An Equal Music by Vikram Seth

There’s an unfortunate phenomenon in which authors sometimes fall victim to their own success. For some, that means they stop pushing themselves and coast off of a formula that works. For Vikram Seth, it means he has slipped into Joseph Hellerism. It may be apocryphal, but Joseph Heller purportedly was asked how he’d respond to critics who say he’s never written a book better than Catch 22 and he purportedly responded, “I’d respond by saying that no one has written a book better than Catch 22.” Seth’s epic romance A Suitable Boy, clocking in at 1474 pages, is hard to live up to—it has such a rich cast of characters and is beautifully woven with multiple storylines. An Equal Music is also a love story of sorts, and it’s fine but it is unable to reach the same heights as his previous work.

The novel is about a quartet of musicians and follows, in part, their career. I quite liked witnessing the dynamics between Piers, Helen, Billy, and Michael (our protagonist and narrator) as they are offered important performances and a recording contract for Bach’s The Art of the Fugue. I also appreciated their superfan that follows them around, their lush agent, Erica, and the bigwig Ysobel that offers them a record contract. Even more engaging to me is that, early in the text, Michael’s girlfriend (and violin student) Virginie puts him on to an obscure work that he didn’t realize existed—a recording of Beethoven’s string quartet in C. minor, Op. 104. I seem to love the idea of ‘lost media’ in books, and watching Michael track down this lost piece was engaging.

The symbolism of that record also serves a functional purpose for the book. Michael unearths something that he thought was lost. On the same day, he’s on one bus passing by another and sees a woman he hasn’t seen in ten years on the opposite side. Ten years prior, they had a romantic relationship, but their careers went in different directions and there’s clear tension and regret over not seeing that relationship through. So, Michael reaches out and tries to get in touch with her on the same day he has found that long lost record. The record disappears from the story for a time and later resurfaces (this word choice is perhaps in poor taste) at the climax when it is flung into a lake and sinks for all time.

The trouble of the novel is the love story at its core. Readers will all have different interpretations, I’m sure, but to me I found Michael profoundly unlikable as a romantic lead. First of all, the fact that he is sleeping with his younger pupil is distasteful in itself, but he also does not treat Virginie very well. On the phone, he’s terse; he’s evasive and belittles her, and he stops engaging with her intimately. The fact is, he’s not in love with her and tells her as much. Worse, he cheats on her. When he and Julia encounter one another, they resume a romance, and she too is unfaithful to her partner. I have a hard time getting behind their romance because Michael is pushy with her and doesn’t respect her boundaries. He repeatedly does not listen to her when Julia says no. Time and time again he insists on intruding in her life, and it felt more desperate than passionate.

Perhaps I could let the obsessiveness and infidelity slide if there were enough moments to show the light they bring out in each other, but there doesn’t feel to me enough tenderness to justify the relationship. The relationship is entirely clouded by a brooding tone; the situation seems impossible—not in an erotic or fun impossible, but in a depressing impossible. I interpret the situation as Michael wanting a fresh start while Julia is looking for the perfect ending. Michael wants to relive their time ten years prior and refuses to let go of the past. Meanwhile, Julia is at the end of her musical career and it appears to me like she’s trying to settle the score (!) before she retires from playing piano. The disconnect between them sets up for a disastrous bond.

Later in the book, there’s a great scene in which Julia’s husband invites Michael to a party at their home. The invitation and the party itself are riddled with potential innuendos. It creates an atmosphere of suspicion: does he know? I would have liked that scene to go on for longer, actually; lingering in that ambiguity creates a great tension for the story that has otherwise read as a bit repetitive. Michael sits in the discomfort, narrating in a series of questions about whether Julia’s husband has found them out and what the consequences might be. In my view, Seth pulls the ripcord a bit too soon and Julia reveals that yes, he knows, no she doesn’t know how, yes she can tell from his face. 

To Seth’s credit, as unlikable as Michael is, Julia remains a sympathetic character. The secret at the core of her character is that she is going deaf. (Note to self: finally get around to watching the movie Sound of Metal). She knows that things are ending for her, and so her connection with Michael is mournful. She plays music with him as a quintet knowing that it will be the last time she will perform with others, and Michael cannot accept it. There’s an awkwardness surrounding her deafness, a secret that Michael finds himself forced to share (he’s the worst!—how dare he betray her confidence like that? Revealing her secret could ruin her!).

