How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph.Page)
Quote #4
But Alan dropped out of college to sell Fuller Brush products, and then sold bicycles, and did fine, extremely well for a while there, until he and others decided to have other people, ten thousand miles away, build the things they sold, and soon left himself with nothing to sell, and now he was in this conference room over-looking the harbor, and he was staring at this pinched-face Eric Ingvall, who owned him and who knew it. (IX.9.64-65)
Alan's participation in movement of manufacturing jobs out of the U.S. has landed him at a professional dead end. The building and selling of bicycles is not only far away; it's streamlined and technologically driven. There's no need for so much person-to-person schmoozing when everything can be settled impersonally and quickly. Alan can no longer support himself on his old skill set, and he seems too devastated to get a new one. His personal independence is now hostage to the whims of jerks like Ingvall.
Quote #5
"They're making actual things over there, and we're making websites and holograms. Every day our people are making their websites and holograms, while sitting in chairs made in China, driving over your bridges made in China." (XII.69.87)
Ron, Alan's dad, has no interest in making his son feel better about the state of things in the world. In fact, he's really into torturing Alan for his part in the shift away from manufacturing physical goods in the U.S. It's a theme that many Americans have taken up in the last few years: what good are we if we can't make any of the things that we actually use everyday?
Quote #6
Now, though, he had nothing to teach these people. They could set up a hologram in a tent in the desert, while he'd arrived three hours late and wouldn't know where to plug the thing in. (XVII.31.130)
Remember all those "out-of-body" experiences that Alan has while he's in the desert? He feels like he's stepping outside himself and wondering just who he has become. It happens partly because Alan no longer has a place in the world that's evolving at breakneck pace around him. He's basically a Fuller Brush salesman in a Silicon Valley world. Alan feels his irrelevance pretty hard when he tries to figure out exactly what he brings to this team of young, technologically hip people from Reliant.