King of the Mississippi: A Novel

by Mike Freedman

Overview

A biting, hilarious literary satire of war, business, and contemporary masculinity, set in the cutthroat-but-ridiculous world of management consulting

King of the Mississippi is an incisive, uproarious dissection of contemporary male vanity and delusion, centered around a "war" for dominance of a prestigious Houston consulting firm. On one side of the conflict is Brock Wharton, an old money ex-jock whose delight in telling clients to downsize is matched only by his firm conviction that people like himself deserve to run the world. On the other is Mike Fink, a newly hired wily former soldier trying to ride his veteran status to the top of a corporate world that lionizes "the troops" without truly understanding them. Brock and Mike are mortal enemies on sight, bitterly divided not only by background and class but by diametrically opposed (yet equally delusional) visions of what it means to "be a man." And as their escalating conflict spirals out of control, it will take them all the way from the hidebound boardrooms and gladiatorial football fields of Texas to the vapid and self-serving upper echelon of Silicon Valley, to the corporatized battlefield of Iraq, all the while serving as a ruthlessly funny takedown of the vacuity and empty machismo of corporate life and alpha-male culture in modern America.

Devastatingly witty, unapologetically scathing, and ultimately surprisingly moving, King of the Mississippi marks the arrival of a unique and scintillating new voice in American fiction, one that boldly punctures the myths of American manhood like no one has since the heyday of The Bonfire of the Vanities and American Psycho.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780525573807
Publisher:	Random House Publishing Group
Publication date:	07/09/2019
Sold by:	Random House
Format:	eBook
Pages:	256
File size:	946 KB

About the Author

MIKE FREEDMAN was born and raised in Houston. He volunteered for the infantry after 9/11, later serving three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan in the U.S. Army Special Forces. He received his MBA from Rice University. He is the author of School Board.

Read an Excerpt

1.

The King Declares

“Not everyone is meant to be a CCGer,” Brock Wharton said to himself as much as to the staffer who fumbled with the applicant folders.

Great consultants mastered the management of time. The muggy fall day that would usher the war home to the future managing director of Cambridge Consulting Group had commenced, like any other for change agent Brock Wharton, on the fast track.

“Next up in the holding pen,” Carissa Barnett said, pulling a manila folder from the stack.

Holding pen. She had not been on the job five weeks and already acted as if she were a veteran consultant with a short attention span. Confidence was contagious at CCG, even for the support. Wharton conceded to himself that the new twenty-five-year-old recruiting coordinator did carry a disproportionally generous bosom on her slender frame, which was managed expertly--the old conceal and reveal--in her pairing of formal business suits with blouses his colleague Piazza labeled “plunging.” Wharton waited for her to set down the folder she held out for him, as she exaggerated multitasking with God-knows-what application on her new smartphone that had transferred none of its claimed intelligence to its owner. That Carissa ran the task force to recruit a wider collection of out-of-the-box thinkers troubled Wharton, who as a principal at CCG had pushed the initiative over the summer after feedback from a client critical of CCG’s junior-level consultants.

Seven of them sat erect in chairs in the four-walled glass room. From outside the fishbowl, their conversation buzzed like a horde of caught flies against glass. All faked pleasantries with the other applicants while nervously hoping their newfound friends fell flat on their faces during the case interview. Although these seven applicants had done their first-round interviews at the smaller Dallas office, Wharton recognized a couple of the applicants from networking events the Houston office had sponsored. Five guys and two girls. Or was that six male applicants and one female applicant? Wharton studied the cropped hair and suit style of the suspect candidate. CCG was really leading the charge to beat McKinsey and Bain in their recruitment of the best and brightest from the LGBT community--though if pressed Wharton would be forced to admit that although he knew what the first two letters stood for, he wasn’t sure those belonging to the third letter should have their own category, and was still confused as to what the fourth letter represented in this “community.”

