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Hardly Working: A Semi-Auto Fiction
New Semi-Auto Fiction from Caleb Caudell, author of The Neighbor (shortlisted in the Indiana Author's Awards 2022). Hardly Working follows (very) hard-working stiff Caleb through dead-end jobs, dead-end relationships, bodily failures, and collapsing apartments amid the cultural ruins of the Rust Belt all with his trademark humour and determination to avoid comfortable despair. Among many other felicities, Hardly Working garnishes your latte with a hatchet to the forehead, solves the riddle of time and reverse engineers the need for God.
I shouldn’t even call them days. It suggests an unreal unity. A day lurches from moment to moment and never meets itself. Gone before it arrives, sliding past its seconds. They call them seconds because there’s no firsts; time is imaginary addition, a recounting. The original experience missing.
"As if Graham Greene worked at Denny's." -Gil Gildner
I shouldn’t even call them days. It suggests an unreal unity. A day lurches from moment to moment and never meets itself. Gone before it arrives, sliding past its seconds. They call them seconds because there’s no firsts; time is imaginary addition, a recounting. The original experience missing.
"As if Graham Greene worked at Denny's." -Gil Gildner
236 pages, Paperback
Published September 9, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
October 19, 2025
Everyone needs to read this book!
Caleb Caudell is part of a new, emerging scene of angry, disillusioned young(ish) male writers who aren't in the mainstream publishing world but are forming an underground cult scene which will one day be recognised as revolutionary. Get on the bandwagon now or risk being left behind.
I have heard Caudell described as a sort of "Houllebecq of the American Midwest" and the description is at least partly accurate. He fucks a lot less than the Frenchman.
Like the Frenchman he takes a clear eyed look at the miserable experience of an ordinary worker drone in our globalised capitalist society. His critique is both damning and heart-breaking.
The average working chump in our society is getting fucked over. You can't get ahead by working but you can fall behind by not working therefore the only point to showing up at your job every day even though you hate it is because you hate the idea of sleeping under a bridge more. Not a recipe for happiness and contentment.
One day Caudell and the other writers in the decentralized and digital literary scene he's in will be lionised, canonised and lauded as prophets. Until then they are struggling to get attention so do yourself and them a favour and read their books.
Caleb Caudell is part of a new, emerging scene of angry, disillusioned young(ish) male writers who aren't in the mainstream publishing world but are forming an underground cult scene which will one day be recognised as revolutionary. Get on the bandwagon now or risk being left behind.
I have heard Caudell described as a sort of "Houllebecq of the American Midwest" and the description is at least partly accurate. He fucks a lot less than the Frenchman.
Like the Frenchman he takes a clear eyed look at the miserable experience of an ordinary worker drone in our globalised capitalist society. His critique is both damning and heart-breaking.
The average working chump in our society is getting fucked over. You can't get ahead by working but you can fall behind by not working therefore the only point to showing up at your job every day even though you hate it is because you hate the idea of sleeping under a bridge more. Not a recipe for happiness and contentment.
One day Caudell and the other writers in the decentralized and digital literary scene he's in will be lionised, canonised and lauded as prophets. Until then they are struggling to get attention so do yourself and them a favour and read their books.
July 22, 2025
This book is bafflingly brilliant. Caudell explores the soulless and repetitive nature of post-grad service work. He writes from the perspective of an educated but unmotivated mind locked in [current year]’s transient consumer slush. He captures the seemingly infinite treadmill of that life in viscerally depressing prose, deeply original language, and often with shockingly honest transparency (assuming a big wedge of this is true).
But he skips over the trap of misery porn. The book is warm, funny, self-deprecating and often describes gut dropping moments of beauty and compassion. You somehow come out of this book feeling… hopeful?
Although repetition is the motif of this book, it never feels repetitive. Each time he falls back into the cafe job, or into a new apartment, it feels like the narrator is describing things through changed eyes. Sometimes wearier, sometimes with the hope of an email job around the corner, sometimes through the lens of new mechanical enhancements or a new relationship.
Caudell rarely and only momentarily positions himself as a victim of circumstance. He takes responsibility for his situation and this allows him to pull the sympathies of the reader masterfully through what could have so easily been a slog of book if handled differently.
Caudell also balances his philosophical vignettes perfectly. I didn’t expect to like these sections, but they always felt like they were enhancing the previous chapter, giving you another perspective to view the previous events from, they never bog the book down.
The chapter Left to My Own Devices deserves a mention in its own right. A incredible exploration of the nature of male sexuality through an astoundingly honest and vulnerable story. It is as gripping for its content as it is for the incredible skill Caudell has in making this story sympathetic and paradoxical, while never avoiding the raw desire just under the surface. It would be a stunning short story on its own.
In another time, this book would be published by a trendy in-print of some mega-publisher and would be a smash hit. Caudell is truly a great floating undiscovered in the indie world.
But he skips over the trap of misery porn. The book is warm, funny, self-deprecating and often describes gut dropping moments of beauty and compassion. You somehow come out of this book feeling… hopeful?
