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Service
A darkly comic novel set on the lower slopes of the Los Angeles literary world.
I stepped out to behold a crimson-streaked sky that would soon be adorning ten thousand Instagram posts, and walked down the sleepy residential streets, suffused with a soft and forgiving evening light, to the main drag. It felt like the end here, both sanctuary and a soft place of harsh realities where a sun that once meant something barely brushed against the world. The perfect spring evening was blighted only by the citizenry.
A journalist in his late forties—having lost his job as a consequence of the death of print media—finds himself working at a bookstore in a rapidly gentrifying Los Angeles neighborhood, where he is thrown into the company of a younger generation with whom he has little in common. Embittered by his lowly position at this late stage of what had once been a promising career, he collapses his longtime ambition of writing a novel into a hilariously cathartic litany of contempt for his present circumstances.
Service examines the plight of the unrepentant artistic outsider in an unforgiving day and age. It alternates between passages that painstakingly describe the protagonist’s fraught attempts to write his novel and such scenes of service work as wrapping children’s books for Silver Lake moms and being “pilloried by dunces” on Yelp. As his writing process stalls in a “stale ceremony” of indolence and self-doubt, these unfamiliar humiliations become a toxic wellspring for his irascible observations.
With his notoriously dry wit, John Tottenham’s debut novel reflects on a farrago of contemporary gentrification, debt, friendship, aging gracelessly, self-medication, male vanity, professional jealousy, the perils of political correctness, and the role of literature in the digital era. Eventually, after endlessly agonizing about matters of form and style, he finds that despite himself he has actually written a book.
I stepped out to behold a crimson-streaked sky that would soon be adorning ten thousand Instagram posts, and walked down the sleepy residential streets, suffused with a soft and forgiving evening light, to the main drag. It felt like the end here, both sanctuary and a soft place of harsh realities where a sun that once meant something barely brushed against the world. The perfect spring evening was blighted only by the citizenry.
A journalist in his late forties—having lost his job as a consequence of the death of print media—finds himself working at a bookstore in a rapidly gentrifying Los Angeles neighborhood, where he is thrown into the company of a younger generation with whom he has little in common. Embittered by his lowly position at this late stage of what had once been a promising career, he collapses his longtime ambition of writing a novel into a hilariously cathartic litany of contempt for his present circumstances.
Service examines the plight of the unrepentant artistic outsider in an unforgiving day and age. It alternates between passages that painstakingly describe the protagonist’s fraught attempts to write his novel and such scenes of service work as wrapping children’s books for Silver Lake moms and being “pilloried by dunces” on Yelp. As his writing process stalls in a “stale ceremony” of indolence and self-doubt, these unfamiliar humiliations become a toxic wellspring for his irascible observations.
With his notoriously dry wit, John Tottenham’s debut novel reflects on a farrago of contemporary gentrification, debt, friendship, aging gracelessly, self-medication, male vanity, professional jealousy, the perils of political correctness, and the role of literature in the digital era. Eventually, after endlessly agonizing about matters of form and style, he finds that despite himself he has actually written a book.
328 pages, Paperback
First published May 6, 2025
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1784 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 95 reviews
May 6, 2025
In my early 20s, I worked as a bookseller for a large chain bookstore. Not the one you’re probably thinking of, but the other one. The one that doesn’t exist anymore. It was a thankless job that had my and my co-workers arriving at five in the morning to shelve books for several hours before the doors were opened wide to the all-consuming and ever-questioning public. This was the good part of the day - the hours where we could play whatever music we wanted, where we could shout to each other across the aisles of books and over the store’s PA system or where we could sneak off to the bathroom and read whatever Murakami or Eggers book we’d gotten in from the distributors that week. In short, if you liked books, the hours before the store opened were like a strange sort of working holiday that you spent with your work friends.
But when those doors opened, the tenor of the store shifted into something deeply unfamiliar from those pre-dawn and early morning hours. The music stuck to a regimented playlist of the same six corporate approved albums on a loop and merged with the incessant chatter of hundreds of browsing humans into a dull, lifeless sort of cacophony that sat at just the right frequency to ensure that your mind would approach madness by the end of your shift. Requests for the same three bland bestselling authors, requests for whatever fad diet book was trending that week, requests for gift wrapping during customer rushes when the lines would hit the back of the store, requests for the location of the Fiction section while standing under a sign emblazoned with bold lettering that read “FICTION” - all near daily staples and all more exhausting with each repetition.
Most of us that worked at the store were young and knew in the back of our minds that this job was a stopping point before our “real lives” began and no matter how often our supervisors would make attempts to talk us into taking on more responsibility or thoughtfully suggest that we seriously consider a career path in management, we treated our working days like they were temporary. I can look back now with more fondness than I could right after I left that job, but that’s the thing about time away from situations, it softens them into something unrecognizable from what you actually endured.
John Tottenham’s Service is an absolute marvel of memoir disguised as fiction. What at first glance appears as a loose diary of a writer’s time spent begrudgingly working behind the counter at a hip Echo Park bookstore as he approaches his fifties is quickly revealed to be a character study of what it means to be a creative person that has made the decision to cease engaging with and practicing their desire to create. John (or Sean, as he is labelled in the context of the book) seeks out the answer to what happens when you’ve spent a lifetime defining yourself as a writer and then decide to stop writing and quickly discovers that regardless of how much his skill and his past efforts have left him with little to no acclaim, the urge to write and the desire to lay yourself bare on a page for others to consume is not so easily pushed into the corner for a time-out.
Service spends a good deal of it’s time with Sean as he works as a part-time bookseller at what has become a sort of infamous destination bookstore in the rapidly gentrifying neighbourhood of Echo Park in Los Angeles. His time at the bookstore began as a favour to a friend that initially opened the shop and devolved into a situation where he now works for an increasingly uptight recovering addict and former friend that he himself brought on years before to work at the store. Days drift by in an agonizing half-speed as he is inundated with customers that annoy him and visits from writers (both friends and nemeses) stopping by to read from their published work or to antagonize him from his spot behind the counter as the incessant sound of people yelling into their phones in the middle of the aisles provide the store it’s never-ceasing backing track.
Sean reaches a point where not writing becomes an impossibility and forces himself into a specific schedule during his time at home in which he can properly medicate himself to reach a place where the holy act of writing can occur. His writing sessions are often fraught with panic over feeling as if he has so little to say or disturbed by distractions from the outside world that only seem to serve to shut his process down and render him incapable of getting anything he’s even remotely happy with on the page. But time is a vulture looming overhead for Sean as he watches a number of his peers pushing deeper into their own literary careers and entering into entirely new tax brackets as he is stuck in the same place, day after day, receiving one negative Yelp review after another for his impatience with the majority of the customers that walk through the doors of the bookstore.
At a certain point, Service evolves past what you might initially gather from a summary on the inside of a dust jacket or a blurb in some publication and becomes something swallowing itself over and over until it becomes unclear where the line between John as the writer and you as the reader exists. When Sean strikes up a careful acquaintance with a young musician that starts working at the in-store coffee stand, the two begin begin discussing and critiquing Sean’s novel-in-progress and the balance between what is the story and what is real life is thrown into chaos as writing techniques, plot developments and character arcs are discussed in practice as soon they are occurring in the story itself. Sean begins telling people that he’s lost all ability as a writer to craft a novel that requires skill or invention and is instead writing things as they are. Sentences are repeated, opinions run rampant and bits are recycled and fold in on themselves as the novel begins to take on the shape of the shapeless and in this manner becomes something that better approaches reality than you would ever believe possible from something written to fill 300 pages.
