Conor Hultman started reading The New Fuck You: Adventures In Lesbian Reading

"Service by John Tottenham is both a hot iron and a salve for the subsequently risen flesh. One big pink L for Loser branded on my forehead. As a fellow public servant and book mule with mounting debt, the book was at times hard to read. I was going to work and reading about the work, and growing more irritated, caught in the nauseating cycle. But Tottenham speaks to the lot of us who feel at odds with a world seemingly always moving from under our feet. Who resent the cliques from which we have convinced ourselves we need shallow and empty approval. And who feels the ever-circling question of a reluctant 'creative type' - am I just adding to this overwhelming mediocrity of the world?

We live in a time where, more than anything else, people look for themselves in every piece of media. A large audience is only interested in consuming what they see as relatable, so they can become attached to these fictions. They themselves can be in a“fucking my professor era,� an “Adderall era,� or whatever may bring excitement without real risk or effort.

We all wanna see a little bit of John in us- fancy ourselves an ironic wordsmith or a lovable cynic. But by sheer virtue of the fact that one might try to model oneself after him, you land nowhere close. And in doing so, there is a fundamental misinterpretation. John, or I should say ‘Sean�, the main character who maybe resembles John a little if you squint, is frequently maligned by assumptions. And, despite what could be seen as a bad attitude, it reminds us that you can feel critical of someone, see them for their flaws, and love them too.

Throughout the book, there are moments of such tender sincerity and trying to reconcile with the way the world can so harshly turn a person out that it cuts through the sullen tautology:

Jackson’s compliment inspired me to open up. “I excel, if anything, at the negative. I’ve tried writing in a positive, life-affirming vein, but it doesn’t feel or sound right. I can complain about anything. It’s my gift to the world, not that the world’s interested. I can’t help it. . . .�

“You know, to externalize yourself, to bring forth what is within, to get it out of your system and into other people’s systems: to provoke, console, and inspire, if it’s within one’s means. To return the favor, so to speak. Having been cheered and consoled by the bitter words of others. . .�

Service although it predates the shift into the literary zeitgeist that Los Angeles eked its way into, all but predicts it. The writerly disposition maintains its peak contemporary acclaim, but the solitary practice is not accounted for. Book deals are made up of bi-coastal stardom, collections of tweets, notes-app listicles of hyper-specific descriptions, and auto-fiction.

Readings have become a thin guise for parties supplemented with boxed wine sponsors, DJ sets, and flash tattoos. Young, thin, ironically or otherwise well-dressed women toting around their token, washed-up old male authors in some backward post-woke roleplay.

And without a doubt, one wants to be a part of that narrative. To be accepted into the coterie and not just as the person who sets the chairs up. Sean, the character, watches, sedentary, as a roaster of indistinguishable drug memoirs circulates around him. And yet the successes of these bush-league authors accrue. He feels like it is undeserved, but also an innate draw towards joining the rat race. John, the author, faces a particular problem in the age of auto-fiction and the impetus of every reader to look for themselves figuratively. The problem is in anyone who might assume the book is based completely on fact and sift through the characters looking for their real-life matches.

Iris Murdoch said

The literary world is a small, silly, and very vain place, a place of silly people. . .
The public criticizes you for all the things that you have been careful to avoid and applauds you for things that you never intended.

The reader's preoccupation with coaxing out the perceived truths in the book may eclipse its stronger elements, like the petulant repetition. Every day in the bookstore, being subjected to the same humiliations by incessant patrons or by your own kith and kin. But also the days spent in a wistful practice. Sean reflects on it disappointedly, and John uses this as a device in the book. Bringing it somewhere very new, meta, and transcending from the mere autobiographical style:

Paragraph by paragraph, I anticipate my potential readers dropping away, wearied and irritated by this tiresome outpouring. But I must insist on pressing forward if only to honor a life's work of discarded manuscripts. With so much unfinished, so much unbegun, nothing, no matter how worthless, can be thrown out anymore. I have to complete something, even if it is ignoble of sentiment and unsound of construction; even if it's not up to the standards of what I once threw out; even if it is the exact opposite of what I had once hoped to achieve�-that I was probably never capable of achieving in the first place; even if it reflects badly upon me; even if it is crap.

Real life, real work requires a hope generated by repeated practice. It is an inward and spiritual exploration. It gives real merit to a life lived and more to a life recorded. To quote from Kierkagaard’s essay on the subject:

Repetition is the reality and the seriousness of life. . . Repetition not as redundancy but of a kind of reassurance.

That solitary practice, though a committed pursuit of truth and beauty, comes only with painstaking commitment secured most often by doing the things we don’t want to. And, because it is solitary, it is not frequently rewarded. Not to be seen historically as someone who does or is loved for what one has done.

It is easy to become entangled with what becomes resentment towards our friends and strangers for what one has and has not done, or would have approached differently if ever given the chance.
These uncomfortable realities of life come up again and again. We meet the same kind of people, have the same sort of problems, and make mistakes again in a familiar way. We grow tired of not getting anywhere. We are always a work in progress."