Several People are Typing by Calvin Kasulke

Published by Doubleday on August 31, 2021

If I were to attach a label to Several People Are Typing, I might go with absurdist or experimental. A more apt description might be “really, really funny.”

One of the technology trends that I’ve managed to avoid is called Slack. If I’m getting this right, Slack is a messaging app that businesses use to enable internal communications and conferencing. Slack users apparently have the ability to add emojis to their communications. According to a blog post at Vice, nobody is quite sure what the “dusty stick” emoji means. That ambiguity is milked for its full laugh potential in Several People Are Typing.

The novel consists entirely of chat dialog in Slack message rooms used by the New York office of a public relations firm. Clients rely on the firm for crisis management. When Pomeranians start dying because their dog food has been poisoned, they turn to the firm for positive messaging to restore the faith of dog owners in the deadly product.

Early in the novel, a member of the firm named Gerald is working at home on a spreadsheet that he has made to compare the merits of various winter coats so he can decide which one to purchase. That task somehow transports his consciousness into Slack, where he has rather unproductive conversations with Slackbot, a Clippy-type helper that refers Gerald to the Help Center for answers to his questions about why he is stuck in a program. Gerald can easily communicate with other employees via Slack, but they think he is trying out a “bit” when he complains that he is stuck inside Slack. Gerald’s co-employee Pradeep eventually heeds Gerald’s entreaties, goes to Gerald’s home, and finds Gerald’s drooling body slumped over a keyboard. Pradeep takes this in stride, in part because Gerald pays Pradeep to tend to his body while his mind adjusts to living inside of Slack. Slackbot eventually “wakes up” and decides he would like to live Gerald’s physical life while Gerald is stuck in Slack. Slackbot’s idea of living is largely limited to eating and sex, although he enjoys sunsets, at least when they appear in a gif.

Much of the story’s humor comes from random office absurdities. A new employee arrives in the office on a snowy day, finding only one other employee who made it to work. They promptly have sex on the boss’ standing desk, to the detriment of the desk. They discuss their dalliance on Slack, secure in the knowledge that the boss never exercises his authority to read private communications on Slack. A “wrong send” nevertheless clues the rest of the office into the romance. Before that happens, the male in the relationship seeks advice in private rooms about Valentine’s Day — specifically, how to avoid celebrating it with his new casual lover without seeming like a dick for avoiding it, a problem I instinctively understood.

An employee named Lydia has a growing concern about the howling she always hears, as if wolves are at her door. Another employee develops a concern when Lydia disappears and nobody else in the office remembers that Lydia ever worked there. Such is life in the modern office environment.

The novel satirizes office relationships, professional and personal, as well as working (or not working) from home, a mode that is popular with the firm’s employees, who never seem to do much work even if they’re in the office. It satirizes managers who ignore questions (like, “when are you going to send me the information I need to finish this project?”) and employees who gossip (i.e., all employees). Of course, it satirizes dusty stick and the culture of using emojis as ambiguous shorthand, including the tendency to “thumbs up” any remark when no better response comes to mind.

Perhaps the novel merits an analysis of the serious observations it makes through satire, but I was too busy giggling or guffawing to consider anything beyond its humor. Every page of Several People Are Typing made me laugh. Many pages made me laugh more than once. Considering how gloomy the world can be, I give high marks to books that are as clever, smart, and funny as this one. For readers who appreciate wackiness, Several People Are Typing might be the year’s must read.

RECOMMENDED