The deeper that Sean disappears into writing the novel inside of Service, the further he gets away from one of his earliest exclamations at the dawn of the book that art should be the residue of life and not the life itself. However, the more that Service represents someone whose art is being consumed by their life (or is it the other way around?) and the more honest that John is with his breaking of the fourth wall in small micro-communications with the reader, the more vibrant and vital this text becomes as it resonates with that undying urge to create before time runs out that both plagues and enriches the lives of so many in equal measure. Service deserves a bountiful amount of attention and accolade for it’s truth, honesty and…well, it’s service as both a testament to art and as an act of art itself. In fact, it deserves acclaim of the exact nature that it’s author might publicly abhor and attempt to diminish, but willingly accept and ultimately cherish inside of his own private thoughts.
Thank you to the incredible people at Semiotext(e) for sending me an advanced copy of John’s remarkable work of art to read and review.
But when those doors opened, the tenor of the store shifted into something deeply unfamiliar from those pre-dawn and early morning hours. The music stuck to a regimented playlist of the same six corporate approved albums on a loop and merged with the incessant chatter of hundreds of browsing humans into a dull, lifeless sort of cacophony that sat at just the right frequency to ensure that your mind would approach madness by the end of your shift. Requests for the same three bland bestselling authors, requests for whatever fad diet book was trending that week, requests for gift wrapping during customer rushes when the lines would hit the back of the store, requests for the location of the Fiction section while standing under a sign emblazoned with bold lettering that read “FICTION” - all near daily staples and all more exhausting with each repetition.
Most of us that worked at the store were young and knew in the back of our minds that this job was a stopping point before our “real lives” began and no matter how often our supervisors would make attempts to talk us into taking on more responsibility or thoughtfully suggest that we seriously consider a career path in management, we treated our working days like they were temporary. I can look back now with more fondness than I could right after I left that job, but that’s the thing about time away from situations, it softens them into something unrecognizable from what you actually endured.
John Tottenham’s Service is an absolute marvel of memoir disguised as fiction. What at first glance appears as a loose diary of a writer’s time spent begrudgingly working behind the counter at a hip Echo Park bookstore as he approaches his fifties is quickly revealed to be a character study of what it means to be a creative person that has made the decision to cease engaging with and practicing their desire to create. John (or Sean, as he is labelled in the context of the book) seeks out the answer to what happens when you’ve spent a lifetime defining yourself as a writer and then decide to stop writing and quickly discovers that regardless of how much his skill and his past efforts have left him with little to no acclaim, the urge to write and the desire to lay yourself bare on a page for others to consume is not so easily pushed into the corner for a time-out.
Service spends a good deal of it’s time with Sean as he works as a part-time bookseller at what has become a sort of infamous destination bookstore in the rapidly gentrifying neighbourhood of Echo Park in Los Angeles. His time at the bookstore began as a favour to a friend that initially opened the shop and devolved into a situation where he now works for an increasingly uptight recovering addict and former friend that he himself brought on years before to work at the store. Days drift by in an agonizing half-speed as he is inundated with customers that annoy him and visits from writers (both friends and nemeses) stopping by to read from their published work or to antagonize him from his spot behind the counter as the incessant sound of people yelling into their phones in the middle of the aisles provide the store it’s never-ceasing backing track.
Sean reaches a point where not writing becomes an impossibility and forces himself into a specific schedule during his time at home in which he can properly medicate himself to reach a place where the holy act of writing can occur. His writing sessions are often fraught with panic over feeling as if he has so little to say or disturbed by distractions from the outside world that only seem to serve to shut his process down and render him incapable of getting anything he’s even remotely happy with on the page. But time is a vulture looming overhead for Sean as he watches a number of his peers pushing deeper into their own literary careers and entering into entirely new tax brackets as he is stuck in the same place, day after day, receiving one negative Yelp review after another for his impatience with the majority of the customers that walk through the doors of the bookstore.
At a certain point, Service evolves past what you might initially gather from a summary on the inside of a dust jacket or a blurb in some publication and becomes something swallowing itself over and over until it becomes unclear where the line between John as the writer and you as the reader exists. When Sean strikes up a careful acquaintance with a young musician that starts working at the in-store coffee stand, the two begin begin discussing and critiquing Sean’s novel-in-progress and the balance between what is the story and what is real life is thrown into chaos as writing techniques, plot developments and character arcs are discussed in practice as soon they are occurring in the story itself. Sean begins telling people that he’s lost all ability as a writer to craft a novel that requires skill or invention and is instead writing things as they are. Sentences are repeated, opinions run rampant and bits are recycled and fold in on themselves as the novel begins to take on the shape of the shapeless and in this manner becomes something that better approaches reality than you would ever believe possible from something written to fill 300 pages.
The deeper that Sean disappears into writing the novel inside of Service, the further he gets away from one of his earliest exclamations at the dawn of the book that art should be the residue of life and not the life itself. However, the more that Service represents someone whose art is being consumed by their life (or is it the other way around?) and the more honest that John is with his breaking of the fourth wall in small micro-communications with the reader, the more vibrant and vital this text becomes as it resonates with that undying urge to create before time runs out that both plagues and enriches the lives of so many in equal measure. Service deserves a bountiful amount of attention and accolade for it’s truth, honesty and…well, it’s service as both a testament to art and as an act of art itself. In fact, it deserves acclaim of the exact nature that it’s author might publicly abhor and attempt to diminish, but willingly accept and ultimately cherish inside of his own private thoughts.
Thank you to the incredible people at Semiotext(e) for sending me an advanced copy of John’s remarkable work of art to read and review.
November 15, 2025
Every bookseller should read this. It might do for the book industry what All Fours did for 20-year marriages.
Funny, cynical and sneering, it's easily the best book about bookselling out there. Tottenham invokes some of the spirit of Bukowski and Dan Fante as he depicts life at a small bookstore in a rapidly gentrifying LA neighborhood, while his late-40s 'protagonist' tries to scratch out a novel.
A great addition to the ignoble tradition of LA loser lit.
Funny, cynical and sneering, it's easily the best book about bookselling out there. Tottenham invokes some of the spirit of Bukowski and Dan Fante as he depicts life at a small bookstore in a rapidly gentrifying LA neighborhood, while his late-40s 'protagonist' tries to scratch out a novel.
A great addition to the ignoble tradition of LA loser lit.
November 15, 2025
Negative and repetitive but also very funny and very recognisable for booksellers.
December 3, 2025
This book was the single most depressing, repetitive, self-indulgent expression of not very much that I have read to date. The protagonist was unlikeable, which is not a necessary flaw, but without any insight, depth or development I was left wondering why I was still reading it. I couldn’t wait for it to be finished. If you want to read somebody’s almost singular complaint on repeat for several hours this is your book. The feeble attempt to intellectualise the effort with obtuse vocabulary was in my opinion unsuccessful in the extreme. I have worked in the service industry and endured challenges in many ways similar to those encountered by the protagonist. In light of this I feel confident to say the dissatisfaction he experienced was neither satisfying nor relatable, and I wondered at many points what experience (if any) Tottenham sought out before writing it.
October 7, 2025
If you are, or at any point were, a pretentious white guy with some nebulous artistic ambition that you mostly sublimated into Very Conspicuous overconsumption of media and who (feels/felt*) somehow both infinitely superior and infinitely inferior to everyone you encounter, you won't necessarily "get anything" out of reading this -- you're not going to be introduced to a new perspective or be challenged or affirmed -- but sometimes you gotta go where everybody knows your name, and reading feels more nutritious than watching a sitcom. It's rambling autofiction that wants to place itself above and outside of rambling autofiction by indicating that it is aware of the fact that it's rambling autofiction, but feels guilty at the cheapness of this slight-of-hand. You're going to feel the spin of these cycles of frustration, and you can tire of it quickly if you're not somehow sympathetic to the main character -- this is the Unc who would talk to me at a Built to Spill show when I was 15 and he had a 15 year old kid sleeping at his ex-wife's house. I like that guy, I understand that guy, I know where that guy is coming from, becoming that guy is a perpetual option for me, and I understand why you would want to have nothing to do with any of that. I had fun with it, but yeah, it's My Year of Rest and Relaxation for guys with Hot Water Music tattoos.
