Yet another Alan Joyce delusion
Never let the facts get in the way of a good memoir.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but the reception to Alan Joyce's memoir Riding the Jet Stream since its release two months ago could not be described as adulatory. The backlash against his attempted comeback plainly caught the former Qantas CEO off guard. We know this because the book itself contained very little by way of substantive apology for his disastrous decisions (just three of which cost Qantas shareholders a combined $435 million of compensation and penalties). It was only on the publicity trail for the book, as Joyce was mugged by widespread hostility, that he began to proffer his remorse.
The fact he expected a warm reception tends to confirm all I've written over several years about Joyce's morbid self-awareness bypass. I would highly commend to you Alan Kohler's extended conversation with Joyce from August, where Joyce's non-comprehension and Kohler's interviewing prowess are both on prime display.
Reports from the publishing world suggest Joyce's book isn't exactly flying off the shelves, and each day I beseech the Lord to take away my rapturous schadenfreude. Hey, nobody did more to promote his book than I did, and I even bought my own copy for posterity (albeit not signed by the author).
Having previously catalogued Riding the Jet Stream's top-line instances of Joycean misinformation and hallucination (here and here), I can now reveal a new and quite brilliant example of the same.
