“The stock closed up $1.75 on Friday. Bill has 78,000,000 shares, so that means he’s now $136.5 million richer. I have almost no stock, and this means I am a loser.”
The title of this book tells you all you really need to know – Microserfs, a portmanteau of “Microsoft” and the feudal “serfs,” is about a group of programmers working at Microsoft who take the risk and start their own software company. Really, it’s a nineties version of HBO’s Silicon Valley.
This is an epistolary novel, but instead of a diary or letters, narrator Dan Underwood types all his thoughts in a “PowerBook entry,” filled not just with his day-to-day life, but with random notes and emails, complete with typos and grammatical errors to really give it that “draft word document” feel.
“Note: I think Starbucks has patented a new configuration of the water molecule, like in a Kurt Vonnegut novel, or something. This molecule allows their coffee to remain liquid at temperatures over 212° Fahrenheit. How do they get their coffee so hot? It takes hours to cool off—it’s so hot it’s undrinkable—and by the time it’s cool, you’re sick of waiting for it to cool and that ‘coffee moment’ has passed.”
I was born in 1995, so while I obviously cannot relate to these characters, Coupland does an excellent job of immersing you in this era of young programmers through his skillful incorporation of pop culture references. It’s a nice little slice of the nineties, infused with humor, quirkiness, and heartwarming moments.
“Checked the WinQuote: The stock was down 86 cents over the day. That means Bill lost $70 million today, whereas I only lost fuck all. But guess who’ll sleep better?”
Originally, I was going to read this via an email subscription service which sends you the letters/journals/newspaper clippings that make up this epistolary novel on the date they were written; but honestly the book was too enticing to wait until the next email, so I ended up just going ahead with it.
Vampires have become such a popular genre since this was published in 1897 (Twilight, Blade, American Horror Story, What We Do In The Shadows, the list goes on…), so we have all become somewhat unfazed by them, even obsessing over them. So going into this, I tried to imagine someone reading about vampires for the first time, especially in the late 1800s, where vampires threatened the Christian and puritan ideals so prevalent at the time. In this novel, submitting to someone like Dracula presents an eternally damned fate worse than death.
"To us for ever are the gates of heaven shut; for who shall open them to us again? We go on for all time abhorred by all; a blot on the face of God's sunshine; an arrow in the side of Him who died for man. But we are face to face with duty; and in such case must we shrink?"
Regarding plot, I’d say the first four chapters are probably my favorite. There are only two main characters, Jonathan Harker and Count Dracula, and all you can do is read as the horror slowly unfolds upon itself; it’s honestly such a strong beginning. But after these chapters, the plot and pacing start to slow down.
And to me, the pacing from this point onward presents kind of a Catch-22 situation. By that, I mean there were a lot of dry parts between the letters and journal entries, especially as we get to know all the new characters introduced after Jonathan’s visit. However, the presence of these dry parts amplified the shock when horror scenes did occur, and for that reason, passages such as the recollection of sailors on the boat had such a profound effect. I don’t know if these scenes would be as gruesome had the book just been filled with Dracula’s misadventures and wrongdoings. So, I can’t necessarily blame Stoker for wanting to build up story and mystery in the scenes between the horror.
“He can, within limitations, appear at will when, and where, and in any of the forms that are to him; he can, within his range, direct the elements: the storm, the fog, the thunder; he can command all the meaner things: the rat, and the owl, and the bat—the moth, and the fox, and the wolf; he can grow and become small; and he can at times vanish and come unknown. How then are we to begin our strife to destroy him?”