*I understand that there's an undue generosity I'm granting in even invoking the past tense. You can cognitive-behavioral therapize away from it, but not all the way out of it. At the very least, you'll be in a situation at some point where you'll experience a flare-up, and it's an ugly and childish thing.
*I understand that there's an undue generosity I'm granting in even invoking the past tense. You can cognitive-behavioral therapize away from it, but not all the way out of it. At the very least, you'll be in a situation at some point where you'll experience a flare-up, and it's an ugly and childish thing.
June 5, 2025
It's ~achingly~ dumb. The guy wonders why he's in his life circumstance followed by he spends an exorbitant number of pages demonstrating why. And to top everything off he says he has discerning taste and yet then numerous times he writes about the word count of his book while saying he wants to write a longer book. If this book wasn't published out of pity the whole world is stupid.
This book is hugely recommended to anyone who needs reminded what not to do in life. I guess you could say in that way it's a self-improvement book. Sucks that is even worse. Unfortunately I read into it thinking there'd be intelligent writing. Choosing a book for its vocabulary is like choosing a book for its font. Just missing the whole point of desperate questions and deeper needs. I know this guy struggles like we all do but his first book sucks. I'd say his second book might be better but he doesn't have the capacity, which to be fair he does mention.
And if you think I'm being hard on the book, I'm actually restraining myself about how dumb it is. Books are about being a book, period. Life is boring. Try not to remember that while reading this self-pitying monstrosity.
This book is hugely recommended to anyone who needs reminded what not to do in life. I guess you could say in that way it's a self-improvement book. Sucks that is even worse. Unfortunately I read into it thinking there'd be intelligent writing. Choosing a book for its vocabulary is like choosing a book for its font. Just missing the whole point of desperate questions and deeper needs. I know this guy struggles like we all do but his first book sucks. I'd say his second book might be better but he doesn't have the capacity, which to be fair he does mention.
And if you think I'm being hard on the book, I'm actually restraining myself about how dumb it is. Books are about being a book, period. Life is boring. Try not to remember that while reading this self-pitying monstrosity.
June 11, 2025
the doting embrace of loser literature... could anything be more loving to the reader?
July 22, 2025
DNF 230 pages in because I can’t do this anymore…actually liked it but it’s so repetitive that it just gets to a point…
September 15, 2025
If you appreciate sarcasm and cynicism within a setting filled with literature, writing, books, music, current cultural trends, politics and alienation, you will enjoy this read.
John Tottenham is an amusing self-referential wordsmith.
The protagonist, named Sean, is an ex-journalist now subsiding as a bookstore clerk who stuffs unpaid credit card debt notices into trash bags ignoring “these tedious importunings and hoped my oppressors would eventually give up and go away.”
“A flaneur in utopia, with nowhere to flan”, he muses, as he passes a once popular and reasonable family owned restaurant now taken over by developers. Looking for an old-time bar he finds “one last perforation into the sacred anomie of the past.”
He maintains and relishes a good dose of schadenfreude for those writers who are published and for an ex folk band member who still has cache, though his career ended years ago.
Reading a book on a crashed one hit wonder he mentions Townes Van Zandt, ‘both died in their early to mid-fifties: a decade I now floundered upon the brink of, looking down into it as if it were a pit that would swallow up the remains of hope and promise.”
Discouraged, disheartened he decides to NOT write anymore but shortly succumbs to getting closer to death: “the worst part of it was that I hadn’t created anything that would outlive me” and decides to buy $300 of meds to help him sit still enough to start writing again.
Throughout the book he muses on books and mentions several including Confessions of a Crap Artist (Philip K. Dick), 4 Dada Suicides and Kundera’s, The Unbearable Lightness of Being – all of which seem reflective of his current mental state.
In other takes he critiques other writers in a mocking humorous way which further reveals the character’s negativity and authorial talent:
Regarding Cormac McCarthy – “I once forced myself to wade through one of his novels…it was heavy work, the author’s straining brow was visible as he forced out his turgid prose, which combined the worst qualities of Faulkner and Hemingway – exhibitionistic prolixity and grueling masculinity – with no flow, no humor, and no feeling (the literary equivalent of NFL football: all effort, no rhythm, all stop and start) while continually tripping the reader up by inserting ill-fitting obscure words into his laborious sentences for no apparent purpose other than to flaunt his sesquipedalian proclivities. I could do better than that, but that would entail coming up with plot, character and dialogue, of which I am incapable.”
This long quote exemplifies Tottenham’s unique humorous tricksterism. He is a talented wordsmith, knowledgeable of literature and is able to self-mock by mocking others with an enormous tongue in cheek proclivity. The fact that I love Cormac McCarthy’s books (I have read most all of them) only makes this passage juicier and more entertaining.
At other times he is ruthless in his comments on customers who stroll through the bookstore. The mistaken title of the book (Service) misrepresents his scolding and contempt for most everything that occurs in the bookstore.
“After dealing with requests for “where the restroom is? I returned to my light reading: a drug memoir written by a musician or a musical memoir written by a drug addict – it was hard to say which.”
Bad Yelp reviews follow him to which his manager confronts him with regularity.
A customer asks for a book recommendation: “I don’t have the energy…do I have to read the fucking book for you too? Its not as if I’m going to be compensated for the service. You throw two dollars at a bartender for popping the top off of a beer bottle. I give you a book that’s going to change your life and what do I get in return? Nothing.” ‘Maybe you’re in the wrong profession’, replies the customer – ‘no shit’ I said.”
About his own efforts a younger colleague asks to read some chapters to provide feedback and Sean (the narrator) replies “I don’t know about that. I’m feeling more and more uneasy about it. Its an act…a work…of great narcissism and treachery.” His young friend replies “Aren’t they all though” to which Sean says “there are degrees, and I have exceeded the bounds of propriety. I’ve thrown a few people under the bus. I only hope they emerge unrecognizably disfigured.”
(Above is Tottenham’s self-referential talent-poking his own effort -the book - the reader is reading entitled, Service)
At another time he says to his younger informal editor: “If I remove all the self-pity there won’t be much left” and his co-worker responds, “all the portrayals are negative…it’s just not the women. It’s across the board. Everyone’s unlikeable.” I laughed reading this and for some reason started comparing Tottenham to Lenny Bruce.
The following put-downs demonstrate this talent:
Where he works is now “more of a book-lined corridor leading to a café than an actual bookstore, out in force tonight the ululating dilettantes, the braying cacologists, the ready-made phrase sprouters and the fake exaggerators, mutilating the air with sloppy diction and ersatz enthusiasm.”
In the bookstore vacuous people ask for books whose titles are made up by Tottenham, a humorous take on what sells these days:
Fuck Fame, Boredom, Failure, Frustration, (“all the best one-word titles have been taken”), Contempt, The Death of the Novel, Damaged Goods, The Habit of Absence, I Hate Honey…
And as I read through them all, I couldn’t but muse that Tottenham’s own book, Service, could easily be entitled, Bookseller’s Blues.
