LaserWriter II

by Tamara Shopsin

A WIRED Pick for the 7 Books You Need to Read This Winter and one of Vox’s 11 Titles Not to Miss

From the incomparable New York Times and New Yorker illustrator Tamara Shopsin comes a debut novel about a New York City printer repair technician who grows up alongside the Apple computer—featuring original designs by the author.

LaserWriter II is a coming-of-age tale set in the legendary nineties indie Mac repair shop Tekserve—a voyage back in time to when the internet was new, when New York City was gritty, and when Apple made offbeat computers for weirdos. Our guide is Claire, a nineteen-year-old who barely speaks to her bohemian coworkers but knows when it’s time to snap on an antistatic bracelet.

Interweaving the history of digital technology with a tale both touchingly human and delightfully technical, Shopsin brings an idiosyncratic cast of characters to life with a light touch, a sharp eye, and an unmistakable voice. Filled with pixelated philosophy and lots of printers, LaserWriter II is, at its heart, a parable about an apple.

Genres: Fiction, Technology, Novels, Historical Fiction, Historical, Contemporary, New York

224 pages, Paperback

First published October 19, 2021

Reviews

[Daniel Kloke · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 stars because I used to have this job in the early 90s. It may have been the best job I ever had, so there is serious nostalgia. You don't have to be a tech to enjoy this book, but having a hobby or passion is helpful in understanding (i.e., grok).

We predominantly used four senses when fixing every computer (I was in a shop that dealt predominantly with Apple products): eyes, touch (for vibrations for drives/disks), sound (for bells, and grinds), and smell (a whiff of ozone told you that you cracked the fuse). I never tried taste. A good tech / engineer had a dialogue with the things that needed fixing. Things almost always worked in the end because of mutual agreement.

I miss those days, but I got a little of that back in this book. An easy read, almost simplistic, but a wonderful window into the odd people that would get trapped in this world.

This is a book about people. Not a book about dramatic interludes, but a book for those who enjoy reading about different lives and enjoy stories of real people.

I had almost forgotten this style of writing - For the past few years, I have been reading mysteries, science fiction, supernatural stories, etc. which are all written at the speed of plot to reach a stirring conclusion of some kind.

Perhaps I need to consider opening up some new genres into my reading lists!
4 stars. Maybe room for more if I end up dwelling on it over the next two weeks.

[Olive Fellows (abookolive)]

There’s nothing quite like the moment of panic when your computer sputters and the screen goes black. Did something spill on it? Why won’t it turn back on? An even more chilling thought comes to mind: was it backed up recently? If you were a Mac user and had these questions in 1990s New York City, you would race to Tekserve, the legendary Macintosh repair shop, hardware in hand, hoping to God they could help you.

The longstanding shop closed its doors in 2016, but LaserWriter II, the succinct and quirky debut novel from Tamara Shopsin, illustrator for the New York Times and the New Yorker and author of the memoirs Arbitrary Stupid Goal and Mumbai New York Scranton, brings it back to life.

Click here to read the rest of my review in the Harvard Review.

[Oriana]

Oh, this sounds incredibly strange and cool. Here's a review in Bomb describing the main character's "epic journey of the soul" as a young printer expert at the iconic Mac repair shop TekServe (at which I had many a computer fixed), which also breezily drops this tidbit: "By far the most interesting characters are the anthropomorphized machine parts, which form a kind of impassioned Greek chorus throughout the novel."

Sorry, what??? Yes please please please.

[Maddy · Rating 5 out of 5]

best book this year congrats book

[Jordan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Perfectly simulates the experience of getting stuck listening to two people who work together excitedly talk about their office

[Uzma Ali]

ICAN'T DO THIS ANYMORE I'm giving up halfway through. It's only 200 pages and I can't with the never ending info dump... each paragraph introduces a new name of some company or character you must commit to memory or else nothing makes sense. There's barely a semblance of storyline, unless you count mc Claire's navigation of her new job at this Mac repair shop. Incessant flashbacks of her coworkers' assimilation to their roles too. Technical jargon I don't care about. I don't care I don't care I don't care give me a reason to care

[Louise · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a weird little book. I wasn’t sure what to expect but it was comforting to read about this early 90s Apple repair shop and the characters working there. A bit of light anti capitalism sprinkled in made the entire book shine.