“Topper.” Wharton read the first name at the top of the résumé aloud and waited to gauge the manner in which he rose. The tall candidate was an easy read for the ex-quarterback. The burgundy tasseled Ferragamo loafers with yacht-stitch detail, though not on the level of Wharton’s bespoke shoes, were a touch of class by Topper Musgrave IV. He wore a practiced smile (to match the sheen of light mousse he put in his hair) as easily as he wore a tight-fitting, European-cut suit favoring his athletic build. On the older side of applicants, he was close to Wharton’s age of thirty-three. Wharton predicted that within a year of starting, Musgrave would be on the website and in company recruiting literature under the caption For me, CCG is not only about developing the strengths you have but also about growing intellectually in a field where the learning never stops. His was an image cut from the Brock Wharton Catalog for out-of-the-box thinkers.

Wharton led Musgrave down the all-white hallway to put him through the obligatory case interview. “How was the flight from New York?”

“Nothing quite like coming back home to Houston from the city.” Wharton understood this code-speak: I can play with the big boys on Wall Street, but I have chosen to return home and be a big fish in a small pond. Wharton liked the play. Wharton had benefited from comprehending the big-picture value of leveraging his fading status as a hometown hero. In New York, he would have joined the mile-long list of ex-athletes turned traders and bankers. But in the good-ole-boy network of Houston, Wharton was the marlin hung on the office wall.

Inside his office, Wharton allowed Musgrave to take in the football given to Wharton by the Houston Texans on draft day that was mounted on its own wall. On the other wall hung his framed University of Texas jersey from the Holiday Bowl. Next to it was his Harvard Business School degree encircled by a bright, crimson-colored frame to achieve a layered effect juxtaposed with the majestic Longhorn dehydrated orange. Never one who was much for the aesthetics of interior design, Wharton adhered to a guiding principle of honoring achievement.

After sufficient time had passed for Musgrave to be intimidated but composed, Wharton put the résumé down and examined the applicant’s features for signs of awe or reverence. No wrinkles on the field under the perfectly stationary, coifed brown hair or above the thin eyebrow trails; big hazel eyes dialed in on the prize; the symmetrical nose and ears showing no genetic slight. Only born assurance. A familiar face stared back at Wharton in the award-winning pedigree of Musgrave: here was a CCG man.

Wharton began, “I usually begin a decision-round interview by providing the candidate with a face to put with our international reputation of excellence and seventy worldwide offices. Then I will ask you a few questions about your background to get to know your story, allowing you to walk me through your résumé. After which time we will proceed to the case portion of the interview, and then wrap up with any questions you might have. Sound good?”

“Sounds great.”

Wharton motioned to his football jersey upon concluding a brief internal debate to lend his own face as the best example. “When my football career ended in injury before my first NFL preseason, I asked myself, ‘What other challenges are out there for a game-changer in life, Brock?’ At first glance, it was investment banking. Which I did here in town at arguably the best bulge-bracket investment bank for four years--logged a lot of hours and got up to speed on everything I thought there was to know about business. But it was while learning the case-study method at Harvard Business School that I realized a well-trained monkey can perform the functions in banking.” Since Musgrave, a native Houstonian, had opted for Wall Street, Wharton decided to forgo his polemic on oil and gas as unnecessary; he calculated he was not alone in his derision of the industry as not meeting the ambitions of someone of their talent level. “It was that epiphany--which came to me during the twenty-fifth mile of the Boston Marathon--that made me realize consulting was the only place in the business world that provided a daily intellectual challenge for the extreme competitor in life. If you’re a competitor, you will never be bored and your future is limitless at CCG.” Wharton stopped to point at Musgrave and asked with a turn of the palm up to show the oyster that could be held there, “In what other job in the world can a recent MBA graduate stand in front of a Fortune 500 CEO and tell him how to fix his company? So, Topper, why do you wish to be a part of CCG?”

“Because it’s the best. And it can grow further.”

“Further,” Wharton said, wrapping his tongue around the length of the word approvingly, in the manner of a python encountering a small mammal.

“Houston was the number one city in job creation at three hundred and nine percent this past year. It’s about to overtake Chicago as the third-largest city in the country. This is the downtown where I wish to log my future late nights.”

Directed by this exhortation to his lectern, the future mayor asserted, “It’s not just an oil town.”