Another discussion with his editor colleague: “You’re going to be accused of sexism” … “if I am lucky enough to be accused of anything. My main concern at this point is I’m writing for a limited readership” … “that’s fine”, his friend replies, “as Henry James said, ‘three thousand good readers is the most you can hope for.’ ”
In another passage we are presented with a pretty good description of the world of reading and writing:
“Everybody listens to music, but not many people read anymore…Reading requires more mental effort than any other art. Music is a soundtrack, a stimulus, a driving force toward other things; watching a movie is an entirely passive act, something to do when one is too tired, bored, or lazy to do anything else; looking at a painting makes very little demand upon one’s time or mental energy. Writing is the highest form of art, the others are shortcuts.”
Again Sean (who seems like a stand-in for Tottenham) muses; “the self-conscious novel is a lower form of literature, but it’s all I’m capable of: a tired exercise in good old-fashioned modernism.”
Reading this passage, I knew that this was indeed the kind of novel I was reading, and which I gravitate towards as a reader and a writer; wondering what it says about me and my own tastes and style. Indeed, much of current “modern” literature is of such form and content (see Rachel Cusk, et al).
In the end, his financial liabilities and frustrations get the best of him. Sean laments his solitary life, a failed artist, his middle-aged friends have moved on, with no supportive or well-to-do spouse, patron or stipend from a grant foundation, his future prospects grow dim.
This book is a fun read. The pages fly by as one is entertained by John Tottenham’s satire, cynicism, humor, word smithing, and insights of the current cultural zeitgeist.
Another recent read which seems like a good companion piece is Blue Rain by Hari Kunzru, he, too, a British novelist writing about the journey artists take in the face of fame or fortune or its absence, thereof.
John Tottenham is an amusing self-referential wordsmith.
The protagonist, named Sean, is an ex-journalist now subsiding as a bookstore clerk who stuffs unpaid credit card debt notices into trash bags ignoring “these tedious importunings and hoped my oppressors would eventually give up and go away.”
“A flaneur in utopia, with nowhere to flan”, he muses, as he passes a once popular and reasonable family owned restaurant now taken over by developers. Looking for an old-time bar he finds “one last perforation into the sacred anomie of the past.”
He maintains and relishes a good dose of schadenfreude for those writers who are published and for an ex folk band member who still has cache, though his career ended years ago.
Reading a book on a crashed one hit wonder he mentions Townes Van Zandt, ‘both died in their early to mid-fifties: a decade I now floundered upon the brink of, looking down into it as if it were a pit that would swallow up the remains of hope and promise.”
Discouraged, disheartened he decides to NOT write anymore but shortly succumbs to getting closer to death: “the worst part of it was that I hadn’t created anything that would outlive me” and decides to buy $300 of meds to help him sit still enough to start writing again.
Throughout the book he muses on books and mentions several including Confessions of a Crap Artist (Philip K. Dick), 4 Dada Suicides and Kundera’s, The Unbearable Lightness of Being – all of which seem reflective of his current mental state.
In other takes he critiques other writers in a mocking humorous way which further reveals the character’s negativity and authorial talent:
Regarding Cormac McCarthy – “I once forced myself to wade through one of his novels…it was heavy work, the author’s straining brow was visible as he forced out his turgid prose, which combined the worst qualities of Faulkner and Hemingway – exhibitionistic prolixity and grueling masculinity – with no flow, no humor, and no feeling (the literary equivalent of NFL football: all effort, no rhythm, all stop and start) while continually tripping the reader up by inserting ill-fitting obscure words into his laborious sentences for no apparent purpose other than to flaunt his sesquipedalian proclivities. I could do better than that, but that would entail coming up with plot, character and dialogue, of which I am incapable.”
This long quote exemplifies Tottenham’s unique humorous tricksterism. He is a talented wordsmith, knowledgeable of literature and is able to self-mock by mocking others with an enormous tongue in cheek proclivity. The fact that I love Cormac McCarthy’s books (I have read most all of them) only makes this passage juicier and more entertaining.
At other times he is ruthless in his comments on customers who stroll through the bookstore. The mistaken title of the book (Service) misrepresents his scolding and contempt for most everything that occurs in the bookstore.
“After dealing with requests for “where the restroom is? I returned to my light reading: a drug memoir written by a musician or a musical memoir written by a drug addict – it was hard to say which.”
Bad Yelp reviews follow him to which his manager confronts him with regularity.
A customer asks for a book recommendation: “I don’t have the energy…do I have to read the fucking book for you too? Its not as if I’m going to be compensated for the service. You throw two dollars at a bartender for popping the top off of a beer bottle. I give you a book that’s going to change your life and what do I get in return? Nothing.” ‘Maybe you’re in the wrong profession’, replies the customer – ‘no shit’ I said.”
About his own efforts a younger colleague asks to read some chapters to provide feedback and Sean (the narrator) replies “I don’t know about that. I’m feeling more and more uneasy about it. Its an act…a work…of great narcissism and treachery.” His young friend replies “Aren’t they all though” to which Sean says “there are degrees, and I have exceeded the bounds of propriety. I’ve thrown a few people under the bus. I only hope they emerge unrecognizably disfigured.”
(Above is Tottenham’s self-referential talent-poking his own effort -the book - the reader is reading entitled, Service)
At another time he says to his younger informal editor: “If I remove all the self-pity there won’t be much left” and his co-worker responds, “all the portrayals are negative…it’s just not the women. It’s across the board. Everyone’s unlikeable.” I laughed reading this and for some reason started comparing Tottenham to Lenny Bruce.
The following put-downs demonstrate this talent:
Where he works is now “more of a book-lined corridor leading to a café than an actual bookstore, out in force tonight the ululating dilettantes, the braying cacologists, the ready-made phrase sprouters and the fake exaggerators, mutilating the air with sloppy diction and ersatz enthusiasm.”
In the bookstore vacuous people ask for books whose titles are made up by Tottenham, a humorous take on what sells these days:
Fuck Fame, Boredom, Failure, Frustration, (“all the best one-word titles have been taken”), Contempt, The Death of the Novel, Damaged Goods, The Habit of Absence, I Hate Honey…
And as I read through them all, I couldn’t but muse that Tottenham’s own book, Service, could easily be entitled, Bookseller’s Blues.
Another discussion with his editor colleague: “You’re going to be accused of sexism” … “if I am lucky enough to be accused of anything. My main concern at this point is I’m writing for a limited readership” … “that’s fine”, his friend replies, “as Henry James said, ‘three thousand good readers is the most you can hope for.’ ”
In another passage we are presented with a pretty good description of the world of reading and writing:
“Everybody listens to music, but not many people read anymore…Reading requires more mental effort than any other art. Music is a soundtrack, a stimulus, a driving force toward other things; watching a movie is an entirely passive act, something to do when one is too tired, bored, or lazy to do anything else; looking at a painting makes very little demand upon one’s time or mental energy. Writing is the highest form of art, the others are shortcuts.”
Again Sean (who seems like a stand-in for Tottenham) muses; “the self-conscious novel is a lower form of literature, but it’s all I’m capable of: a tired exercise in good old-fashioned modernism.”
Reading this passage, I knew that this was indeed the kind of novel I was reading, and which I gravitate towards as a reader and a writer; wondering what it says about me and my own tastes and style. Indeed, much of current “modern” literature is of such form and content (see Rachel Cusk, et al).
In the end, his financial liabilities and frustrations get the best of him. Sean laments his solitary life, a failed artist, his middle-aged friends have moved on, with no supportive or well-to-do spouse, patron or stipend from a grant foundation, his future prospects grow dim.
This book is a fun read. The pages fly by as one is entertained by John Tottenham’s satire, cynicism, humor, word smithing, and insights of the current cultural zeitgeist.
Another recent read which seems like a good companion piece is Blue Rain by Hari Kunzru, he, too, a British novelist writing about the journey artists take in the face of fame or fortune or its absence, thereof.
