cases signed up, but won’t be able to pull them off unless a trial goes through in Arizona. Meanwhile, people are starting to die from the use of Dyloft, the other drug case he had, and people are raising hell about that. On top of that, people are accusing Clay of stiffing them on the settlements by charging too much in fees. Pretty much everything looks like it’s going down the drain for Clay. Well, that is until Rebecca pops in to say hi to him. He was pumped about that. But then the Feds show up and give Clay hell about cheating on the stock market and getting stolen documents from his friend Max. Luckily, his pal Mel covered for him and didn’t say anything incriminating. Looks like Clay has dodged a bullet for the moment.
The King of Torts
37-42
The last leg of Clay’s quick climb to success and of his tremendous fall to bankruptcy is finally here. In this portion things grow continually stickier for Clay. The Dyloft users dying and suing him for compensation, Maxatail won the case in Arizona, so his 20,000 cases are to be thrown out the window, and Clay was also mugged by some guys from the small town cement company he had forced into bankruptcy through settlements. Backed against a wall, Clay is forced to declare bankruptcy, give up his license to practice law, and flee the country, leaving it all behind. It may seem pretty bad, but in the process of all this Rebecca left her husband to be with Clay. So, united with his lady, Clay tells the dark side of his explosion onto the mass tort litigation scene. Surprisingly though, Clay does not mention the name of Max, his inside source for all of the cases, throughout his entire story to the reporter. This is the loyalty a favor will earn you, which in a roundabout way, brings me to what I believe the theme of this entire book is, that being the theme of favors and the loyalty that comes up with them. Clay wouldn’t become Rebecca’s father’s lapdog, so instead he accepts the help from Max. However, Clay signs away his integrity, as he is no longer practicing law to protect people, but to make money. In the end however, he protects the chance granted by Max, by not selling him out to the press/police. This would be the theme, I guess.
The King of Torts
Oops!
Okay, so check this out. I completely forgot how I had originally planned to section off the book, so I kind of sort of really messed up and only got 6 posts for the entire book. So yeah, I goofed up. Instead of having a real section of chapters to write about, I’m going to give a brief little synopsis of the book. First off, I didn’t really like the book. The plot started out pretty nicely with that mysterious murder and then the corrupt pharmaceutical company releasing the mysterious drug into the public. That was all pretty awesome. Then it just went downhill into Clay making money and messing up and then losing his money and leaving the country. It was pretty lame.
Besides my disapproval of the plot, I just didn’t really dig the theme. In my last post I said it was all favors and debts and loyalty. For the most part, that seemed to fit for me. But sadly, as soon as I put that up I saw another interpretation and thought it was worth half a thought. This mysterious second theme was that of greed and how it leads to people’s downfalls. I realize this is a tired old theme, but it warrants a glance. Seeing as how Clay started out saying he’d make his own way without the help of his father, it was pretty obvious he had his greed in check. But then he got the job from Max, and suddenly Clay’s integrity had a $10 million dollar price tag.
Still, Clay climbed the ladder of wealth, promising himself he wouldn’t let it get out of hand. Instead he got a super-model girlfriend to make Rebecca jealous, leased a jet, and bought a boat for his dad, a nice house, and a badass car. Sounds to me like things got quite out of hand with Clay. Finally, his greed leads to his downfall as he accepts a couple bad cases from Max, and gets in trouble with the Feds. Clay declares bankruptcy when he’s got nowhere else to go. So in the end, he lost it all…except for his friends. They all offer him part of their money he gave them, and he also gets Rebecca back, and it all turns out okay for the guy. He wins. So there’s my alternative theme, all laid out for you.
Post a Comment