The You You Are by Dr. Ricken Lazlo Hale, PhD
January 31, 2025 9:58 AM - Subscribe

Available for free on Apple Books, in both text and audiobook versions. The audiobook is read by Michael Chernus.

Adding this as its own post because it may contain spoilers for Severance.
posted by simonw (17 comments total) 10 users marked this as a favorite
 
This book won me over early with its description of Ricken's parents:
I'm the youngest son of renowned performance artists Bob and Grace Hale, known collectively as HumpDumpster, though I have sought for decades to distinguish myself from their intellectual shadow. [...]

Readers of my previous books know that both my conception and birth took place in a small theatre behind a defunct perfumery in Western Oregon, as part of a nine-month performance art piece originated by my parents titled "Smells Like Afterbirth, F**ker." It was noteworthy in that I was the first child sired exclusively for theatrical purposes, and critics at the time hailed it as "a baroque deconstruction of the increasingly perverse human urge to procreate." My birth was witnessed by such cultural leaders as Jason Robards, Lina Wertmüller, Walt Frazier, and Oregon Governor Robert W. Straub, who called it "American theater at its most sublimely obscene."

Though I cannot remember my birth performance, the knowledge of it has always brought me great joy. Knowing that a version of me, even one I don't recall, brought meaning and profundity to so auspicious a coterie of persons, infused into my young life a deep sense of purpose. Yet, as I aged, irrational questions began to creep in. Was the piece truly as revelatory as the critics claimed? Was it not simply a retread of the Reeperbahn shows of Hamburg? Did my parents actually want a child?

The latter question especially took root as HumpDumpster moved on to new pieces, including 1992's critically lauded "Cheers, F**kers," in which they held a Boston bar at actual gunpoint for 36 hours, leading to a quasi-substantive prison term. This and other endeavors led to long stretches where I was alone, and it was in these silent periods that a grim and intrusive resentment - of my parents, my lineage, and even myself - began to take hold.
posted by simonw at 10:05 AM on January 31 [8 favorites]


Here's the official trailer for the book on YouTube.
posted by simonw at 10:08 AM on January 31 [2 favorites]


Though I cannot remember my birth performance, the knowledge of it has always brought me great joy.

This bit reminds me of the beginning of Thomas Mann's Bekenntnisse des Hochstaplers Felix Krull (Confessions of Felix Krull):
Such was the home upon which, on a mild rainy Sunday in May, I first opened my eyes. ... If report tells true, the birth was slow and difficult ... It appears that I—if I may use the first person to refer to that far-away and foreign little being—was extremely inactive ... They tell me that I was a quiet child, that I did not cry and break the peace, but was given to sleep and napping, to a degree most comfortable to my nurses ... Often enough I heard from my parents' lips that I was a Sunday child ... I have often been told ...
Notably, Confessions of Felix Krull was intentionally written as a pompous-sounding parody of a work by Goethe.
posted by jedicus at 10:23 AM on January 31 [2 favorites]


Just to clarify: is this fiction or nonfiction?
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:50 AM on January 31 [1 favorite]


> I'm the youngest son of renowned performance artists Bob and Grace Hale, known collectively as HumpDumpster ...

I made it as far as "HumpDumpster" and immediately started to look for, and make if necessary, a Fanfare thread

It's at the bottom of page 1 for me, soooo
posted by Pronoiac at 10:52 AM on January 31 [1 favorite]


Just to clarify: is this fiction or nonfiction?
I think the honest answer is "both".
posted by simonw at 10:53 AM on January 31 [1 favorite]


> Just to clarify: is this fiction or nonfiction?

I mean, there's no Wikipedia entry for HumpDumpster, yet, so I'm guessing it's fiction
posted by Pronoiac at 10:55 AM on January 31


How do I read this if I don't have any Apple infrastructure?
posted by cooker girl at 11:17 AM on January 31 [2 favorites]


I've been keeping an eye on the Reddit thread to see if someone creates a bootlegged PDF/ePub version but nothing so far.
posted by simonw at 12:47 PM on January 31 [2 favorites]


I was similarly confused in a "there is no way this is real" way, so I searched and found it's a Severance thing.
posted by mrphancy at 1:20 PM on January 31 [1 favorite]


Ah, OK. The book does note up front that it's "drawn from the universe of Severance."
posted by Halloween Jack at 4:50 PM on January 31


“The answer, which is yes, may surprise you.” Amazing.
posted by sillygwailo at 5:35 PM on January 31 [1 favorite]


That was a bizarre hour and a bit. Definitely has changed how I view Ricken. Maybe even Mark S. a bit too.

It left me questioning whether the outside world in Severance is kind of messed up (well, I guess any world where they come up with the severed program is kind of messed up), or if Ricken’s point of view is skewing it way more.
posted by eekernohan at 9:17 AM on February 2


It left me questioning whether the outside world in Severance is kind of messed up (well, I guess any world where they come up with the severed program is kind of messed up), or if Ricken’s point of view is skewing it way more.

I think it's both - Ricken and all his dinner party guests were demonstrably over-the-top in their milquetoast inanery, especially compared to Devon... But the world is clearly warped by the presence of Lumon. The company both spends heaps of money producing inscrutable nonsense, but also possesses magic-equivalent technology that can scan for the hidden presence of text, or even codes - the mere concept of recorded communication. They seem to have distorted the local and global principalities like how Disney and Scientology have their own Floridian gravity wells.
posted by FatherDagon at 10:44 AM on February 3


This doesn’t seem to contain any of the snippets I vaguely remember from S1’s screen time of TYYA. I remember those as being kinda interesting, with some assertions that I could broadly agree with. I got the impression that, while Ricken is a doofus in his daily life, he had some ideas that were at least Unabomber-grade “there is a truth to that even if I’m not onboard with all of your conclusions.”

This ebook is just plain buffoonery, disappointingly.
posted by xueexueg at 3:44 PM on February 3


Some old quotes here — I don’t remember the ebook having:
Should you find yourself contorting to fit a system, dear reader, stop, and ask if it's truly you that must change, or the system.

Your job needs you, not the other way around.
posted by xueexueg at 3:58 PM on February 3


There were definitely a decent number of bits from the show present in this excerpt, like the acrostic poem experience, and "whereas man is made of skin," but yeah, the more plot-relevant line presumably are from later into the book (page 197, which canonically slaps, is definitely not in the first eight chapters)
posted by DoctorFedora at 4:54 PM on February 3 [1 favorite]


« Older King of the Hill: Livin' on Re...   |  The Pitt: 11:00AM... Newer »

You are not logged in, either login or create an account to post comments