January 10, 2026
A miserable, self loathing, misanthropic, 48-year-old manchild with a serious debt and drug problem is working at a bookstore in LA and attempting to write his first novel, and spends 300 pages complaining about it all. If that doesn’t sound like a good time to you, then I would suggest moving on. You will hate this book. Me, I loved it. I’d actually put it in the same esteemed company as Frederick Exley’s A Fan's Notes and Flann O Brian’s At Swim-Two-Birds in terms of its sheer hilarity coupled with an excruciatingly painful portrayal of the struggles of a writer to complete his work.
The first-person narration is a relentless chronicle of self-torment, jealousy, procrastination, and rationalizations, as our hero makes a valiant attempt to write every day, while also dealing with the maddening drudgery of his day job at the bookstore, where he unleashes hilarious contempt on anyone who dares ask him a question. (Most recurring question: “Do you guys have a bathroom?”.)
The author himself is a bookseller in LA and a poet, and this is his first novel. Is the self loathing and feelings of being too old, of lost opportunity, of fading creative ability—is this all essentially autobiographical? Or is it all just part of the joke? Is this book the book that our narrator is trying to write? Especially when, as he says, he has no grasp of character, dialogue or plot? Is Service guilty of these very things?
I think your tolerance for this book will depend on just how much you can take of his essentially one-note tone of disgust, which he extends both towards himself and everyone around him. Personally, I laughed harder than any book in recent memory, and could have highlighted basically every other sentence. But since I am also an aging, self-loathing would-be writer, maybe it’s just that it spoke to me personally. I saw myself in it, I cringed, and I laughed.
The first-person narration is a relentless chronicle of self-torment, jealousy, procrastination, and rationalizations, as our hero makes a valiant attempt to write every day, while also dealing with the maddening drudgery of his day job at the bookstore, where he unleashes hilarious contempt on anyone who dares ask him a question. (Most recurring question: “Do you guys have a bathroom?”.)
The author himself is a bookseller in LA and a poet, and this is his first novel. Is the self loathing and feelings of being too old, of lost opportunity, of fading creative ability—is this all essentially autobiographical? Or is it all just part of the joke? Is this book the book that our narrator is trying to write? Especially when, as he says, he has no grasp of character, dialogue or plot? Is Service guilty of these very things?
I think your tolerance for this book will depend on just how much you can take of his essentially one-note tone of disgust, which he extends both towards himself and everyone around him. Personally, I laughed harder than any book in recent memory, and could have highlighted basically every other sentence. But since I am also an aging, self-loathing would-be writer, maybe it’s just that it spoke to me personally. I saw myself in it, I cringed, and I laughed.
Read
July 22, 2025This might the most miserable, bitter, negative book I've ever read (which is really saying something.) So self-absorbed and mostly airless. It also made me laugh a few times, especially near the beginning. I should also probably admit that my main thought reading it was that I thought I was really miserable, bitter and negative but John Tottenham completely has me beat. I know he's also making fun of himself, making fun of this caricature of his curmudgeonly self, but the misanthropy somehow often undoes the humour, especially in the second half, which at times (I suppose) was interesting in a watching a car crash sort of way.
April 27, 2025
Service by John Tottenham is both a hot iron and a salve for the subsequently risen flesh. One big pink L for Loser branded on my forehead. As a fellow public servant and book mule with mounting debt, the book was at times hard to read. I was going to work and reading about the work, and growing more irritated, caught in the nauseating cycle. But Tottenham speaks to the lot of us who feel at odds with a world seemingly always moving from under our feet. Who resent the cliques from which we have convinced ourselves we need shallow and empty approval. And who feels the ever-circling question of a reluctant 'creative type' - am I just adding to this overwhelming mediocrity of the world?
We live in a time where, more than anything else, people look for themselves in every piece of media. A large audience is only interested in consuming what they see as relatable, so they can become attached to these fictions. They themselves can be in a“fucking my professor era,” an “Adderall era,” or whatever may bring excitement without real risk or effort.
We all wanna see a little bit of John in us- fancy ourselves an ironic wordsmith or a lovable cynic. But by sheer virtue of the fact that one might try to model oneself after him, you land nowhere close. And in doing so, there is a fundamental misinterpretation. John, or I should say ‘Sean’, the main character who maybe resembles John a little if you squint, is frequently maligned by assumptions. And, despite what could be seen as a bad attitude, it reminds us that you can feel critical of someone, see them for their flaws, and love them too.
Throughout the book, there are moments of such tender sincerity and trying to reconcile with the way the world can so harshly turn a person out that it cuts through the sullen tautology:
Service although it predates the shift into the literary zeitgeist that Los Angeles eked its way into, all but predicts it. The writerly disposition maintains its peak contemporary acclaim, but the solitary practice is not accounted for. Book deals are made up of bi-coastal stardom, collections of tweets, notes-app listicles of hyper-specific descriptions, and auto-fiction.
Readings have become a thin guise for parties supplemented with boxed wine sponsors, DJ sets, and flash tattoos. Young, thin, ironically or otherwise well-dressed women toting around their token, washed-up old male authors in some backward post-woke roleplay.
And without a doubt, one wants to be a part of that narrative. To be accepted into the coterie and not just as the person who sets the chairs up. Sean, the character, watches, sedentary, as a roaster of indistinguishable drug memoirs circulates around him. And yet the successes of these bush-league authors accrue. He feels like it is undeserved, but also an innate draw towards joining the rat race. John, the author, faces a particular problem in the age of auto-fiction and the impetus of every reader to look for themselves figuratively. The problem is in anyone who might assume the book is based completely on fact and sift through the characters looking for their real-life matches.
Iris Murdoch said
The reader's preoccupation with coaxing out the perceived truths in the book may eclipse its stronger elements, like the petulant repetition. Every day in the bookstore, being subjected to the same humiliations by incessant patrons or by your own kith and kin. But also the days spent in a wistful practice. Sean reflects on it disappointedly, and John uses this as a device in the book. Bringing it somewhere very new, meta, and transcending from the mere autobiographical style:
Real life, real work requires a hope generated by repeated practice. It is an inward and spiritual exploration. It gives real merit to a life lived and more to a life recorded. To quote from Kierkagaard’s essay on the subject:
That solitary practice, though a committed pursuit of truth and beauty, comes only with painstaking commitment secured most often by doing the things we don’t want to. And, because it is solitary, it is not frequently rewarded. Not to be seen historically as someone who does or is loved for what one has done.
It is easy to become entangled with what becomes resentment towards our friends and strangers for what one has and has not done, or would have approached differently if ever given the chance.
These uncomfortable realities of life come up again and again. We meet the same kind of people, have the same sort of problems, and make mistakes again in a familiar way. We grow tired of not getting anywhere. We are always a work in progress.
We live in a time where, more than anything else, people look for themselves in every piece of media. A large audience is only interested in consuming what they see as relatable, so they can become attached to these fictions. They themselves can be in a“fucking my professor era,” an “Adderall era,” or whatever may bring excitement without real risk or effort.
We all wanna see a little bit of John in us- fancy ourselves an ironic wordsmith or a lovable cynic. But by sheer virtue of the fact that one might try to model oneself after him, you land nowhere close. And in doing so, there is a fundamental misinterpretation. John, or I should say ‘Sean’, the main character who maybe resembles John a little if you squint, is frequently maligned by assumptions. And, despite what could be seen as a bad attitude, it reminds us that you can feel critical of someone, see them for their flaws, and love them too.
Throughout the book, there are moments of such tender sincerity and trying to reconcile with the way the world can so harshly turn a person out that it cuts through the sullen tautology:
Jackson’s compliment inspired me to open up. “I excel, if anything, at the negative. I’ve tried writing in a positive, life-affirming vein, but it doesn’t feel or sound right. I can complain about anything. It’s my gift to the world, not that the world’s interested. I can’t help it. . . .”
