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This Thing Between Us
Books

LaserWriter II

9780374602581 fc
Digital, MCD × FSG, 2021
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Tamara Shopsin

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

LaserWriter II is a coming-of-age tale set in the legendary 90s indie NYC 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 off-beat computers for weirdos. Our guide is Claire, a 19-year-old who barely speaks to her bohemian co-workers, but knows when it’s time to snap on an antistatic bracelet.

Tamara Shopsin brings us a classically New York novel that couldn’t feel more timely. 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.

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  • "At turns wistful and playful, a novel of appreciation for computers' dust and guts. Like its heroine, LaserWriter II is charming, inventive, and weirdly magnetic."

    ―ANNA WIENER, author of Uncanny Valley

  • “‘Early 1990s Mac computing’ sounds niche, and maybe it is, but what a niche: packed full of interesting people who stumbled together across the bridge between the analog and the digital. If that holds any resonance for you at all, you will love, love, LOVE Tamara Shopsin's new novel. Beautifully written and nerdily precise, LaserWriter II reveals the things we didn't know then; it enlivened my own memories, gave them new context and richness. This is a really special book.”


    Robin Sloan, author of Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore

  • “It’s easy to forget when Apple was the underdog, full of scrap and funk, giving cold tech an oddball humanity. It’s easy to forget all the oddball humans it drew together in places like Tekserve on 23rd St, the Old Reliable Macintosh Shop, and how unpolished, un-gleaming, un-fancy it was—along with New York City itself, one million years ago in the year 1999. But Tamara Shopsin doesn’t forget easily. As deft, funny, and thoughtful a fiction writer as she is a memoirist, Shopsin, somehow makes a page turner out of a trip into the works of a broken laser printer, into a past when broken computers—and people—were a little less disposable.”

    John Hodgman
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