Response to "Losing Sincerity" by Taylor

            “Losing Sincerity” is a wild story about a hotel manager’s take on a huge event the hotel has organized. The manager, Brad, narrates the story in first person. I think the central idea of the story is the different personalities Brad recognizes in himself: his work personality and his non-work personality. There is more than sufficient evidence from the story, from the thoughts of the narrator, and from his interactions with his employees that he is, like he says, a prick. However, he suggests that outside work, he is not so hard to get along with.

            I got pretty caught up in the craziness of this story, which had a lot of characteristics of a wild frat party story, but which also had a much more sophisticated element: the fact that this was not a frat house, but a hotel. I was able to pick up all the hotel and restaurant lingo, which really tied me strongly to the characters and events in this story, as I work in a restaurant myself. I found myself laughing out loud at the ludicrousness of the drunken crowd and the annoyance of the manager. I felt like I could really see all the crazy things going on in this hotel, and I empathized with the stressful and critical emotions of the manager. I think managers typically need to have a no-nonsense attitude.

            I’m not sure if there’s any conflict or any change at all in Brad, and this is a problem. At the end of the story he’s not different than he said he was: after the stress of the night is over, he seems more relaxed and happy to have a drink with Alyson. But he already told us this would happen, so we are not seeing any change coming over him other than the change we already anticipated would occur. Also, there’s a lot of confusion in my mind about the relationship between him and Alyson. It seems pretty obvious that he doesn’t want a serious relationship: he does not even care that she apparently doesn’t remember who stayed with her the previous night—turns out it was him. I think the story is about a guy who wants to have fun but has to endure the misery of work, but I just don’t see any conflict.