“You know, to externalize yourself, to bring forth what is within, to get it out of your system and into other people’s systems: to provoke, console, and inspire, if it’s within one’s means. To return the favor, so to speak. Having been cheered and consoled by the bitter words of others. . .”
Service although it predates the shift into the literary zeitgeist that Los Angeles eked its way into, all but predicts it. The writerly disposition maintains its peak contemporary acclaim, but the solitary practice is not accounted for. Book deals are made up of bi-coastal stardom, collections of tweets, notes-app listicles of hyper-specific descriptions, and auto-fiction.
Readings have become a thin guise for parties supplemented with boxed wine sponsors, DJ sets, and flash tattoos. Young, thin, ironically or otherwise well-dressed women toting around their token, washed-up old male authors in some backward post-woke roleplay.
And without a doubt, one wants to be a part of that narrative. To be accepted into the coterie and not just as the person who sets the chairs up. Sean, the character, watches, sedentary, as a roaster of indistinguishable drug memoirs circulates around him. And yet the successes of these bush-league authors accrue. He feels like it is undeserved, but also an innate draw towards joining the rat race. John, the author, faces a particular problem in the age of auto-fiction and the impetus of every reader to look for themselves figuratively. The problem is in anyone who might assume the book is based completely on fact and sift through the characters looking for their real-life matches.
Iris Murdoch said
The literary world is a small, silly, and very vain place, a place of silly people. . .
The public criticizes you for all the things that you have been careful to avoid and applauds you for things that you never intended.
The reader's preoccupation with coaxing out the perceived truths in the book may eclipse its stronger elements, like the petulant repetition. Every day in the bookstore, being subjected to the same humiliations by incessant patrons or by your own kith and kin. But also the days spent in a wistful practice. Sean reflects on it disappointedly, and John uses this as a device in the book. Bringing it somewhere very new, meta, and transcending from the mere autobiographical style:
Paragraph by paragraph, I anticipate my potential readers dropping away, wearied and irritated by this tiresome outpouring. But I must insist on pressing forward if only to honor a life's work of discarded manuscripts. With so much unfinished, so much unbegun, nothing, no matter how worthless, can be thrown out anymore. I have to complete something, even if it is ignoble of sentiment and unsound of construction; even if it's not up to the standards of what I once threw out; even if it is the exact opposite of what I had once hoped to achieve—-that I was probably never capable of achieving in the first place; even if it reflects badly upon me; even if it is crap.
Real life, real work requires a hope generated by repeated practice. It is an inward and spiritual exploration. It gives real merit to a life lived and more to a life recorded. To quote from Kierkagaard’s essay on the subject:
Repetition is the reality and the seriousness of life. . . Repetition not as redundancy but of a kind of reassurance.
That solitary practice, though a committed pursuit of truth and beauty, comes only with painstaking commitment secured most often by doing the things we don’t want to. And, because it is solitary, it is not frequently rewarded. Not to be seen historically as someone who does or is loved for what one has done.
It is easy to become entangled with what becomes resentment towards our friends and strangers for what one has and has not done, or would have approached differently if ever given the chance.
These uncomfortable realities of life come up again and again. We meet the same kind of people, have the same sort of problems, and make mistakes again in a familiar way. We grow tired of not getting anywhere. We are always a work in progress.
June 23, 2025
Just finished reading Service by John Tottenham. Stumbled upon John’s launch party at 2220. The room was packed with big names in literature introducing the book - Colm Toibin and Rachel Kushner - and was published by Semiotexte, aka publisher of the artistic and academic elite in Los Angeles. Over a hundred people at the launch party. This guy seemed like a big fucking deal, and an embedded member in the literary community in LA. After reading the book, I am stunned by the contradiction between reality and fiction.
Spending hours before bed getting to know "Sean", I felt so sad at the end of this book, a somber kind of sadness. I felt like, if this protagonist doesn’t have some sort of epiphany, he’s one life crisis from being unhoused. One of those grumpy old men who gets sick, goes to the hospital, piles up more debt, and then gets discharged. Loses his house, and still refuses to accept reality. Using all the same dysfunctional coping strategies to prevent the clear and direct feedback that what he is doing is not working, and that he is the problem- not society, not other people, not women, not the fact that he never wrote a novel, not the pills. He is the problem who denies reality by making everyone else feel like the problem.
This book gave me compassion for my obviously miserable administrators at my school who deny their misery and need for help by making me feel like I am the problem, suggesting anti-anxiety meds or simply that I’m not cut out to be a teacher when their behavior of trying to micro-manage me and tell me what to do doesn’t solve the problem.
Things can be managed. People must be led.
In these situations, I do not want to follow the leaders in my school. They are clearly miserable.
This man appears to be miserable, and obviously needs help, needs to go to therapy. In order to cope in a difficult childhood in the UK, he learned some skills that are obviously no longer working. They may have worked at first in LA, or when he was in his 20s or 30 (and continued to look in his 20s)- but there are things that are simply red flags when people can see you have had plenty of time to mature and become a fully developed adult, and you haven’t.
In a way, by the end the character Sean is on his way to being a fully developed adult. He wanted to write a book, and he after decades, finally took responsibility for that goal and did the work to make it happen.
In writing this book, he was forced to accept his reality, his perspective. Will he actually change? Will life force him to change? Or will he be one of the many man-children that the Los Angeles lifestyle permits to exist.
Those who can hide in music and art and books, in fictional fantasies, who can inflate their intellectual egos about their deep understanding of the human experience without having much practice using any of the skills required to actually be a fully developed human.
I am attracted to these sad men. I saw myself in Mona, the woman he invites over when he is at his loneliest and most desperate, seeking positive attention. Always trying to play therapy with them and heal them, to unearth the experience that stunted their growth and keeps them trapped in the lifestyle and mindset of a boy in their early 20s.
This early 20s with an avoidant attachment style who struggles to allow the people he has sex with to cuddle and sleep over after does not age well.
Brimming with untapped potential.
I have dated this man before. I may be dating him now. The self-help books and podcasts I engage with tell me to avoid him.
But I have so much compassion for him. I know if I had been a boy, I would have been a sad boy.
Just like I know that if I had been born 40 years earlier, I would have been a Karen.
This book is a warning. If you know any sad-boys who are refusing to go to therapy or do any work to improve their quality of life, give them this book to read.
Very well-written with a clear voice, a voice that needs to be heard, and needs to be loved, and who needs love, needs to learn how to love.
Read my review at https://literarypixie.com/2025/06/23/...
Spending hours before bed getting to know "Sean", I felt so sad at the end of this book, a somber kind of sadness. I felt like, if this protagonist doesn’t have some sort of epiphany, he’s one life crisis from being unhoused. One of those grumpy old men who gets sick, goes to the hospital, piles up more debt, and then gets discharged. Loses his house, and still refuses to accept reality. Using all the same dysfunctional coping strategies to prevent the clear and direct feedback that what he is doing is not working, and that he is the problem- not society, not other people, not women, not the fact that he never wrote a novel, not the pills. He is the problem who denies reality by making everyone else feel like the problem.
This book gave me compassion for my obviously miserable administrators at my school who deny their misery and need for help by making me feel like I am the problem, suggesting anti-anxiety meds or simply that I’m not cut out to be a teacher when their behavior of trying to micro-manage me and tell me what to do doesn’t solve the problem.
Things can be managed. People must be led.
In these situations, I do not want to follow the leaders in my school. They are clearly miserable.