In fact, most of the characters are fleshed out pretty beautifully. They feel distinct. Authentic. When I think about the classics of literary fiction, particularly in the British tradition, I think of novels populated with unique and memorable characters. Seth seems to capitalize on that approach. The members of the quartet all have their affectations and interests, but Michael also engages with a broad range of colourful characters. Mrs. Formby, for example, is a family friend and former teacher to Michael whose spirit really shines. Her generosity leads to her promoting his career and loaning him (essentially for life), his prized violin. Seth’s knack for populating his books with real people is one of the highlights of the text.

On the topic of the violin, what I found disappointing in the story structure is its ending. Throughout the book, Michael and Julia’s relationship sits in the foreground and there are any number of moments that I think warrant a permanent dissolution of their affair. When it finally happens for real, it feels weirdly unearned—not a genuine climax, but simple period at the end of a sentence. Even throwing the record into the lake feels understated. The denouement goes in an entirely different direction; with about forty pages to go, the story is no longer primarily about Michael’s romantic endeavour. Instead, we see him quit the quartet and mill about purposelessly. We also find out that Mrs. Formby has died and has left Michael her violin. In life, she had told Michael that he would need to return it so that she could rearrange her assets and give funds to her nephew. Michael accepted that the time was coming, and is surprised to find out she had a change of heart before her death. Her nephew then reaches out, threatening a lawsuit. This bit of drama is short-lived and as a result gives the ending an unfocused quality. The conflict is an echo of the novel’s main theme: the pain of loss, the joy of recovery, the deepening pain of once again losing that which we thought was returned. The obscure record, Julia, the violin: they each follow a similar pattern. To that end, the violin lawsuit piece makes sense, but it feels like a whimper at the end of the movement rather than a crescendo. It feels like the characters don’t really learn anything, but get to enjoy their stasis. Michael, at the end of the novel, has not committed to returning to the quartet and goes back and forth on whether to go to Julia’s performance of The Art of the Fugue. He simply cannot stay away from the beautiful music—and music is a clear stand-in for Julia and vice versa.

As you’ve likely noted, there are clear parallels between the characters’ emotional states and the other elements of the text. The descriptions of the instrumentation, for example, often mimic the depressive streaks of the characters. The description of the violin and how it is touched mimics the way Michael feels, too. There are lush descriptions of both sound and visuals; partly, Seth seems to highlight the visuals when Julia is losing her hearing, which is a nice touch. There’s a clear craftsmanship to the work; the novel is quite proficient in that respect.

An Equal Music is generally good, but if you’re like me you’re going to have to accept that the main character is unlikable. It’s a love story that makes more sense as a cerebral exercise rather than one of the heart. The bond between the lovers seems to me more about their contexts and life circumstances than genuine affectionate moments, so it doesn’t quite land for me in that respect. I still like Vikram Seth’s writing and his ability to economically flesh out characters is a true talent. Now that I’ve read Seth’s three published novels, I’m going to have to convert to his poetry or wait for the encore: A Suitable Girl —a sequel thirty three years in the making (so far).

In the intermission, happy reading!

Chilean Poet by Alejandro Zambra

There are times when the length of a review is a clear indicator of a reviewer’s feelings. I know from my own experience that my lengthiest reviews are the books I most adore or the books that inspire the most ire. This leaves me in an odd position for Alejandro Zambra’s Chilean Poet, a novel about which I took precisely zero notes but which I nonetheless see as essentially perfect.

Despite being published a mere four years ago (!), Chilean Poet already feels timeless, eternal, classic. It inspires a feeling I haven’t had towards contemporary novels very often, though Zadie Smith’s White Teeth comes to mind. I’m trying to identify why Zambra’s work feels like a classic already and I think it comes down to the fundamentals of novel writing just being done extremely well. Chilean Poet has a flexible, lively style that adapts itself to the purpose of scenes. The characters are all fleshed out beautifully and they feel authentic and relatable, even and especially in their flaws—at the core, they are all likable. The plot and structure provide the right balance of forward momentum whilst not abandoning the reflective interiority of the characters. There’s also something about the omniscience of the narrator that speaks to the timelessness of the tale.