“My grandfather used to say, ‘Oil is a commodity you own, not something that defines you.’ ” Musgrave did not have to spell out for Wharton that his grandfather had uttered the platitude as a cabinet member in President George H. W. Bush’s one-term administration.

“You can’t be inimitable if you float on the same rising tide as all boats,” Wharton crowed, now rehearsing his speech as the first Mr. Houston recipient who would reject the celebration of oil--in his case, as not celebratory enough of his own distinguished talents, any industry that ultimately derived its success from the luck of drilling into the earth’s right spots. Where was the sport in that?

“At every stage in my life I’ve been the best, gone further. Whether it was graduating at the top of my class and still finding the intestinal fortitude to captain the basketball team at a little school in Boston, or serving as a leader after that by besting my peers on the trading desk.”

Little school in Boston. The competitor speech had sunk the hook deep in this billfish. “Captained at Harvard, eh?” Was it even necessary to insult this captain by asking him for a solution to a case study? The rest of the interview would be better spent shooting clays. What a joy it would be to open the gate for such a competitor. To hit him with a tight spiral in the end zone during the Consulting Bowl. Even the future king of a city needed his lieutenants.

Reading Group Guide

1. In King of the Mississippi, Mike Freedman delivers a satire of contemporary American masculinity. What are some of the most outrageous displays of bravado that you can recall from the book? In your view, what are some of the insecurities that underpin “toxic masculinity,” as it is once termed by K.K., Brock Wharton’s wife?

2. Mike Fink’s charm and charisma, alluring to many at Cambridge Consulting Group, escapes Wharton, who is repulsed by the former Green Beret soldier. Why does Wharton so despise Fink? At base level, do you think Wharton is threatened by the descendant of the so-called “King of the Mississippi”?

3. Wharton compulsively compares himself to others to measure his self-worth, having been influenced by his father’s “eternal Socratic question for him: If being the best gives your life meaning, who are you then if you are not the best?” (page 124). What effect does living in constant competition with others have on Wharton’s happiness? Does it hold him back in any way?

4. Consider the following moment during the football game in chapter 6:

“C-C-G! C-C-G!” Carissa chanted, shaking pom-poms and her integrity.
“U-S-A!” Fink chimed in to mine the mindless patriotism that had brought him thus far.
“U-S-A! U-S-A!” cheered the CCG players.
Corporate America, Wharton thought bitterly as their chanting nationalism flagged. He needed to find a new career and maybe a new country. (page 151)

Were you surprised to see this attitude in Wharton, who was once a poster boy for corporate America and considered himself a gatekeeper to the world of consulting? How did you see his perceptions and priorities gradually change as the narrative progressed? How might Fink have been a catalyst for these changes?

5. At one moment, Wharton thinks to himself that “[a]ll of life was probably myth creation” (page 161). How do you interpret this thought? What “myths” determine the meaning or purpose of life for the characters in this book?

6. In earlier parts of King of the Mississippi, Wharton ridicules the intelligence of Fink and others who serve in the military, which he dismisses as “the last stop for the talentless” (page 12). When he travels to the Middle East, however, he encounters members of the Special Forces, including a former Goldman Sachs banker and a young Harvard graduate fluent in three languages, who “could smoke any consulting dream team in concentration of talent” (page 229). Did this novel challenge your own view of the military or your presumptions about the kinds of people who serve in it?

7. In part three of this book, how does the author paint the vested interests of Western corporate giants as contributing to the causes and even benefiting from the sustainment of conflicts in the Middle East? Why is it favorable for the likes of CCG in this book for Middle Eastern countries to “embrace capitalism”?

8. How might Freedman’s novel suggest that environmental degradation, climate change, and certain international wars may have a common root cause? What might this cause be?

9. In chapter 9, Wharton and Fink are told by Faruq Hawrami, a business owner in Kurdistan, that “the best business ethics are in making the best deal” (page 215). What does this mean? Do you think that prioritizing profit above all other considerations is, in fact, a suspension of ethics? Why or why not?