This man appears to be miserable, and obviously needs help, needs to go to therapy. In order to cope in a difficult childhood in the UK, he learned some skills that are obviously no longer working. They may have worked at first in LA, or when he was in his 20s or 30 (and continued to look in his 20s)- but there are things that are simply red flags when people can see you have had plenty of time to mature and become a fully developed adult, and you haven’t.
In a way, by the end the character Sean is on his way to being a fully developed adult. He wanted to write a book, and he after decades, finally took responsibility for that goal and did the work to make it happen.
In writing this book, he was forced to accept his reality, his perspective. Will he actually change? Will life force him to change? Or will he be one of the many man-children that the Los Angeles lifestyle permits to exist.
Those who can hide in music and art and books, in fictional fantasies, who can inflate their intellectual egos about their deep understanding of the human experience without having much practice using any of the skills required to actually be a fully developed human.
I am attracted to these sad men. I saw myself in Mona, the woman he invites over when he is at his loneliest and most desperate, seeking positive attention. Always trying to play therapy with them and heal them, to unearth the experience that stunted their growth and keeps them trapped in the lifestyle and mindset of a boy in their early 20s.
This early 20s with an avoidant attachment style who struggles to allow the people he has sex with to cuddle and sleep over after does not age well.
Brimming with untapped potential.
I have dated this man before. I may be dating him now. The self-help books and podcasts I engage with tell me to avoid him.
But I have so much compassion for him. I know if I had been a boy, I would have been a sad boy.
Just like I know that if I had been born 40 years earlier, I would have been a Karen.
This book is a warning. If you know any sad-boys who are refusing to go to therapy or do any work to improve their quality of life, give them this book to read.
Very well-written with a clear voice, a voice that needs to be heard, and needs to be loved, and who needs love, needs to learn how to love.
Read my review at https://literarypixie.com/2025/06/23/...
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 25, 2026
Rec. by: Roberta, kinda
Rec. for: The mopiest of the mopes. Not you, Britton!
Yowza. John Tottenham's novel Service is a no-good, very bad, terrible book about the worst possible kind of protagonist. Sean Hangland is a dour, selfish, vile, pathetic loner, a would-be writer who can't bring himself to write, even with the help of those little yellow pills he gets from Mitchell. Sean lives in Los Angeles (like Tottenham), and works part-time in a bookstore, where he hates almost all of the books he sells and despises evvybody who walks in. Seriously—all of the Yelp reviews Sean gets are one-star, as his boss Gilbert frequently points out.
And yet... I kind of liked it anyway.
My wife Roberta checked this one out of the library, but she didn't remember why and ended up not wanting to read it herself. When she handed Service off to me, it wasn't exactly with enthusiasm. I get that.
The thing is, though, that John Tottenham really leans into the situations he's portraying, so far that they sometimes tip over into being almost... funny. Calling an independent press "Prolix," for example, seemed like pure genius... although now that I look Prolix Press does appear to have existed, briefly, back in 2012.
Now, I'm not recommending Service to you. Not really. Even for me (and I can read almost anything), this was a rough journey—as if someone had given Marvin the Paranoid Android a novel-writing prompt, to "write what you know."
And yet...
Sean spends a couple of pages mourning changes to the Grand Central Market downtown, a place Roberta and I knew well,
Once upon a time, Sean was invited to join a budding band... leading to this snark:
Sean is employed by a bookstore in Echo Park called Mute (hey, like, cool! OMG! I think I've been in there!), but he does not enjoy the work. The customers are loud, shallow, shambling cellphone-obsessed idiots. And the authors...
At least Sean does not spare himself:
And yet... every now and then, Hangland's actually funny. I'm sure he (well, Tottenham) is entirely aware of what he's saying here, for example:
Mute, the bookstore, is substantially smaller than, say, Powell's... which doesn't necessarily excuse Sean's typical response to a guy who's just "looking for a book":
And yet... at least there's some sex, right? A salacious scene or two would really liven up Sean's life, not to mention the experience of reading Service...
Well, no. There is a sex scene (pp.284-286, if you're wanting to skip right to the "good parts") but it's not exactly satisfying—not for Sean, not for his partner in the act, nor for the reader. All he can think about is how he'll get rid of her afterward... and then when she does dress and leave abruptly, he's upset about that.
Maybe that's the point... Tottenham himself is described as a poète maudit , an outsider to society, and such outsiders rarely rise to success and prominence. In a way, Service is a novel for the rest of us, for the masses who never quite succeed, even at our paltry self-appointed tasks.
While I was reading the book, a song started playing that I decided, belatedly, was the perfect musical accompaniment to Service:
Now, I'm not recommending Service to you. Not really. It's repetitive (more so than this review!). Sean belabors his points and circles back to them like an addict patting his pockets for that pill he's sure is still in there somewhere.
And yet... I did finish reading Tottenham's novel, which is not true of every book I've started to read.
Or to write...
Rec. for: The mopiest of the mopes. Not you, Britton!
Yowza. John Tottenham's novel Service is a no-good, very bad, terrible book about the worst possible kind of protagonist. Sean Hangland is a dour, selfish, vile, pathetic loner, a would-be writer who can't bring himself to write, even with the help of those little yellow pills he gets from Mitchell. Sean lives in Los Angeles (like Tottenham), and works part-time in a bookstore, where he hates almost all of the books he sells and despises evvybody who walks in. Seriously—all of the Yelp reviews Sean gets are one-star, as his boss Gilbert frequently points out.
And yet... I kind of liked it anyway.
My wife Roberta checked this one out of the library, but she didn't remember why and ended up not wanting to read it herself. When she handed Service off to me, it wasn't exactly with enthusiasm. I get that.
The thing is, though, that John Tottenham really leans into the situations he's portraying, so far that they sometimes tip over into being almost... funny. Calling an independent press "Prolix," for example, seemed like pure genius... although now that I look Prolix Press does appear to have existed, briefly, back in 2012.
Now, I'm not recommending Service to you. Not really. Even for me (and I can read almost anything), this was a rough journey—as if someone had given Marvin the Paranoid Android a novel-writing prompt, to "write what you know."
It's a long story, too sad to be told, and I am not inclined to tell it. Life is plotless. Plots are for graveyards.
* * *
I have decided to stop writing for awhile.
—p.17 (of 327!)
And yet...
You don't need to have a death wish to live in Los Angeles, but it helps.Oh, I understand that... my wife and I lived in L.A. for five years, and eventually—not having a death wish—we left.
—p.37
Sean spends a couple of pages mourning changes to the Grand Central Market downtown, a place Roberta and I knew well,
a network of lunch counters and produce stands occupying a cavernous block-wide hangar of a bulding with entrances on two parallel streets, Hill and Broadway.At least it was, back in the 1990s.
—p.54
Once upon a time, Sean was invited to join a budding band... leading to this snark:
Using the flimsy excuse that I didn't play an instrument, I begged off, not realizing at the time that anybody with even the most rudimentary grasp of rhythm and melody could master the bass guitar.Heh... speaking as someone who did play bass in a band for a bit, I think Sean would have discovered otherwise.
—p.57
Sean is employed by a bookstore in Echo Park called Mute (hey, like, cool! OMG! I think I've been in there!), but he does not enjoy the work. The customers are loud, shallow, shambling cellphone-obsessed idiots. And the authors...
Purely out of masochism, and to see what all the fuss was about, I once forced myself to wade through one of McCarthy's novels. It was heavy work: the author's straining brow was visible as he forced out his turgid prose, which combined the worst qualities of Faulkner and Hemingway—exhibitionistic prolixity and grueling masculinity—with no flow, no humor, and no feeling (the literary equivalent of NFL football: all effort, no rhythm, all stop and start) while continually tripping the reader up by inserting ill-fitting obscure words into his laborious sentences for no apparent purpose other than to flaunt his sesquipedalian proclivities.