[Laurel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is incredible! Characterization was sharp and precise. And those characters ranged from real persons, fictional persons, and components of computer hardware. This book is short. It made me so happy.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a love letter to computer nerds (specifically, Mac nerds) of the late 90s and early 2000s. It captures some of the feelings really well, like your first time being able to fix a computer. If that sounds appealing, then you'll probably enjoy this.

[Carm · Rating 1 out of 5]

I honestly don’t know what possessed me to pick this up. Nothing about the subject matter really appeals to me. And surprise: the book didn’t change that. Actually, that’s not entirely true, I needed to throw another book into my shopping cart to get free shipping. Either way, this one’s on me.

Shopsin has a distinct voice, and I get the sense that for the right reader, this would be a charming little oddball. But I spent most of it feeling like I was trapped in someone else's hyper-specific nostalgia spiral. Detached narration, characters I couldn’t get a grip on, and a deep reverence for a subculture I’ve never cared about... none of it landed.

Then, about halfway through, the machine parts started talking to each other and instead of finding it endearing, I thought maybe I was having a stroke.

Totally fair if this is your thing. It just very clearly wasn’t mine.

I’ll end by completely plagiarizing Goodreads user Jordan, who said (with spooky accuracy):
“Perfectly simulates the experience of getting stuck listening to two people who work together excitedly talk about their office”

Will I continue to chase free shipping? Probably. I’ve never once claimed to live and learn. Anyway. That’s enough of that.

[Danger]

Didn't know anything about this. Grabbed it at the library simply because I liked the weird title/cover. It is about a woman named Claire who works at an independent Apple computer repair shop in the 90s. A coming-of-age story, I guess. Full of moments of whimsy and nostalgia. For me though, the observations in this book felt kind of shallow. Nothing much happened. Time simply marched on. Is that the point? Maybe. But as far as a plot goes, that's not very compelling. The short vignettes keep it moving/readable, yet for all its charm, I never felt enamored with this book.

[Torrin Nelson · Rating 1 out of 5]

For a book about printers, this was a waste of paper and ink. Now, keep in mind, I’m 1. a graphic designer 2. a nerd 3. a lover of Apple products 4. nostalgic for the 90s, and I still found this book absolutely pointless. I love the cover though.

[Olivia Stepper · Rating 5 out of 5]

cute, nerdy, and very quick; good at showing not telling

[Maia · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a novel, loosely, but more so it's a little window back into a specific era of repairable technology and the people who were drawn to it. Set almost entirely in a (real, I think) Mac repair shop in New York City in the 1990s, this book jumps from backstory to backstory, introducing a range of self-taught computer fanatics. The cast and the story both feel wide but not deep. I didn't get to know anyone well, not even Claire, the newest hire and lead character. It did give me some serious nostalgia, even though I was really too young in this era to really have any meaningful relationship with it's technology. A weird but charming little book.

[Jason Snell · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a funny and quirky book about 90s-era Apple products and the people who fix them at New York City's premier Mac repair shop, Tekserve. The main character is a young woman who is taught the secrets of printer repair and works with a cast of characters, some pleasant, some unpleasant. This was an enjoyable trip back in time with several laugh-out-loud passages. My only real criticism is that it's very short and kind of slight. It left me wanting a lot more.

[andré crombie · Rating 5 out of 5]

“She has found her calling. One that draws on her full mind and body. A noble calling that helps people make poetry and do their taxes.”

Notes: “RIYL: Hitting the ‘Random Article’ button on Wikipedia,” indeed. Filled with such reverence for kindness, decency, and the simple, sacred power of very specific work (in this case, printer repair) done well. At times it reminded me of The Queen’s Gambit; there’s a sprinkling of Pynchon, too. Terrific!

