Molly McGhee Wants to Rethink the Way We Work
In Molly McGhee’s genre-busting debut Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind, the eponymous Abernathy accepts a job auditing the dreams of everyday employees. The gig, more snake than ladder, involves a kind of hazmat spacesuit and a shiny metallic elevator. Also innumerable checklists. Abernathy struggles with the new vocation, falling ever farther from his personal goals of romantic fulfillment, self-actualization, and financial stability.
Careening from daydream to nightmare—sometimes his own, sometimes not—Abernathy is a facetious parable for our harrowing terms of national employment. McGhee, who teaches undergraduate creative writing at Columbia, has a lot to say about work, writing, and debt.
Eric Olson: The rhythm of your writing really shines in this
