Close to the Machine
Book review by Clark Humphrey for The Stranger, 10/30/97
Now here's something you don't see everyday: A San Francisco essayist who's not
an insuffrable egomaniac. Instead of incessantly promoting herself as a Hipper
Than Thou brand name, Ellen Ullman in Close to the Machine (City Lights
Books) calmly and personably details some of the routines and subroutines of
her daily existence as a freelance "software engineer and consultant." On one
level, this short memoir gives a narrative focus to the process of
programming--something I haven't really seen since a 10-year-old Microsoft
Press interview book, Programmers At Work.) On another level, Ullman evokes
real sympathy while describing her life as the soul-numbing reality behind the
other techno-essayists' futuristic fantasies. She sits at her keyboard all day
and most of the night, except when she's driving two hours each way on an
assignment in some deep-suburban office park. She lives in a cool loft space,
but spends most of her time there working alone. Aside from her family back
east, her only non-work-related relationship consists of occasional convenience
sex with a younger man who dreams of making it big in offshore money laundering
and online porn. On the plus side, she does get to drive a fancy car and eat at
fancy restaurants and solicit AIDS-benefit money from her wealthy
acquaintances. But, as centuries of literature have already shown, upscaleness
can't buy happiness.
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