[Darya Clark · Rating 2 out of 5]

i HATEDDDDD the anthropomorphism of the machine parts. But the book is too short to complain too much. And I do like when people take apart things and learn how they work

[Peter Tillman]

Far from my usual fiction fare... Well, maybe not THAT far. I've been a Mac user since Mac Plus days, with a big big 10-MB external (and noisy) HD -- so much for Steve Jobs insistence on no fan in that one. But it was a good machine, for its day, and worked fine until its retirement. The Mac-branded printer we bought, hrm, what were they even called, printed with a cluster of pins? Or was it a primitive ink-jet? Anyway, it used fan-fold paper, I'm almost certain, and that part was fine. Print quality, even for then, was fair at best. But it did work, and I don't recall ever having to fix it. The computer that replaced it, despite a beautiful big portrait-style CRT monitor -- well. That one I was happy to retire, and largely replaced with a low-end, still monochrome PB-5300....

Oh, wait. You wanted to know about the novel? OK, nice NY Times review here, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/12/bo...
Excerpt:
"Long before the first shiny Apple Store arrived in Manhattan, there was Tekserve, the independent Macintosh computer repair shop open on West 23rd Street from 1987 to 2016. For those of us who were customers, it provided reliable service in a funky space decorated with vintage Macs, a hanging porch swing and an old-fashioned glass-bottle Coke machine. If your PowerBook 1400 ground to a halt or your printer became constipated with paper jams, Tekserve was there to help.
..
Tamara Shopsin sets “LaserWriter II,” her first novel, at Tekserve around the late 1990s, before smartphones and social media became ubiquitous. It’s the story of 19-year-old Claire, who’s searching for purpose and spending her free time illicitly auditing philosophy classes using someone else’s lost Columbia student ID. She’s a quiet idealist...."

Anyway. Offbeat & kind of intriguing. Macs were also marketed to women and drew a following among students, since they weren't too expensive (at the low end) and intuitive to use. Well, supposedly....
Marked as TBR-maybe-library. I'll also look to see what others say.

[Peter Knox · Rating 5 out of 5]

Meant to be enjoyed in one sitting, LaserWriter II is an accurate history of Tekserve in NYC that reads like the back of house of a restaurant (like Kitchen Confidential for Mac repair) in a poetic prose way only its author can write. Loved it.

You get nostalgia for the early Mac days, a bit of Apple history as the underdog, and the 90s of NYC. You meet the characters working at Tekserve, understanding their background that lead them to work there. And a bit of an office novel as a restaurant company - which works so well.

[L]

Well, that was fun, but also a little sad. It's a coming of age story for Claire, and a love letter to but also the opposite of a coming of age* story for Tekserve.

(*I googled words that are the opposite of "coming of age" and would like to use "dégringolade" because it looks and sounds interesting, but that seems to be a rapid decline which is not quite right here.)

[Miles · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a fun book. Who knew a computer repair store could hold so much tenderness

[Maytal · Rating 1 out of 5]

Booo how can that even be called a book

[Alex Ho · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short and sweet. Great snapshot of a community before tech grew to what it is today.

[Michelle Leung · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such a charming nostalgic little gem. If you’ve ever had your laptop (specifically a mac ) die on you for whatever reason, this is such a sweet little tale I enjoyed immensely. It perfectly captured a very specific time and place and will make Apple computer fans grin from ear to ear.

[Koen Crolla · Rating 2 out of 5]

This isn't really anything—consumerist nostalgia by a New York rich kid engaging in working class tourism.

[Kate P. from the Bachelor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quirky, weird, sweet, and charming. So great. This book ignited a distinct memory I have of receiving bad news in Tekserve in like 2003. I don’t remember what the bad news was tho… maybe it was my boyfriend’s and I was just there for moral support? Whatever, I’m so glad this adorable book captures that iconic place.

[Lyn · Rating 1 out of 5]

Boring.

Did not see the point of telling this story. Did not care about the shallow characters. Very unsatisfying read. Also did not get the point of corny anthropomorphing, of the computer equipment that punctuated the text.

[Micah · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm giving it two stars instead of one because I was capable of finishing it, though I was nauseous by the cloying end. Nostalgia trip conforming better to the conventions of the romance genre than lit fic.

[Nikky Southerland · Rating 2 out of 5]

Clever little book in a neat package but it never becomes compelling and ultimately is just such a light read you already forgot what it was about.

(The POV scenes involving parts are also the worst)

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enlightened computer repair was a thing; this book unerringly taps into a scene I remember well. Delightful.