An excerpt from my upcoming book
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As we hurtle into September, I’m excited to share the first of a few excerpts from my upcoming book, This Won’t Help: Modest Proposals for a More Enjoyable Apocalypse, out October 24. This (brief!) excerpt is up on McSweeney’s Internet Tendency today, so please do go there to read it.
Fine. Here’s a little sneak peak to get you interested:
For Just Forty Hours a Week of Intense Work Outside Your Full-Time Job, You Too Can Make Passive Income
Are you tired of not being rich?
Do you want to make thousands of extra dollars every month without breaking a sweat?
Great news: all you need to do is commit an extra forty to fifty hours a week to intense work outside your full-time job, and you, too, can make passive income.
I know, I know: it sounds too good to be true. At first, I couldn’t believe that I could make a comfortable living without giving up my free time. And you know what? I was right to feel that way. I couldn’t give up my free time—it had to be spent working.
Pre-Order! Blurbs!
My debut collection hits shelves October 24, but you can pre-order a copy right now! Here’s what early readers of This Won’t Help are saying:
Behind the Writing
I’ll be featuring some pieces from This Won’t Help in my upcoming Behind the Writing sections. Today, the excerpt above has my thinking a lot about the ongoing writers (and actors!) strike. This piece speaks not only to the ills of disturbing career advice in late-stage capitalism (think about every Instagram reel you’ve seen with basically this same message), but also to the ways in which the non-ownership class in America gets left out to dry.
As the Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike enters its fourth month, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) and wealthy reactionaries seem more keen than ever on convincing the general public that the writers’ fight is not their fight. That it is an annoying squabble between two bickering but equally reasonable “sides.” But this strike, and that of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG-AFTRA), and all strikes yet to come — and the unions that organize them — are the last protection the working class has against the unchecked robber barons of the ownership class. You know the ones. Geoff Zebos. Elom Tusk. Those are some recurring characters in my collection, and any resemblance to real people is a complete coincidence.
That’s all for today. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you right here sometime next week!
In solidarity (and passively),
E