Although repetition is the motif of this book, it never feels repetitive. Each time he falls back into the cafe job, or into a new apartment, it feels like the narrator is describing things through changed eyes. Sometimes wearier, sometimes with the hope of an email job around the corner, sometimes through the lens of new mechanical enhancements or a new relationship.
Caudell rarely and only momentarily positions himself as a victim of circumstance. He takes responsibility for his situation and this allows him to pull the sympathies of the reader masterfully through what could have so easily been a slog of book if handled differently.
Caudell also balances his philosophical vignettes perfectly. I didn’t expect to like these sections, but they always felt like they were enhancing the previous chapter, giving you another perspective to view the previous events from, they never bog the book down.
The chapter Left to My Own Devices deserves a mention in its own right. A incredible exploration of the nature of male sexuality through an astoundingly honest and vulnerable story. It is as gripping for its content as it is for the incredible skill Caudell has in making this story sympathetic and paradoxical, while never avoiding the raw desire just under the surface. It would be a stunning short story on its own.
In another time, this book would be published by a trendy in-print of some mega-publisher and would be a smash hit. Caudell is truly a great floating undiscovered in the indie world.
October 2, 2024
Caudell’s finest yet, though it isn’t difficult to locate the consummate line running through his three (physically) published works.
I may enjoy these most as the essay is how I first experienced and enjoyed his writing, but the timely relevance of many subjects approached in this collection (the absurdity of the Covid era, the culture wars, etc.), as well as the frank handling of extremely delicate, often hidden or passed-over subjects (those which are mortifying and typically are privately, quietly suffered. See: “Left To My Own Devices”) are denuded in a fashion that is simultaneously touching and funny, without shielding us too much from the utter brutality of such an experience. I do believe with this particular essay he has broken new ground, going beyond bodily horror.
Having read many of his other fantastic essays posted online over the years, I know just how much more he has in store for his readership, and in some ways I see Caudell turning a corner out of what some have called “bleak” (but really that which is fairly obvious on some level to anyone who has stood at the precipice of the abyss) into redemption, ultimately. Reading of his struggles with despair, I do not conclude that he’s operating with a sense of sheer hopelessness, but rather is working through desolation in hope of consolation.
If you’ve ever read Schopenhauer or Cioran and laughed, perhaps this collection is for you.
I may enjoy these most as the essay is how I first experienced and enjoyed his writing, but the timely relevance of many subjects approached in this collection (the absurdity of the Covid era, the culture wars, etc.), as well as the frank handling of extremely delicate, often hidden or passed-over subjects (those which are mortifying and typically are privately, quietly suffered. See: “Left To My Own Devices”) are denuded in a fashion that is simultaneously touching and funny, without shielding us too much from the utter brutality of such an experience. I do believe with this particular essay he has broken new ground, going beyond bodily horror.
Having read many of his other fantastic essays posted online over the years, I know just how much more he has in store for his readership, and in some ways I see Caudell turning a corner out of what some have called “bleak” (but really that which is fairly obvious on some level to anyone who has stood at the precipice of the abyss) into redemption, ultimately. Reading of his struggles with despair, I do not conclude that he’s operating with a sense of sheer hopelessness, but rather is working through desolation in hope of consolation.
If you’ve ever read Schopenhauer or Cioran and laughed, perhaps this collection is for you.
November 25, 2024
I’ll write more about this book elsewhere but for now I’ll just say it was a massive downer that still managed to radiate kinetic laugh-lines, many arrows in the comedy quiver. I wonder how an audiobook of this would go over. Much of the writing is heavily philosophical about the modern conundrum of the low-paid working stiff making lattes at coffee shops where people with remote “email jobs” congregate and spread out with their tech gear as if they’re managing a NASA mission. It’s hilarious dagger-eyes pointed at the 21st century US economy and all those who don’t deserve designer burgers and other gastronomic wonders, while out in the courtyard two old men pass a fifth of scotch back and forth. We’re doomed, according to Caudell, and it really hurts, but he has to fix his car to get to the next crappy job. This is a voice in the wilderness crying out for justice, and it’s not coming.
June 27, 2025
Caudell combines a sharp sardonic eye with a witty understated prose style to deliver a series of auto-fiction stories (semi-autobiographical, in other words) set in and around the workplace.
I dont't know if CC is a classical Calvinist or has simply absorbed the doctrines through his pores from the predestinarian atmosphere of the Midwest, but his thesis is plain: "Satan rules the fallen world and we’re sinful and disgusting beasts." Though this may be taken with a pinch of salt, and corresponds in an ironic way to an authorial posture, it is at the same time deadly serious and the action is shot through with this sense of post-lapsarian pessimism.
The obvious corollary to this doom-laden notion is that fallen humanity brooks no improvement, and so all and any attempt to better the lot of ourselves and others by social action, or fostering a sense of community or - Nobodaddy forbid - a political programme, is the work either of rubes or frauds. Like communists, the mid-Westerner's go-to bête noire, who are simply lazy gluttonous hacks: "by the look of things, the contemporary communist itinerary is dinner and criticism all day long."
