Friday Black

I was super conflicted about halfway through this book, because a lot of these stories are super super good, and some of them are just kind of meh.

When I had finished The Finklestein 5 I had thought to myself “yeah that was pretty great!”. Five or so days later I found myself explaining the story in its entirety to my coworker, down to explaining how the story creates tension with the reader through its pacing.
I adored The Era, and found myself quoting it around friends, because something was just special about reading that story from the viewpoint of an innocent child. Imagine “The Giver”, but told through the lense of an actual child.
The next three stories didnt hit as hard though. Zimmerland just wasnt able to evoke the same sort of emotional response that The Finklestein five did, Lark Street was too confusing for too long to make me enjoy any of it too much, and while I liked The Hospital Where the most out of these three I just mentioned, I still think this book has better entries.
The Lion and the Spider and Light Spitter were both incredible. There was a line in the former that reminded me of actual real conversations that ive witnessed and heard in real life. My old roommate tells this story (more times than id like to have heard it, and way more times than hed like to admit) about his old boss at a catering job he worked at, where they were talking about one of their coworkers, who they both consistently got along with. At some point this dude quit his job, and this boss that my roommate talks about all the time said something along the lines of “I liked that guy , but what a piece of shit”. This coworker who was the topic of the conversation was black, and this boss Im telling you about didnt actually call him a piece of shit he called him a racial slur, but in the same way youd call someone a piece of shit. This is sort of the inverse of what happens in The Lion and the Spider, but the same sort of idea can be drawn from both interactions. If youve read the story you know which line im talking about. Very normal people walk among us, and some of those people are racists. Some of these racists have worked with black people in the past, and theyve probably used these experiences to alleviate some of that racism in their head, even if its in an incredibly backwards manner. Light Spitter was a lot less realistic and relatable, but it drew me in immediatley and I very much enjoyed what it was doing. I have a lot less to say about this one but it was also very good.
Through The Flash was pretty interesting too, but it honestly made me more excited to read Chain Gang All-Stars more than it got any sort of emotional response out of me.
If youve read this book you probably noticed I skipped a few stories. If you want to read this and havent yet im gonna put this next section under a spoiler tag. Nothing about the plot of these stories will be revealed, however I think what im going to talk about was a nice suprise for me when I was reading, so I have no reaosn to believe that it wouldnt be for you too.

Spoiler”Friday Black,” “How to Sell a Jacket as Told by Ice King,” and “In Retail” are all incredibly good stories, but my experience with enjoying these was a little more complicated than it should have been. When I first read the story that the book was named after, I thought it was fine. Nothing about the story as a standalone short story is spectacular. It's only when you realize that this mall that this guy works at is a mall that people in the other stories I mentioned also work at that it really clicks. The Ice King story might be my favorite story in the entire book, even if I'm willing to admit that it's not nearly the best one in the book. Something about the internal dialogue of what is an everyday customer interaction for literally anyone that works with the public is so fascinating and relatable at the same time. I could not tell you how many times I've been working with a customer, and I've sat there and made up some skillful reason for every word and mannerism I've spoken and presented for that individual sale. There is something hilarious about Ice King that you just won't be able to appreciate unless you've been Ice King before. A guy who wants to be the very best at his dead-end job. A guy who revels in doing what is, by all means, important work but work that, at the end of the day, is unfulfilling to anyone who wants to make something of themselves. A guy who has very clearly outgrown his workplace mentally and stays there anyway for reasons you'd only understand if you were Ice King. “In Retail” was also super relatable in this sense. The “Lucy” person our character keeps bringing up is someone we are all familiar with, even if the circumstance isn't exactly a 1:1 reflection of the actual situation you're thinking of right now. Rather than your coworker committing suicide, maybe you just noticed the slow and steady mental decline of someone you've worked with for years, or maybe there's just someone that you work with that everyone agrees is so stupid that you've gone and made their name into a verb. And then you realize that there are people all over America that feel this way. All over the world even, and then you feel a little less insane about yourself.

I was too lazy to spellcheck this so I made AI do it for me, sorry if any of this looks super strange and doesnt make sense