10. By the epilogue of King of the Mississippi, Wharton has formed an unlikely alliance with Fink, as the two even consider starting a new business together to compete with Cambridge Consulting Group. In the long run, how do you think their business partnership would pan out? How would their company, tentatively named CrossConsult by Fink, be different from the likes of CCG?

Editorial Reviews

06/01/2019

Brock Wharton, former star quarterback and Harvard B-School graduate, oozes white privilege and is cock of the walk at a prestigious Houston consulting firm. Over his extreme objections, the firm hires eccentric, boastful ex-vet Mike Fink (who claims kinship to the legendary King of the Keelboats), and the two become instant enemies. As much as Wharton conspires to get Fink fired, the chameleonlike Fink keeps succeeding. They work against each other but are forced together in this takedown of corporate culture, male identity, and American ideals. Their path leads through Silicon Valley, to a hilarious football game (with Fink the unlikely hero) against a rival firm, to Iraq and the corporate war that never ends. Funny in a nuanced way if not a laugh-out-loud read, the latest from Freedman (School Board) is at the same time serious in intent. The first third, however, is overloaded with marketing/economic terminology, which will cause many readers to skim a lot or simply quit; the last section behaves somewhat similarly, with an abundance of military terminology. VERDICT In the end, some readers might feel that the concept exceeds the execution. But the Wharton/Fink bonding is worth the ride. For fans of literary fiction.—Robert E. Brown, Oswego, NY

Library Journal

05/13/2019

A towering monument to arrogance faces off against a wily underminer in Freedman’s precise and pungent satire of the business world (after School Board). Brock Wharton is a successful Houston business consultant and, at least according to him, the smartest guy in the room. He’s on partner track at his consultancy when he’s assigned to train a new hire, Mike Fink, an earthy ex–Special Forces operative who sees Brock as less a mentor than a target. As Fink endlessly capitalizes on his veteran status to win the trust of clients and engages in various forms of professional sabotage, Brock develops his own counterinsurgency (as he dubs it) to get rid of Fink, whose very existence is an affront to Brock’s Harvard-burnished values. It’s not ruining anything to say that the two end up conspiring together on a far-flung assignment, but the road to their detente is never a forced one. Freedman laces the narrative with acid observations (“Like Islamists, Houstonians shared a fanaticism for knocking down landmark buildings”) and fills it with jargon, though the business doublespeak conceit wears thin. Freedman deserves credit for sticking with such a hubristic antihero; his darkly comic skewering of capitalism is all the more potent for it. This is sly, sharp fun. (July)

Publishers Weekly

"I have trouble expressing the sheer joy of reading King of the Mississippi.  Not only is this book funny, but it is serious funny, angry funny, insightful funny, wise funny, and just plain old-fashioned funny funny.  Stanley Elkin and Joseph Heller — let me introduce you to Mike Freedman."
—TIM O'BRIEN, National Book Award-winning author of Going After Cacciato and The Things They Carried

“Mike Freedman is a brilliant satirist. King of the Mississippi is the best comic novel since Kingsley Amis's Lucky Jim.”
—PHILIPP MEYER, Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of The Son and American Rust

"Two alphas battle to be top dog at a global consultancy in this amusing satire on business, ambition, and entitlement...A solid entertainment from a writer of considerable talent and promise."
—Kirkus (starred) 

"Mike Freedman's King of the Mississippi takes us on a wild and raucous ride through the "homefront" of contemporary America and the foreign front of "over there," shredding—to hilarious and usually wincing effect—the prevailing pieties of corporate and military culture. Freedman has a keen eye for the damning detail, a quick ear for the unctuous con, which makes him an ideal satirist/realist for our highly disturbed age. Joseph Heller, Terry Southern, Hunter S. Thompson, George Saunders, say hello to the newest member of the American Jesters club."
—BEN FOUNTAIN, author of National Book Critics Circle Award-winning Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk
 
