Brian Alan Ellis’ Hobbies You Enjoy is a darkly humorous exploration of modern ennui, capturing the absurdities of life with a raw, biting edge. As with much of Ellis’ previous work, this novella revels in the oddities of human existence, oscillating between moments of hilarity and despair. The title, in a lighthearted pursuit, belies the book’s deeper examination of alienation, self-sabotage, and unfulfilled aspirations in modern life.
The structure of Hobbies You Enjoy is episodic, almost like a series of vignettes with no grand narrative arc, no sense of resolution or redemption. Instead, Ellis focuses on moments, small pockets of time that accumulate into a larger sense of existential dread. This fragmented approach reinforces the book’s themes, as the protagonist moves from one aimless activity to the next.
Throughout the novella, Ellis crafts a portrait of someone drifting through the motions of life, yearning for meaning or connection or something but incapable of escaping the patterns of behavior that lead to inevitable disappointment. This tension between desire and inertia is central to the book’s emotional core.
Ellis’ writing is minimalist yet impactful, with a sharpness that lends itself well to both comedic and tragic moments. His style evokes the tradition of writers like Bukowski or Tao Lin, where the grit and grind of everyday life are laid bare, often with a caustic wit that punctuates the otherwise mundane. Ellis manages to extract hard truths, presenting a character who is often at their most honest when they’re at their worst.
The books cinematic dialogue presents conversations that are both hilarious and cringe-inducing, highlighting an inability to communicate effectively or to escape their social awkwardness. Ellis excels in creating these moments of tension and release, where humor is often used as a coping mechanism, masking the deeper issues at play.
At the same time, Ellis doesn’t shy away from the existential undertones of the story. Beneath the sarcastic, often flippant surface of the narrative, there’s a palpable sense of melancholy. Hobbies and pastimes—seemingly trivial activities that one might enjoy—are in fact empty distractions, a way of filling the void left by unfulfilled dreams and missed opportunities. This irony is where the novella finds much of its emotional weight.
Hobbies You Enjoy is a potent exploration of life’s discontents. Ellis’ writing is incisive, and his portrayal of human frailty is both unflinching and deeply empathetic. The book captures the absurdity of existence, balancing between comedy and tragedy, and ultimately leaves the reader with a sense of the profound loneliness that often underlies the most trivial moments of our lives. It is both a darkly funny and melancholic commentary on the modern condition, a mirror held up to the reader, reflecting back the absurdity of our own distractions, or as Ellis calls them, hobbies.
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