The Efficiency Expert

“Thanks,” said Jimmy, “and I don’t mind telling you that you’re the one man I know whom I’d just as soon borrow from and would like the opportunity of loaning to. You say that you can’t understand me and yet you’re a whole lot more of an enigma yourself! You admit, in fact you’re inclined to boast, that you’re a pickpocket and a safe-blower and yet I’d trust you, Lizard, with anything I had.
The Lizard smiled, and for the first time since he’d known him Jimmy noticed that his eyes smiled with his lips.

If this book hadn’t been played on the sffaudio podcast, I don’t suppose I would ever have read it, but it was surprisingly amusing and enjoyable. It is the story of Jimmy Torrance, who graduates bottom of his show more class from an Ivy League college and is determined to make it in business without the help of his wealthy father. Along the way he makes friends in high society and among the criminal classes, while working his way through a variety of jobs. show less

A more literate-than-average novel, by the author of the Tarzan series, to my surprise. The story is very much of its time: it concerns an incompetent college graduate who finds the postwar business world nearly impossible to enter. The term 'efficiency expert' had begun to circulate before the First World War with businessmen/engineers such as Frederick Winslow Taylor, but was rapidly popularized in the following decade by politicians such as Herbert Hoover.

Pretty enjoyable short book about a recent college graduate struggling to find his place in the world. Published in 1921 and contemporaneously set in Chicago, Jimmy Torrance makes the best of a series of somewhat demeaning jobs. The plot is highly dependent on coincidence, but if you can suspend disbelief, it's an enjoyable way to waste a little time and embrace a bit of zeitgeist.

This was kind of fun, and not at all like most Burroughs' books, such as the Tarzan or War Lord of Mars series. Nope, just a regular book about more-or-less regular people.

So, Jimmy Torrance, Jr. has just graduated from a fancy college in the East, probably some Ivy League school. It's not clear that he studied much. Rather he spent his time being a sports star, and, likely, partying. Studying was for chumps in those days. After all, those fancy schools had the "gentleman's C" racket going on.

Well, anyway, Jimmy does have some conscience, and decides to make it on his own, rather than go back home to take up a position in his father's company. He wants to prove his mettle. So, off he goes to Chicago. He thinks he'll just waltz into an show more executive position of some sort, but quickly learns that the people doing the hiring are more impressed with actual experience than with one's past life of having been a sports star.

Eventually, to make ends meet, Jimmy takes up some menial jobs. He works for a time as a waiter at a sketchy bar. He becomes a milkman, delivering quarts to milk to the various residents of Chicago. In each case, he runs into a fancy young lady, Elizabeth Compton, and her best friend Harriet Holden. In each case, Elizabeth is repelled because of her assumption that Jimmy is lower class, but Harriet sees some potential in Jimmy.

Well, that's enough for now. Suffice to say that Jimmy does all right for himself in the end. Buy why not read the book yourself and find out just how that can happen?

Were GoodReads to allow it, this book would garner 3* , i.e. above average, even if not great. show less

Hard to believe the Author of Tarzan wrote this

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