"In King of the Mississippi, Mike Freedman launches a surgical strike against the old school, old boy network of good ole boys: those masters of the universe who brought us Enron, Lehman Brothers, and (cough cough) President Donald Trump. Freedman’s satirical takedown of white male privilege, 21st Century Kleptocracy, and our forever war is a deeply entertaining tour of duty through America’s heart of darkness. From the boardroom to the battlefield, Freedman calls out the narcs and the poseurs, the warmongers who never leave the wire and have no skin in the game. King of the Mississippi is a comic cri de coeur and Mike Freedman the disarming leader of a dazzling new literary insurgency."
—AMBER DERMONT, author of the New York Times bestselling The Starboard Sea

“This hyperliterate, darkly comic skewering of modern masculinity pits the two combatants in a battle for supremacy via quasi-military tactics and uproariously funny, cringe-inducing hijinks…Freedman masterfully blends humor with thought-provoking and poignant insights. The dialogue hums and the two main characters are colorful, memorable, and thoroughly human, each on his own treacherous path toward the discovery of what it truly means to be a man.”
—Booklist (starred)
 
“A towering monument to arrogance faces off against a wily underminer in Freedman's precise and pungent satire of the business world…This is sly, sharp fun.”
—Publishers Weekly

“In this hysterical novel, Mike Freedman takes on the current and very serious military-civilian divide in a world-class satire from which no side emerges unscathed. Read it; laugh and learn.”
—KARL MARLANTES, author of the New York Times bestselling Matterhorn and What It Is Like To Go To War
 
“The points of reference in America’s literary heritage for Mike Freedman’s King of the Mississippi are in some ways clear and compelling, from Twain to Heller and beyond. But in a very real way they do Freedman an injustice. Reading this book I found all the comparisons falling quickly away. He is an American original. King of the Mississippi weds dark hilarity and deep seriousness in ways that are, it seems to me, uniquely born from this apocalyptic era we have now entered. This is a remarkable novel from a truly important young American writer.”
—ROBERT OLEN BUTLER, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning A Good Scent From A Strange Mountain and Perfume River
 
"King of the Mississippi is a terrific war novel set in the aftermath of Iraq. Distinguish yourself and buy it now.” 
—WINSTON GROOM, Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of Forrest Gump and El Paso
 
"Mike Freedman writes with a distinct sensibility.  His new novel King of the Mississippi throbs with humor and American exuberance."
—HA JIN, National Book Award-winning author of Waiting and The Banished Immortal

“There are echoes of Kingsley Amis and Joseph Heller in this remarkable novel, but Mike Freedman’s voice is entirely his own. And a darkly funny voice it is as he wields his satire like a rapier to puncture any number of today's sacred piñatas. Mike Fink, a mythic character on the early American frontier, returns in the body of an eponymous, though metaphorical, descendant to raise holy hell in the boardrooms of America's oligarchs, and in a wild twist, on the battlefields of Iraq.”
—PHILIP CAPUTO, National Book Award finalist and author of A Rumor of War and Acts of Faith

"Through the lens of Green Berets and corporate war-rooms, Mr. Freedman offers a sharp, witty look at dueling American ideologies with his novel King of the Mississippi. A deftly-woven story that questions societal notions of success and hard work, readers will recognize both their better selves and their most intimate shortcomings as Brock Wharton and Mike Fink battle for new commissions and established business as high-flying consultants from Houston, Texas. Full of laughs and hard truths, the seams of society itself are at stake and we are left with a current, comedic triumph to celebrate." 
—ROSS RITCHELL, Special Operations veteran and author of The Knife

“Mike Freedman's King of the Mississippi is a fast-paced, high-octane, scorching satire that strips bare the industrial-military-football-consulting complex. Every page sizzles with wit and erudition.  An instant classic!”
—DOUGLAS BRINKLEY
 
“Using the world of high-end management consulting as the operative metaphor, Mike Freedman weaves a jarringly humorous critique of our post-modern world, with the war veteran’s post-war fate of seeing the world too clearly.  Along the way, Freedman takes literary satire to new and surprising places, perfectly suitable for our troubled times. Reminiscent to me of some of the best writing about war, this novel puts on display Freedman’s considerably mature talent as a story-teller, and this is a deeply satisfying read.”
—BRUCE WEIGL, Pulitzer Prize Finalist and author of Song of Napalm
 