It could be argued that the novel has three main characters: Gonzalo, Carla, and Vicente. Gonzalo and Carla are teenage lovers sneakily touching each other under a pancho who inevitably break up—partly because of Gonzalo’s love of poetry and Carla’s complete disinterest. Roughly six years later, the two reconnect and Gonzalo quickly and correctly deduces that Carla has a son, Vicente. The following six years are the flourishing of the trio’s domestic life, which is replete with the beauty of small moments and the quiet tragedies that undercut our bliss.

Zambra’s capacity for selection, for focus, is stunning. Each scene, even the quotidian, is critical. For instance, there’s a scene in which Gonzalo and Vicente are caught off guard by a clerk to name their bond. Awkwardly, they describe themselves as “friends” and then have a discussion about the connotations of the word step-father in different languages (stepfather in Spanish holds a diminutive). There’s a tragic moment where Carla miscarries and it sets off a sequence of events that feels (narratively satisfyingly) inevitable in the way only carefully constructed novels achieve. There’s a whole sequence in which Gonzalo reads his poems to Carla, who is unimpressed, and then plagiarizes poems from other poets, who impress her. He gets caught in a lie about publishing a book and he commits to the falsehood, which also forces him to withhold the information that destroys his relationship with Carla: he has been accepted into a PhD program in New York and it is time to leave.

Each of the characters are so distinctive and beautiful and true in all of their weird little details. Vicente, for instance, needs to be weaned off of his addiction to cat food when he’s six years old. The interiority of the characters makes them so rich and likable. Seeing their inner tensions is insightful about how people are while also being compelling in terms of the conflict. In the final movement of the book, Zambra reunites Gonzalo and Vicente after years of separation. The two discover a great deal of experiential overlap, both being passionate about poetry. In the final sequence, there’s a tension of whether the two will ultimately reconcile. There are some truly excellent lines of dialogue where they offer barbs alongside praise, and sometimes the comments are both praise and disparagement at the same time. Their fates are left ambiguous, and it feels so beautiful to see their own uncertainties emerge. The last page of the book, without ruining anything, is mischievously evasive, which gives readers a kind of uneasy optimism about their futures.

Gonzalo, Vicente, and Carla are my favourite characters. There is, however, a fourth main character—Pru. She’s an American journalist in her thirties that finds herself in Chile for a story following a messy breakup with her girlfriend. Her section gives more insight into Vicente, of course, but also she ends up on a story where she interviews all kinds of Chilean poets. Zambra has a real knack for being able to describe literary culture. Again, it’s riddled with tensions of people who like each other’s work but whose jealousy prevents them from open admiration and they pretend to read each other’s work to seem enlightened but also are trying to eschew everything in the name of a new generation of poetry. The whole culture of poetry is depicted as a bit of a farce and, like his character, it feels completely real.

I think it’s really hard to be funny in literature. Zambra, though, has great timing and great turns of phrase. There’s a playfulness to the text that gives it a light touch. The fact that the tone isn’t overly serious makes some of the dramatic moments hit that much harder. Who would have imagined that the simple act of rearranging a fridge magnet would have such a heartbreaking quality? (Incidentally, Zambra explores some translingual meditations, one of which is about how adjectives in Spanish are gendered—except for triste (sadness), implying that sadness knows no gender or bounds). 

Chilean Poet has some elements of the Künstlerroman tradition (novels that focus on the artistic development of its main character from their youth to adulthood). Think: James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man or perhaps The Gift by Vladimir Nabokov. Throughout the book, we are treated to poems that the characters have written. Particularly in the final movement, the poems once again elevate the conflict and the insight into the characters. The commentary that runs alongside the poems and offers to the audience moments of such wonderful tenderness.

Against John Keats, I’d argue that beauty and truth are sometimes mutually exclusive. Not so here. The book is beautiful and true and touching. It’s gorgeous and sad and funny and moving. It had everything I would want from a genuine classic and offered, on top of that, surprise. I adored it. I hope at some point I’ll read this one again and feel the same magic and the same heartbreaking beauty the next time around.

Happy reading!