This toy-reactionary palaver could get old quite quickly. But what's unique about CC is that unlike every hack preacher selling you the Good Ol' Elect and Preterite Schtick, he actually accepts that he (or his down-at-heel narrator) is one of the Preterite, the squalid Lost whose sluggish souls are consigned naturally to hell on earth and hell hereafter. So there's no superiority in it - CC is just as much of a wasted schlub as you or I, dear reader. He's just hard-bitten enough to accept it while we flounder around in our illusions.
This attitude - redolent of such skeptical and bitingly ironic 1930s voices as Ferdinand Cèline, Robert Musil, Nathanael West, early Sam Beckett and most of all the nihilist master of the deadfall aphorism Emil Cioran - has always amused me greatly, and does so just as much here. After all, if you're going to wallow in despair, at least wallow properly and make some nice waves with attractive curlicue effects.
They say misery loves company, but misery more than anything else likes a well-turned phrase that drips with ironic heroism, that rugged and manly acceptance of the inevitable and predestined (or so it would seem to the untramelled Calvinical fanboy) damnation that awaits us all, that grim march into a strictly hierarchical endgame that constitutes the true American religion.
One day CC will find God, or Marx, or Zen enlightenment, and be a happy collector of butterflies. But until that time I'll go along with him on his wry and funny adventure as he gathers the venomous insights that lurk on the dirty kitchen floor along with the cockroaches.
I dont't know if CC is a classical Calvinist or has simply absorbed the doctrines through his pores from the predestinarian atmosphere of the Midwest, but his thesis is plain: "Satan rules the fallen world and we’re sinful and disgusting beasts." Though this may be taken with a pinch of salt, and corresponds in an ironic way to an authorial posture, it is at the same time deadly serious and the action is shot through with this sense of post-lapsarian pessimism.
The obvious corollary to this doom-laden notion is that fallen humanity brooks no improvement, and so all and any attempt to better the lot of ourselves and others by social action, or fostering a sense of community or - Nobodaddy forbid - a political programme, is the work either of rubes or frauds. Like communists, the mid-Westerner's go-to bête noire, who are simply lazy gluttonous hacks: "by the look of things, the contemporary communist itinerary is dinner and criticism all day long."
This toy-reactionary palaver could get old quite quickly. But what's unique about CC is that unlike every hack preacher selling you the Good Ol' Elect and Preterite Schtick, he actually accepts that he (or his down-at-heel narrator) is one of the Preterite, the squalid Lost whose sluggish souls are consigned naturally to hell on earth and hell hereafter. So there's no superiority in it - CC is just as much of a wasted schlub as you or I, dear reader. He's just hard-bitten enough to accept it while we flounder around in our illusions.
This attitude - redolent of such skeptical and bitingly ironic 1930s voices as Ferdinand Cèline, Robert Musil, Nathanael West, early Sam Beckett and most of all the nihilist master of the deadfall aphorism Emil Cioran - has always amused me greatly, and does so just as much here. After all, if you're going to wallow in despair, at least wallow properly and make some nice waves with attractive curlicue effects.
They say misery loves company, but misery more than anything else likes a well-turned phrase that drips with ironic heroism, that rugged and manly acceptance of the inevitable and predestined (or so it would seem to the untramelled Calvinical fanboy) damnation that awaits us all, that grim march into a strictly hierarchical endgame that constitutes the true American religion.
One day CC will find God, or Marx, or Zen enlightenment, and be a happy collector of butterflies. But until that time I'll go along with him on his wry and funny adventure as he gathers the venomous insights that lurk on the dirty kitchen floor along with the cockroaches.
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February 6, 2025At turns hilarious and utterly miserable. The unnamed narrator wakes and drinks coffee in his apartment where the toilet no longer works. Yanks himself through a 12 hour shift. Serves vegan lattes at the café he's already been fired from twice. Smiles and acts the chat show host while fantasising about smashing a stool round the customers covid mask-smeared faces'. Sudden riff on the bastardisation of cafes into places where people use wifi all day rather than talk politics and art. Humorous descriptions of everyday drudgery interspersed with aphoristic meditations on the shittiness of modern life. One can see Caudell's solution. A return to a higher guiding ideal (religion) to combat all this fetishistic individualism that only leads to the homogenised mind. But hell, it's bad reading to ascribe a moral purpose to the author. It stands alone as a monument of creation in a society that doesn't care about art. A cerebral cry into the void. The unlikely martyr plumbing the depths and dissecting the malaise.
"What I'd want my family to appreciate, what I'd want anyone to grasp, is that even a bleak story speaks to the joy of creation. Every negation affirms some power, however marginal or despairing. I need to remind myself from time to time."
"What I'd want my family to appreciate, what I'd want anyone to grasp, is that even a bleak story speaks to the joy of creation. Every negation affirms some power, however marginal or despairing. I need to remind myself from time to time."
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews