A Good Morning America Book Club Pick • A Financial Times Best Science Fiction Book of 2021 • A New Scientist Best Book of 2021 • A Vox Staff Recommendation
"An absurd, hilarious romp through the haunted house of late-stage capitalism." —Carmen Maria Machado, author of In the Dream House and Her Body and Other Parties
“Several People Are Typing is fun, funny, addictive, and surreal…I blazed through it in an hour, came up for air, and then immediately blazed through it again.”—The New Yorker
“An existential romp with a wicked sense of humor, Calvin Kasulke’s debut novel is a Greek chorus of modern strife, a workplace of woebegone souls. It asks the important questions, like what it means to be a person, but also, what it means to be a gif. Several People Are Typing is a dirge for bureaucracy told by one of the funniest new writers @here.” —Hilary Leichter, author of Temporary
“Truly original.” —Esquire
"[An] extremely meta debut novel that feels like just the right amount of triggering after working from home for the last 17 months." —Nylon
“Several People Are Typing is the first novel I've read that feels written of, about, and inside the internet. With cursed spreadsheets, pregnant lizards, backchannel smack-talk, :dusty_sticks:, and the creepiest gifs in American literature, Calvin Kasulke doesn't just commit to the bit; the bit commits to him. If you've ever felt imprisoned by work, the internet, or your mortal body, buy this book twice.” —Tony Tulathimutte, author of Private Citizens
"Calvin Kasulke knows what makes a spooky story good. Questions like: Is that thing real? Is he possessed? What otherworldly realm is this? Where are those wolves howling from? And the scariest: Did I reply-all? Finding human connection in disembodied Slack chat, Several People Are Typing makes the impossible seem possible." —Helen Ellis, bestselling author of American Housewife and Bring Your Baggage and Don’t Pack Light
"Rife with office humor, Internet speak, and sharp criticisms of capitalism, Kasulke’s extremely online debut novel is composed entirely of Slack messages." —The Millions, "Most Anticipated Books of 2021"
“A brilliant, laugh-out-loud funny slice of unglued genius about the triumphs and tyranny of the online workplace. Deliciously weird and wonderfully real, Several People Are Typing is a must-read for anyone who’s ever suspected that the people on the other side of the screen are not all there.” —Max Barry, bestselling author of Lexicon and Providence
"Several People Are Typing is a winsome, light-footed book with deceptive staying power. It operates in the scale of the morning meeting, the memo, the brief aside, the ‘are you kidding me’ request for clarification, the of-the-moment decision of where to go for after-work drinks or whether and when to fall in love. Kasulke retains an unerring instinct for callbacks and repetition, never wearing out a single joke's welcome, instead establishing a rich archive of possible pasts to reference. The book runs on those little economies of attention and care that managed to make me miss working in an office." —Daniel Lavery, bestselling author of Texts From Jane Eyre and Something That May Shock and Discredit You, and writer of Slate’s “Dear Prudence” column
"Here it is, folks! The novel about the clusterf$%# that is working from home when the world's on fire (sometimes literally). Several People Are Typing is dark, witty, and, yes, more than a little Kafka-esque. Guaranteed to cause several people to be typing in your book club group chat." —Book Culture, "Most Anticipated Books of August"
"I loved Calvin Kasulke’s debut novel. It wears weighty themes - surveillance and robot takeovers - so lightly and somehow manages to be touching and funny, as well as eerie and prescient. So easy to read, too. A seriously original book in both form and content." —Pandora Sykes, author of How Do We Know We're Doing It Right?
