The Copywriter byDaniel Poppick

A portrait of the poet as an office worker, plumbing the depths of the spiritual gulf between art and work.

It’s the summer of 2017, and D__, a poet who spends his days writing copy for a retail start-up, can’t shake the feeling that something is quietly coming undone. A twenty-four-year-old CEO with more charisma than experience, a relationship slowly losing its shape, and the surreal backdrop of a country in free fall — it all adds up to something D__ can’t quite name. So he starts a notebook.

What fills those pages is extraordinary: dreams, emails, overheard moments, and what he calls parables — small attempts to decode the hidden rhythm of the universe. Unfolding season by season over two years, this novel circles questions that feel urgently, uncomfortably familiar. How does an artist survive the workday with their soul intact? What do we trade away for a steady paycheck? Does meaningless labor quietly reshape who we are?

Utterly original and lyrically beautiful, this is a comic novel in the tradition of Kafka’s Jewish mysticism — absurdist, sharp, and surprisingly tender. It captures a very specific cultural moment (that strange office-culture purgatory between the Great Recession and the pandemic) with the precision of someone who lived it and the grace of someone who knows how to write.

If you’ve ever stared at a screen writing something you didn’t believe in while something you did believe in waited quietly at home, this book will feel like being understood.

A must for readers of literary fiction, fans of deadpan satire, and anyone who has ever wondered what their day job is doing to their inner life.

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