People Who Lunch
On Work, Leisure, and Loose Living
Failed to add items
Sorry, we are unable to add the item because your shopping basket is already at capacity.
Add to cart failed.
Please try again later
Add to wishlist failed.
Please try again later
Remove from wishlist failed.
Please try again later
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
New to Audible Prime Member exclusive: 2 credits with free trial
1 credit a month to use on any title to download and keep
Listen to anything from the Plus Catalogue—thousands of Audible Originals, podcasts and audiobooks
Download titles to your library and listen offline
₹199 per month after 30-day trial. Cancel anytime.
People Who Lunch
Narrated by:
Christine Lakin
Buy Now for ₹500.00
-
Narrated by:
-
Christine Lakin
-
Written by:
-
Sally Olds
About this listen
What do post‑work politics, the cult of crypto, clubbing, and polyamory have in common? All have spawned thriving subcultures united in their rejection of the patriarchal capitalist order: from wage labor, to the reign of the shareholder class over capital markets, to romantic relationships that feel like contractual arrangements to be negotiated, and more.
People Who Lunch is about hating work and needing to work, intimacy and technology, labor and leisure, and the challenge of living our ideals in a less than ideal world. In it, Sally Olds brings her “unsparing scrutiny to bear…as she grapples with the sense of entrapment in the machinery of capitalism and remorseless logic of commodification” (ABC Arts).
In one essay, Olds’s brief flirtation with post-monogamy forces her to confront the emotional prison of the “open relationship”; in another, a multi-hour viewing of a critically acclaimed performance art piece highlights how even the highest forms of culture exist to convert pleasure into capital.
In the end, her forays into these colorful worlds betray a deep irony: escaping a system built on the exchange of wage labor is, quite simply, a lot of work.
Critic Reviews
“Anyone who saw me reading People Who Lunch in the park would have found me at turns furrowing my brow, nodding ruefully, and cackling aloud. Olds’ writing is that rare combination of unsparing and enjoyable, a much needed departure from the formulaic.”—Jenny Odell, author of How to Do Nothing and Saving Time
“Illuminating essays on the nature of work and relationships.”—Kirkus Reviews
“Olds’s idiosyncratic perspective consistently surprises, and she elegantly blends cultural, historical, and class analysis into an easy to digest whole. This is a pleasure.”—Publishers Weekly
“I can’t stop thinking about People Who Lunch. The book interrupts my sleep, and I desperately want to discuss it with everybody.”—Sydney Review of Books
"A remarkable debut… written in a register many great authors write in: one that does not worry about the industry, about the audience, about the bullshit; one that cares only about the book itself. The result is miraculous."—ABC News (Australia)
“Every piece in the collection…asks you to think harder about the ways we earn money, party, and look out for each other… Driven by sharp intellect and a radiant, unaffected interest in the world around her.” —Imogen Dewey, The Guardian (Australia)
“It’s rare to find new writing this bold and exciting.”—Books+Publishing
“An utterly riveting and original collection of essays—hard-thinking, formally innovative, dazzling intellectually, and sentence by sentence out-of-this-world good.”—Maria Tumarkin
No reviews yet