—p.144
At least Sean does not spare himself:
"I'm not really equipped for the task. I have no grasp of plot, character or dialogue, and my imagination dried up years ago, so I'm obliged to draw on personal experience more than I'd prefer. I've had to throw a few people under the bus. Hopefully, they will emerge unrecognizably disfigured. I'm concerned it might offend some people."
—Sean Hangland, p.193
And yet... every now and then, Hangland's actually funny. I'm sure he (well, Tottenham) is entirely aware of what he's saying here, for example:
"Maybe I can inject the spontaneity later."
—p.194
Mute, the bookstore, is substantially smaller than, say, Powell's... which doesn't necessarily excuse Sean's typical response to a guy who's just "looking for a book":
"I don't see you looking anywhere. You're asking me to look for it. This is a tiny store. The sections are clearly marked. It's not as if you're entering a cavernous, labyrinthine bookstore like the Strand or Powell's, where one might be excused for seeking directions if one was incurious enough not to browse."In case you're ever in there, by the way: Powell's has actual maps.
—pp.203-204
And yet... at least there's some sex, right? A salacious scene or two would really liven up Sean's life, not to mention the experience of reading Service...
Well, no. There is a sex scene (pp.284-286, if you're wanting to skip right to the "good parts") but it's not exactly satisfying—not for Sean, not for his partner in the act, nor for the reader. All he can think about is how he'll get rid of her afterward... and then when she does dress and leave abruptly, he's upset about that.
Maybe that's the point... Tottenham himself is described as a poète maudit , an outsider to society, and such outsiders rarely rise to success and prominence. In a way, Service is a novel for the rest of us, for the masses who never quite succeed, even at our paltry self-appointed tasks.
While I was reading the book, a song started playing that I decided, belatedly, was the perfect musical accompaniment to Service:
I am the son, and the heir
Of a shyness that is criminally vulgar
I am the son and heir
Of... nothing in particular...
—"How Soon Is Now?" by The Smiths (1984)
Now, I'm not recommending Service to you. Not really. It's repetitive (more so than this review!). Sean belabors his points and circles back to them like an addict patting his pockets for that pill he's sure is still in there somewhere.
And yet... I did finish reading Tottenham's novel, which is not true of every book I've started to read.
Or to write...
May 6, 2025
We dig-uh repetition!
January 14, 2026
Some funny moments but mostly tedious
January 17, 2026
After a decent 50-odd pages comes the really quite dispiriting realisation that this is it. You feel churned up in the dyspeptic wheels of Tottenham's bad attitude. He can write a sentence, for sure - but for what? And for whom?
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January 6, 2026Asshole
December 13, 2025
An insufferable, antisocial man lashes out at the world around him out of self pity/loathing because he’s creatively impotent — not very fun to spend time with, obviously. But the novel occasionally gets at something interesting about the punishment one receives in this life for attempting to dedicate yourself to the arts. In this sense, the novel is perhaps made weaker (if not a bit funnier) by the fact that its speaker can’t ever actually bring himself to write
dnf
October 23, 2025First 100 pages were sooooo good. imagine my dismay when the second hundred-page block was almost identical. 120 more pages to go and the forecast is dire... out of kindness for myself, I have thrown in the towel. Godspeed John Tottenham. You are the most miserable bookseller I've ever met.
December 20, 2025
I share all his grievances against hipsters, if not the narrator’s procrastination and lack of ambition. He captured the problem of gentrification and classism, as well as the plight of a writer who needs to earn his living some other way. Still, the novel was too tedious for me. There were many funny observations of human behavior, but not enough for me to enjoy the book.
November 24, 2025
2 Stars/
52%
Eh. It is both funny, tragic, annoyingly meta, repetitive, and yet like a overtly violent slow motion pile up I found it very hard to look away. And I didn't feel great about it.
The first 100 pages were amusing.
The second 100 pages were banal and repetitive. On page 200 I was going to give up. One page 201 Tottenham got all meta and acknowledged his repetitive nature and that he promised to do better. Enter novel notes sessions with 'the Boy'. Now we get to experience wandering, repetitive writing and have it explained to us to make up for the fact its happening. Great.
The last 70 pages dragged me along, feet tied to a rope attached to the bumper of this truck of a novel, as it careered around the motorway before unceremoniously dumping me on a pavement, confused, missing my wallet, and what feels like concussion or a hangover about 30 foot from where I started.
There are some bits this book does really well that I think will speak to a lot of booksellers, and connect with that audience. I am not sure I am that audience - but I do feel as though this book should be read.
And now to do something else than look at this luminous yellow rant that i've been staring at for the last 3 weeks.
52%
Eh. It is both funny, tragic, annoyingly meta, repetitive, and yet like a overtly violent slow motion pile up I found it very hard to look away. And I didn't feel great about it.
The first 100 pages were amusing.
The second 100 pages were banal and repetitive. On page 200 I was going to give up. One page 201 Tottenham got all meta and acknowledged his repetitive nature and that he promised to do better. Enter novel notes sessions with 'the Boy'. Now we get to experience wandering, repetitive writing and have it explained to us to make up for the fact its happening. Great.
The last 70 pages dragged me along, feet tied to a rope attached to the bumper of this truck of a novel, as it careered around the motorway before unceremoniously dumping me on a pavement, confused, missing my wallet, and what feels like concussion or a hangover about 30 foot from where I started.
There are some bits this book does really well that I think will speak to a lot of booksellers, and connect with that audience. I am not sure I am that audience - but I do feel as though this book should be read.
And now to do something else than look at this luminous yellow rant that i've been staring at for the last 3 weeks.
September 4, 2025
Terrible. Repetitive and boring. I disliked the main character more and more as the book went on. Maybe that was supposed to be the point but by the end I just didn’t care about him either.
January 2, 2026
Not for me.
Had some witty moments and the concept of the book itself being the one the writer discusses his struggles writing during was clever.
However, overall felt like a bloke moaning for 300 pages. Also a lot of LA specific jokes/stereotypes which I couldn’t really get a handle on aside from confirming that there’s a lot of pretentious people there?
Had some witty moments and the concept of the book itself being the one the writer discusses his struggles writing during was clever.
However, overall felt like a bloke moaning for 300 pages. Also a lot of LA specific jokes/stereotypes which I couldn’t really get a handle on aside from confirming that there’s a lot of pretentious people there?
December 20, 2025
a character so unlikable that i became pretty sympathetic actually and sort of liked it
probably a little too meta at times a book about writing a book that is the book (or so)
some of the feedback the protagonist gets about ‘his’ book (this book) is, ‘you keep reinforcing the same points’ - which is pretty much dead on
but oh well, i’d still read his next book
probably a little too meta at times a book about writing a book that is the book (or so)
some of the feedback the protagonist gets about ‘his’ book (this book) is, ‘you keep reinforcing the same points’ - which is pretty much dead on
but oh well, i’d still read his next book
September 15, 2025
I’m also procrastinating from writing
November 25, 2025
2.5 rounded up. This was a trek to finish - what had started as a witty eye over the customer service career (which I had spent many years in, hence why I picked it), developed into a slow, introspection of an aspiring novelist with few redeeming features, a cast of co-workers and very few acquaintances, and the inevitable sacking from a job. This is the first novel by poet and artist John Tottenham. I’m off to read the infinitely more pleasing and funny A Sociopath’s Guide to a Successful Marriage (via Netgalley, if you ask nicely)
December 3, 2025
A little repetitive in his moaning about not being able to finish his first novel - but there are some funny/poignant parts that kept me till the end.
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December 20, 2025i can’t even give this one star
August 2, 2025
DISPIRITING. So impressed that I finished this. Positively difficult read
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