“An absolute joy—an ensemble-driven existential horror slash comedy consisting entirely of Slack transcripts. . .Kasulke does an incredible job of capturing the voices of each different employee at the PR firm, rendering thoughtful details all the way down to the cadence of their emoji use.” —Boing Boing, “Someone wrote an existential horror comedy set entirely in Slack and it's great”
“Do you know how weird it looks to (1) read a book on the Philly bus and (2) laugh out loud at the book you are reading on the Philly bus? This book did that to me.” —TechCrunch 2021 Gift Guide
“Calvin Kasulke is a master of the literary stunt. . .In his debut, a novel that could not be more perfect for a year defined by work from home culture, Kasulke sticks the landing of a trick all his own..” —Electric Literature, Best Novels of 2021
"Gloriously inventive. . .Reminiscent of the perfectly realized drudgery of Joshua Ferris' Then We Came to the End (2006) and the gothic happenings of David Foster Wallace's The Pale King (2011), this is a workplace comedy that brilliantly captures the era of remote work. . .A poignant depiction of the always-on nature of the contemporary workplace. Kasulke's ear for dialogue is remarkable as he truly captures the injokes, asides, and odd language of Slack communication. Funny, relatable, and incredibly timely, this is a hugely entertaining debut." --Booklist, *starred review*
08/27/2021
DEBUT Books about being Extremely Online have been carving out a slice of the literary zeitgeist in recent years; right on time to the party is Lambda Literary Fellow Kasulke's debut, told entirely through Slack conversations, emojis and all. Titled after a meme that reflects the calm before a storm—a self-explanatory metaphor in an increasingly connected and immediate world—this work concerns the Kafkaesque existential crisis of Gerald, a mid-level employee at a PR firm who suddenly finds his consciousness and corporeal form inexplicably disconnected; relegated to a virtual existence, Gerald has no idea if his body is even still alive. Light topicality follows this high-concept premise, including commentary on late capitalism's internet-aided work/life imbalance and the fiction of modern communication, but it's Kasulke's execution rather than his ideas that recommends this work. The author masters mood, inflecting his comedic core with bits of surreal horror, and demonstrates a keen ear for lingo, expressly humorous without ever forsaking authenticity. He likewise proves deft at depicting the particular rhythms of group chats, with all communication here existing within a haze of disruption. Admittedly, this comes at the expense of any real characterization, which plays third fiddle to the novel's formal playfulness and puckish conceit, but if the novel never rises above a trifle, it's at least a delicious one. VERDICT Existing in the slipstream of humanity's and technology's mutual march forward, this is a welcome if lightweight oddity that cuttingly observes the horror and humor of the modern condition.—Luke Gorham, Galesburg P.L., IL
2021-06-16
The petty trials and supernatural tribulations of a public relations firm are explored through its Slack conversations in this debut novel.
Gerald, a mediocre employee of an unnamed PR firm, is stuck inside his company’s Slack channel. He doesn't know how his consciousness became trapped inside the business communication app, and he struggles to explain to his colleagues how he’s “just kinda, in here,” which he describes as “pretty existentially terrifying.”Gerald’s co-workers barely register his predicament, however; they believe he's merely engaging in an elaborate bit to take advantage of the firm’s new work-from-home policy. Meanwhile, Gerald frantically solicits help from Slackbot, the app’s troubleshooting AI, who initially only responds with preprogrammed messages like, “I can help by answering simple questions about how Slack works. I’m just a bot, though!” Things get interesting when Gerald convinces his co-worker Pradeep to check on his absent body, and even more so when Slackbot discovers how to “help” Gerald. Kasulke adopts the epistolary format by restricting the action to Slack, composing his novel out of message threads titled by nickname (“#nyc-office”) or the list of participants (“Nikki, Pradeep, Louis C”). Most of the conversations read incredibly quickly, even before the characters are sufficiently differentiated by typing style. Kasulke uses the line breaks and repetition of digital communication to stitch poetry out of textspeak, business lingo, adaptive chatbot phrases, and emojis—the latter represented by frustratingly clunky colon-bracketed text (“:thumbsup:”). Subplots about a PR catastrophe at a dog food company, an office hookup, and an employee haunted by mysterious “howling” offer varyingly interesting sendups of business life. As Gerald dissociates further from reality in favor of endless cyberspace, he laments: “We’re not made to absorb this much human information at once.”
A compulsively readable satire of modern corporate culture.
