(no subject)

[skygiants]

I am a deeply basic individual who loves surrealist workplace horror-satire about the evils of capitalism, and Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind lands squarely within this genre: it's about an anxious young man with crushing debt and a desperation to please who picks up a new job working for a mysterious agency that removes stress factors from people's dreams in order to increase their labor efficiency.

Alas! his new job, which seems initially like a pathway out of the financial downward spiral that's been drowning him in slow motion, turns out to be bad for both him and everyone he knows. This is very clear from the beginning and is repeatedly foreshadowed -- there are several wistful sequences of 'alas! had Jonathan done x at y time, and had a genuine conversation with z, perhaps things would have gone this, better way. however --' in ways that didn't quite work for me; I think I would have enjoyed this book completely wholeheartedly as a novella, but as a full novel I sort of felt like it perhaps ran out of things to tell me sooner than it ran out of pages.

But I also, frankly, have been really spoiled for good surrealist workplace horror-satire by friends who are absurdly talented at evoking it (sometimes just by telling me about something that happened in their day-to-day life! at their startup!) and it is not really Jonathan Abernathy's fault that the tone of this book tilted more dreamy and wistful, and less bitingly detailed and sharp in the way that I personally prefer it. So if you, too, love surrealist workplace horror-satire, it may well be worth giving this book a go, and I think it's even odds that it will scratch the itch!

Comments

[imbir]

Not a recommendation as I've just started it, but have you read Ling Ma's Severance (unrelated to the TV show -- or is it...)? I get the impression that it's the most weirdly prescient of the global pandemic novels written pre-Covid (down to the loot bags of disinfectant miniatures and N95 masks), but it could also be described as a surrealist workplace horror-satire that's firmly entrenched in the sharp & uneasy side of the genre.

[skygiants]

I have not but I've been intrigued by it, moreso now. Have you finished it yet?

[imbir]

Got distracted, currently halfway through a different book (not a comment on Severance, I started rereading the other book to check if I wanted to rec it to someone and tricked myself into reading the whole thing). Hopefully I'll have a verdict by the time your year in review post goes up.

[nevanna]

I am a deeply basic individual who loves surrealist workplace horror-satire about the evils of capitalism...

That was, as I think I've mentioned in the past, one of my favorite parts of The Magnus Archives. I might give this book a try even though I recognize that you're recommending it with caveats!

[skygiants]

Yes, same for me too! Well, my favorite part of The Magnus Archives was the opportunity to give professional advice to the world's worst archivist. God bless. But it's a related impulse.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy this one if you read it!

[asakiyume]

I sort of felt like it perhaps ran out of things to tell me sooner than it ran out of pages. --LOL, that is not what a novel wants to do, for sure (and great way of describing the phenomenon).

[skygiants]

It's an extra risk I think of the kind of book that this is, which is deliberately playing with foreshadowing and with a feeling of doom -- I think this is all quite purposeful! but nonetheless I got quite doomed out too early ....

[asakiyume]

quite doomed out 😂

[chestnut_pod]

As someone who grew up in a house with tech workers, it's a high bar to clear to evoke that particular purgatory better than that dinner conversation!

Did this use the conceit of dreaming in an interesting way, in your opinion?

[skygiants]

THIS IS THE THING. My friends who work in startups provide me with more convincing and compelling surrealism on the daily.

I wasn't super compelled by it, tbh, but again I think it's possible I was just the wrong audience, or was in the wrong mood ... but there are particular compelling-surrealist sequences that will always live with me, and these will not.

[vintagewitch]

My partner and I are watching "Severance" for the first time right now and it is sooooo good.

I worked at a weird health insurance company that wanted to be a fancy tech company for much of this year and oh boy the horrors

[skygiants]

It's so good! extremely stoked for S2 to come out.

& OH BOY I CAN IMAGINE