Bonsai by Alejandro Zambra

Despite being just under eighty pages, Alejandro Zambra’s Bonsai is surprisingly hard to summarize. It’s a book essentially about two lives: Julio’s, which doesn’t end, and Emilia, whose does. The two young scholars develop a relationship while studying for exams and part of the book is about the blooming and withering of their romances. It’s a simple ‘slice of life’ but I felt the book to be funny, tender, creative, and grounded.

The young Julio has two meaningful relationships—one with Emilia and, later, one with Maria. At the time in his life when he meets Emilia, we are told that “Julio has avoided serious relationships, hiding not from women but from seriousness, since by that point he knew that seriousness was every bit as dangerous as women, if not more so” (5). I like that idea of trying to avoid seriousness, and I can’t help but feel like Zambra’s approach to writing is infused with a humour that puts theory into practice. For instance, there’s a funny part in which both Julio and Emilia have lied about reading Proust and have to act as though they’ve read In Search of Lost Time. In another part, Julio pretends that he has become a translator for a writer to impress Maria and that lie leads him into inventing a book and lying about its premise, only for him to be thwarted by the truth. There’s a real comic element in Bonsai that is hard to resist but also that elevates the darker threads of the text. 

I’ve left out the second half of the passage about Julio avoiding seriousness. The passage continues as follows: “Julio knew he was doomed to seriousness, and he tried, stubbornly, to thwart his serious fate, even as he stoically awaited that frightening and inevitable day when seriousness would come to settle in his life for good” (5). Zambra balances the light and the dark, the satire and the serious. The ending of the book, which I won’t spoil, concludes on a somber note and driving around in a 30, 000 peso cab ride. It’s touching and beautiful and ‘serious’—it is, in Zambra’s words elsewhere, “a light tale that becomes heavy” (13).

I think the real core of the book is the relationships between the characters, who are relatable and likable in all of their flaws. Zambra has a particular talent for capturing the spirit of young love. For instance, when Emilia and Julio start their relationship it “was a relationship riddled with truths, with personal disclosures that quickly built up a complicity they strove to see as unassailable” (13). That characterization rings true—there are those couples that come to orbit only one another and there’s a sort of metanarrative about the writing of their lives: “This is the story of two student enthusiasts of the truth, aficionados of deploying words that seem like truth, of smoking endless cigarettes, and of enclosing themselves within the violent complacency of those who believe themselves better and purer that others, than that immense and detestable group called everyone else” (13). The grandiose language serves to both elevate and belittle them at the same time. I liked that because it feels so much the way I ought to have been treated as a young lad.

In another scene of the young couple, Emilia’s friend does not like Julio and says that she has changed since being with him. Emilia defends her relationship, possibly not believing her own words: “Why would you want to be with someone if they didn’t change your life?” (18). Zambra’s description of the incident is that “She said that, and Julio was there when she said it: that life only made sense if you found someone who would change it, who would destroy your life as you knew it. Anita found the theory a little dubious, but she didn’t argue. She knew that when Emilia used that tone there was no point in contradicting her” (18). The grand pronouncements of lovers serve as the groundwork for the book and put Bonsai alongside the literary precedents it references (Madame Bovary, for instance). It feels connected; classic in its own way.

I also have to say, I really like the way the book we read has interjections and uncertainties from the narrator and comes to parallel the book that Julio improvises when “translating” from a successful author. There’s a haphazardness to the narrative that mimics Julio’s own unprompted inventions. Even the fact that the story is not strictly about Julio and Emilia but also jumps to Julio and Maria seems unplanned. The quick transition into new narratives and the short chapters places us in the middle of invention.

I don’t have a ton to say about this book, but I really liked it. I thoroughly enjoyed the characters and the voice of the writing and it’s always impressive when an author can navigate two distinct tones (somber and comic) and make me feel for the characters so deeply in fewer than a hundred pages. I commend Zambra’s Bonsai—looking forward to reading more of his work soon.

Happy reading!

100 Simple Secret of Great Relationships: What Scientists Have Learned and How You Can Use It by David Niven

        In this relationship self-help book, David Niven offers a hundred simple secrets, which, when we really get into it, feels like an overpromise. Each of the chapters spans two pages (or three at most) and they all follow the same formula: a short paragraph to explain the ‘secret,’ an anecdote or case study of people demonstrating that secret in their relationships, and then a related factoid to close. The formula gives 100 Simple Secrets of Great Relationships an accessible, if repetitive, quality.