“What happens when a real warrior meets the pseudo-warriors of business on their turf, then his? Mike Freedman knows them both from the inside, and takes us to war with hilarious and moving results.”
—WILLIAM BROYLES
 
“Like a big blue catfish packed to the gills with schadenfreude and hyper-masculinity, King of the Mississippi is a savagely raucous novel in which no one is safe from a comic skewering. Along with Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, it will stand the test of time as one of the best satires of the War on Terror. From Special Forces gunslingers, to high society wives, to Fortune 500 consultants, to the Bayou City where they mix, mingle, and occasionally do battle, Freedman writes with great verve and authority on the failings of military and corporate cultures alike.”
—BRIAN VAN REET, author of Spoils

"King of the Mississippi is a Houston novel like no other before it: unexpected, scalpel sharp, and darkly hilarious."
—MIMI SWARTZ, author of Power Failure and Ticker
 
“This millennial novel is wild. The characters all feral, funny, and irresistibly entertaining.”
—XUAN JULIANA WANG, author of Home Remedies

From the Publisher

This extremely funny audiobook highlights the tension that arises when a job interviewer believes that an applicant is unqualified—only to discover that his colleagues disagree and have hired the “incompetent.” The resulting ego-driven competition set in the cutthroat world of business consulting is captured flawlessly by narrator Jeremy Bobb. Bobb recognizes that Freedman’s subtext focuses on the competing consultants’ inability to separate the personal from the professional. The dialogue is superb, particularly in the opening scene in which cocky Brock Wharton interviews Mike Fink, a veteran whom Wharton perceives as an immediate threat. As the story develops and the egos collide, Bobb delivers every aspect of the audiobook in a memorably entertaining manner. D.J.S. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine

OCTOBER 2019 - AudioFile

This extremely funny audiobook highlights the tension that arises when a job interviewer believes that an applicant is unqualified—only to discover that his colleagues disagree and have hired the “incompetent.” The resulting ego-driven competition set in the cutthroat world of business consulting is captured flawlessly by narrator Jeremy Bobb. Bobb recognizes that Freedman’s subtext focuses on the competing consultants’ inability to separate the personal from the professional. The dialogue is superb, particularly in the opening scene in which cocky Brock Wharton interviews Mike Fink, a veteran whom Wharton perceives as an immediate threat. As the story develops and the egos collide, Bobb delivers every aspect of the audiobook in a memorably entertaining manner. D.J.S. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine

OCTOBER 2019 - AudioFile

★ 2019-04-14
Two alphas battle to be top dog at a global consultancy in this amusing satire on business, ambition, and entitlement.

Brock Wharton, at 33, reckons he has logged "a lifetime of doing everything right." Quarterback at the University of Texas, married money, Harvard Business School, and on the fast track to becoming managing director of Houston-based Cambridge Consulting Group. But while interviewing new hires, he meets his nemesis, Mike Fink, who seems comfortable being all wrong for CCG. Weak GPA at Tulane, majored in English literature, and sartorially unsplendid: "Navy double-breasted suit he wore as if he were a redneck admiral at a regatta that Wharton would never enter." But Fink's resume includes serving as a Green Beret in the Middle East. So while Wharton thinks of the military as "the last stop for the talentless," CCG's managing director feels that "in our post 9/11 world, these heroes are a lot more real to clients than another fresh-faced MBA." Wharton soon realizes Fink is no hick. During a session with client Dr. Pepper, Wharton spouts CCG's usual mix of jargon, arrogance, and newish ideas. The wily Fink undermines his slideshow and charms the CEO with a paean to corporate tradition. Freedman (School Board, 2014), a former Green Beret himself, uses Fink to skewer the style and substance of consultancies, Houston's moneyed class, and male egos in general—the novel's women barely rise above cliché. The scattershot satire can be rough or forced, but it has a compelling energy, like Rodney Dangerfield's shtick. Freedman's debut was a broadly comic look at business interests in Houston's politics as a charismatic teen vies with an oil executive for a school board seat. Maybe there's another city portrait in the works, something akin to William Kennedy's Albany novels.

A solid entertainment from a writer of considerable talent and promise.

Kirkus Reviews