Friday Reads: Slackers

I’m in the middle of several books, and unexpectedly busy in the middle of the summer, so I was in the mood for something quick and light. I opened Several People Are Typing by Calvin Kasulke, which is a novel told entirely in Slack messages between co-workers at a PR firm. One of them has had his consciousness sucked completely into the chat, so his mind now exists mainly as text on the screen. Everyone thinks he’s faking so he can keep working from home.

It’s one of those ideas for a book that sounds fresh and interesting at first — like, say, “a novel told entirely in tweets” or “a love story shown through the comments on a Facebook post” — but can get incredibly tiresome. So I was fully prepared to put it back down if it didn’t get pretty damn amusing pretty damn quick.

An hour later, I reached the end without even noticing how fast the time had gone. It’s a funny but incredibly specific book aimed primarily at people who know about Slack channels at work and DMs and communicating by emoji, which barely includes me these days. And you have to be willing to simply go with the main conceit — a guy gets his brain sucked into a computer chat for no particular reason — which is never explained.

But that’s okay. Comedy doesn’t have to include massive world-building or long explanations about quantum patterns on the internet or magic computers. It can just be funny. And there are plenty of funny moments delivered entirely by the cleverness of Kasulke’s timing and the deadpan narration of the increasingly weird events at the firm. The employees are all doing the best they can, even as they manage the ethical disasters of their clients. They’re constantly anxious and constantly bored at the same time, trying desperately to focus on the latest distraction. A co-worker disappearing into Slack requires far more attention than most of them can spare.

 Several People… takes an absurd premise and grounds it firmly in the boredom of an office. It’s a perfect summer read in a world filled with low-key panic and constant anxiety stoked by the shiny, beeping boxes we stare at every day. We could use more books like this. God knows we all need the laughs.

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FRIENDS AND WELL-WISHERS DEPT.

My friend Ian Tregillis just sent me the manuscript of his latest work. That’s just me bragging. You won’t get to see it for a while, but when you do, you’ll wish you’d seen it sooner. In the meantime, you can read his book The Mechanical, the first in the Alchemy Wars trilogy, about a world where clockwork robots changed the shape of history.

My other friend Beatriz Williams released The Beach at Summerly, a work of historical fiction featuring Soviet spies and summer romance on an island in New England. Beatriz is beloved by her readers. Pick this up and you will find out why.

That’s it for this week. Farnsworth Radio will be on hiatus for the next couple Fridays as I take a roadtrip with my family and get some work done. See you again on July 21.

As always, add your recommendations and reviews in the comments.