Ultimately, it feels like Niven’s work skirts along the surface and could easily be cut in half. A number of the chapters offer mirror images to each other. For instance, “No One Wins the Comparison Game” and “Beware Second Opinions” could just be one chapter that addresses both comparing your relationship to others’ and receiving their input. While some of the advice is good advice, it’s nothing revolutionary. Moreover, some of the advice offers principles but not really step-by-step instruction. For instance, the chapter “Be Willing to Evolve” essentially says that relationships are better if people are less rigid in their thinking. Well, yeah. Of course. But Niven doesn’t offer a practical strategy for becoming more willing to evolve.

Scaling back on the quantity of ‘secrets’ would give Niven the space to elaborate in more meaningful ways on ‘quality’ secrets. The anecdotes sometimes appear disconnected from the opening paragraph from each of the chapters or insufficiently exploratory. What I really wanted more of was analysis of the factoids at the end of each chapter. I wanted more information on the methodology for the studies or further elaboration on the factors and variables. I guess I was hoping for a more scientific approach than an anecdotal one. At the same time, the book felt weirdly dated. It was talking about gender stereotypes on television that seem long past prevalent and the fact that there was any controversy over men doing housework seems laughable. A lot can change in 20 years, I suppose.

In the end, the book just felt like it was doing too much and not enough simultaneously. It’s probably not going to hurt, but I don’t see this being any more valuable than other resources out on the market for people looking to deepen their relationships.

Happy reading!

Still Mostly True by Brian Andreas

       In 2010, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger invented Instagram, which is still one of the most popular social media platforms in the world. Instagram has been the launching pad for a number of poets’ careers, for better or for worse, capitalizing on short-form poems with just one or two sentences with line breaks and maybe a doodled accompaniment. Often these poems take the form of tidbits of wisdom or advice. Often their tone is designed to be relatable. Well, with Brian Andreas’ 1994 collection Still Mostly True: Collected Stories & Drawings, we’re not quite at the age of Instagram poetry, but we’re in a similar mode of an outsider’s “unpracticed” hand.

Andreas provides a series of short poems, the collection of which can be read start to finish in one half-hour sitting. Most of the poems are two or three sentences with some silly conceit, accompanied by a doodled image that is simultaneously childish and grotesque. Even the fonts of the book are cartoonish—one the huge print of a children’s book, the other the artist’s chicken scratch.

Most of the poems, I have to admit, I felt compelled to gloss over. Here’s a sample of a representative one that I feel encapsulates the simplicity of structure and the not-entirely-landing-humour of the collection: “He won the grand / prize of a vacuum / cleaner & all the / canned goods he / could carry & / when they told him / he couldn’t believe it. // I thought I was / buying drink tickets, / he said” (“Winning Ticket”).

There are a couple of poems in the collection that touch on something sincere. Maybe it’s because it’s such a naive approach, but once in a while the poems hit on something deeper. I’m not going to pretend that these poems will revolutionize our interior worlds, but two stood out as touching reflections.

One untitled drawing is accompanied by the following poem:

he has a hole
where his
heart used to
be because
it fell out when he was running from scary
things one night in a dream & it hurts all the
time now & he doesn’t know how to fix it &
sometimes I think he doesn’t even remember that it’s gone

I appreciate this sense of lack. It’s a bit lackluster to chalk it up to a dream but if you stretch your imagination a little, it feels a little more meaningful.

The other poem gets stupider but there’s still an emotional core worth talking about. The poem goes as follows: “he wore a pot on his head in all / kinds of weather. / I never learned / to cook / I got it / after my / mother died. / he said. I just / know it would / make her happy / that I’m using / it.” Sure, the premise is dumb and implausible, but there’s something sweet about not using the pot for its intended purpose but wanting to bring comfort to his deceased mother.

Anyway, the poetry collection isn’t particularly memorable. It’s not especially developed; the poems wash over you in rapid succession and once they’re done, I was ready to stop thinking about them. The drawings are whimsical but, again, don’t have enough of a distinct visual style to leave a lasting impact.

Nonetheless, happy reading!

Under the Eye of the Big Bird by Hiromi Kawakami

For years, I’ve seen Hiromi Kawakami’s short story collections on the shelf at the book store and think “I should really read some of her work.” Well, by coincidence, her book Under the Eye of the Big Bird was shortlisted for this year’s 2025 International Booker Prize and my partner has purchased the shortlisted works for me so that I can judge for myself. So, I’ve finally dived into Kawakami’s writing.

Under the Eye of the Big Bird is a strange book. I hesitate to call it a short story collection, because each section takes place in the same world, but I hesitate to call it a novel because it’s profoundly episodic. The characters between each chapter change, for the most part, although some characters repeat or we see a throughline between the narratives. Readers are thrown into the book without context and it feels truly alienating. We are the outsiders caught up mid-stream trying to figure out how the world operates.

I’m not sure I have the specifics, really, though towards the end there is some more explicit exposition. Come to think of it, Kawakami might have shown some more restraint and trusted the readers a little more—one character gives the entire history of the world in a conversation with children. In any case, the world feels foreign. The events are taking place hundreds or thousands of years in the future, and humans are just about extinct. They now reside in what we can infer as separate communities without any contact, vaguely united by “mothers” and “watchers” who care for them. Meanwhile, each of the characters seems to be a replica or reincarnation of a previous version of themselves. In one community, this means they have names like 32 of 6 (the 32nd copy of the 6th model or something to that effect). In other communities, it means that you might open the door and find a younger version of yourself, which is your cue to get out of town and be replaced.

That very thing happens in the early chapter “Narcissi.” The chapter’s opening line is “I turned up today. / I opened the front door, and there stood a much younger me, with long hair” (13). The two engage in conversation as the new model moves in. This leads to some of the most interesting grammatical and conceptual content of Under the Eye of the Big Bird. The boundary between self and other-self gets muddled in an interesting way: “As I watched me walk away, I recalled the day the great mother had left” (20). This odd mirroring and duality of selfhood then becomes even more strange as the two swap memories and experiences. The new version of the character arrived in a hovercraft, hid it in the bushes, and approached the home of her predecessor. The predecessor, now having to leave, creeps into the bushes and finds the hovercraft “she” rode in on. It’s an engaging concept, especially because it’s so early on and everything is unfamiliar; Kawakami reels you in as you try to explain the scenes.

On the topic of swapping memories, there are also characters that can essentially connect with other creatures telekinetically. It almost reads like Animorphs except the character seems to be inside a hawk’s brain, witnessing its world, while their physical body remains in place. This psychic connection emerges in several of the stories to explore Kawakami’s themes of love and connection. In one section of the book, split over two parts, Kawakami recounts the tragic story of two lovers. Each has the ability to ‘scan’ the other—that is, dive into the depths of one another’s minds and retrieve any kind of thought or feeling. The woman is both clairvoyant and telepathic and, out of respect, the man refuses to scan her. He comes across as noble and kind until he becomes jealous enough to scan her, finds her complete love of him, and then disappears out of shame. It’s a Blackbeard’s closets kind of situation. In the next section, though, the perspective switches to the young woman’s and we see that she is unfaithful and that her clairvoyance has led her to see how their relationship would operate, how he would behave, and so on and so forth. Him reading love within her mind is chalked up to his lack of practice with scanning—he’s pathetic and she pities him.

Those two chapters stand out as being self-sufficient in their story arcs, while others are components in Kawakami’s narrative mosaic. Eventually the book builds to a section where there is only one great mother left and two girls. Hope for the human race is essentially zero until one of the girls draws on knowledge from the past and starts cloning animals. She has some success over about eighty years, and you might expect it to end there before she’s successfully cloned a human, but then since these beings live for hundreds of years you realize she’s still got some time. If you’d like the spoiler version of the story, I offer it following this sentence. As it turns out, when the human race began to decline, they started experimenting with cloning to help the human race survive; then, they tried to use AI to enhance the defects and whatnot until it became the case that AI embedded itself into human DNA. The mothers are previous iterations of AI that get replaced with the younger versions of themselves; the great mother is the AI that’s miles ahead of the others—but now that seems to be failing and there is likely no hope left.

There’s a lot to like about Under the Eye of the Big Bird—it’s an impressive foray into some creative territory with some cutting-edge concepts that remain the human touch. The downside to the book is that the characters are, by necessity, forgettable and largely underdeveloped. I didn’t feel all that connected to the characters and then before long they would be replaced by another set that drove the world-building forward but felt more like conceptual devices than individuals. It’s a catch-22 with high concept books.

I have to give Kawakami points for offering such a unique project. Now next time when I’m in the bookstore maybe I’ll need to actually pick up her short story collections.

Happy reading!

Work Won't Love You Back by Sarah Jaffe

  Sarah Jaffe’s title should serve as both a grim reminder and a rallying cry for living differently: Work Won’t Love You Back. You can likely infer Jaffe’s central conceit already: we invest love into our jobs, which are increasingly exploitative. The introduction to the book and its conclusion offer its framework, which is somewhat complex. Essentially, capitalism degrades human interaction (consider how many times, for example, you have not seen family or friends because you have too much work to do or because you’re too exhausted from the week, etc. or how many times you’re meeting with a friend in a brief, transactional way localized around a coffee shop.) In response, we’re encouraged to find meaning in our work, rather than seeing it as purely transactional. This creates a context in which we must love our work, and that love paves the way for our own exploitation: we are willing to sacrifice our well-being because we misplace our love.

The argument felt resonant and reminded me of a line from Charles Bukowski’s 1975 novel Factotum that has lingered with me since I read it: “it wasn’t enough to just do your job, you had to have an interest in it, even a passion for it.” It’s a miserable double bind: either hate your job and live miserably most of the time or love your job and sacrifice your other loves to it, pursuing what you find meaningful. Jaffe is looking for an alternative.

I have to admit that I felt a little let down by Work Won’t Love You Back and that it’s almost definitely my fault. I built it up in my head that the book would teach me how to solve my unhealthy relationship with work, but the book is less of a self-help manual and more of a catalogue of how different types of workers are exploited. To Jaffe’s credit, there are a lot of well-researched case studies that trace a clear historical throughline. She offers incisive commentary on a range of industries and documents the labour movements that tried to change things.

When I consider some of the highlight chapters, of course I was geared up for the one about teaching. I was hoping for some more guidance on how to navigate the exploitation of teachers, although the chapter seemed to reignite some of my frustrations rather than offer me a clear solution. I should mention, at least, that the point is not to aim for individual action and to further burden strained employees—only collective action can help to restructure the conditions that exploit us. Perhaps because I have less experience in the field, I was more interested in the parallel chapter about academia. Considering the wages, publication “opportunities”, and unpaid labour that goes into research and higher level teaching, that chapter seemed a natural outgrowth of the teaching one and I found it pretty illuminating.

Another chapter that really spoke to me is the one about art. Arguably, artists are some of the most exploited workers out there. Everyone assumes that artists create out of love (indeed, all artwork is deep down a desire to express and connect with others). Since we all hold the fundamental belief that creating art is enriching to the human spirit, we typically do not see art as being something deserving of financial recompense. Think of all the times artists are paid “in exposure.” The chapter does wonders to expose how much labour goes into creating artwork and how little recompense it receives.

Work Won’t Love You Back leads to two chapters that are more explicitly focused on work-as-play. There is a chapter about the tech industry, where employees at video game companies are expected to put up with insane crunch hours because they have ‘fun’ jobs. Video game testers are sometimes paid by-the-bug, meaning that they might play games for hours with no remuneration. Jaffe mentions, also, the rampant sexism and racism in the gaming industry (as with other fields of work, and with women in particular bearing the brunt of sexist wages). Similarly, the final chapter discusses the unpaid work of athletes—with women athletes in particular maybe earning 20-30k while their male counterparts get high six figure salaries. She discusses the lack of pay—and often lack of education—for college athletes while their owners degrade and profit from them (at least one Black player drawing the parallel to the slave trade). All the while, sports workers trying to advocate for better treatment are routinely punished by management.

All this to say, Jaffe offers a clear overview of how different industries rely on our love of work to exploit us and how that love ought to be redirected to more meaningful forms of connection—-to our actual families, our actual friends. When we have a lack of love, we are more susceptible to the wiles of capitalism—more likely to spend, to accept worse for ourselves, and so on. When our main source of love is our own love of work, we will continue to let work crush us.

So: Work Won’t Love You Back. It’s time to take a step back and find love for ourselves.

Happy reading!