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An Interview with Charlene Elsby: "By the Choices we Make, We Become what we are!"
- The Curator
- Mar 26
- 6 min read
An Interview with Charlene Elsby about 'The Organization Is Here to Support You'
A few weeks back you'll recall I posted a review of Charlene Elsby's The Organization Is Here to Support You. Well, thanks to the glory of the internet, I managed to track down Charlene and ask her some burgeoning questions about this latest book of hers.
My Kind Of Weird: Hey Charlene, you’ve recently had one of your books, The Organization Is Here to Support You, published by Weirdpunk Books. It’s bold and dystopian yet minimalist and terrifying. I feel like it may have been partly inspired by your work at a university where you mentioned being let go on a recent episode of the Death Sentence podcast. Can you give my readers an insight into the inspiration behind it?
Charlene Elsby: Hi Anthony! I'm so glad Weirdpunk agreed to publish this. For me, it's a pretty normal book, but like, trying to figure out where it fits in the landscape wasn't easy. We didn't know how it would land or who was going to read it, but we agreed that as weird punks, that was fine and fuck it.
As for inspiration, I'd say it was more when I left academia and started working 9-5. It reminded me of when I taught Sartre, how somewhere in Being and Nothingness he's talking about adopting an alternate consciousness for the sake of a role, and even feeling the emotions that go along with it, and I felt that. When I taught that book, the example I gave was about when I used to work at a restaurant, and the other waitress would always put the straws in the recycling bin with the soda cans, and how mad I used to get about that--cares I wouldn't have if I didn't work there.
At my 9-5, I could feel myself losing my soul, adopting others' priorities as if they're my own, talking in the jargon, getting actually invested in things that, were it not for the fact that I have to sell my labour to subsist, I wouldn't give a fuck about. I think it happens everywhere when we have to adopt the values of a corporation and be human on our own time.
My Kind Of Weird: As I read The Organization Is Here to Support You, your protagonist seems to be caught in a never-ending web of policy and process. In a way, she’s forever stuck in this sterile corporate environment. I’d be interested to hear your take on if you think the more technologically advanced we are the more disconnected from reality we can become?
Charlene Elsby: That seems right. Coincidentally, I was reading an article this morning that correlated high social media use with delusional disorders. Intuitively, I think we recognize that our views are shaped by the people with whom we choose to associate. I'll do it myself when I want to hear some specific affirmation, so I'll go talk to the person who I know will say what I want to hear. I like feeling good! And social media gives me so many tools where I can amplify that.
At the same time, you have to wonder why with all that power, social media still makes us feel like shit. Maybe there's some grander concept of human existence that extends beyond the momentary pleasure of affirmation? Some deep connection that's necessary to fulfillment that's impossible to establish in the digital muck?
My Kind Of Weird: The use of sex in your book is exploitative but used in a way which feels like your protagonist is doing whatever she can to maintain whatever little control she has over her life. Do you feel like this is the catalyst for her eventual downward spiral?
Charlene Elsby: The sex is there because people have sex; there's a point somewhere in there about how digital fucking counts, that this was her problem with Maurice. The catalyst for her spiral isn't sex. Still, it's one of the ways she finds to sometimes think about something outside the organization, and that's some sort of freedom. It might seem like Clarissa has lost control over her life, but she knows that every day she makes the choice to show up to work, move the mouse, perform the tasks.
That's one of the worst things about living in that sort of environment--that she isn't being forced. If there were only some more immediate motivation for her to continue making the same soul-killing choices day after day, perhaps that would excuse them. But it's a choice--a restricted choice, with only bad options, but a choice nonetheless.
My Kind Of Weird: I wonder if any outside media influenced the world building of the organisation? Books, film, tv etc.
Charlene Elsby: Someone sent me a video of an office building, just a video that a developer made. It was for a live-and-work community that the developer claimed would revolutionize the work environment. It felt like it was designed by no one who had ever had a job before, and I just made all sorts of assumptions about how that project would play out.
My Kind Of Weird: After reading Red Flags and now The Organization Is Here to Support You I’ve noticed what your characters have in common is this recurring theme of being unable to maintain control over their lives. The fear and terror of life spinning out of control is always there. What are you telling us here?
Charlene Elsby: I think that's true. We are at the whim of nature, other people, the passage of time, pretty much everything is something that can make us suffer. This is the basis of stoicism, this metaphysical fact that as long as you exist in a physical body, you will be cold, in pain, have the capacity to be carried away by a strong wind, etc. This is why a stoic (and to some extent, Clarissa) would try to focus on the things she does have control over. To accept that it is the nature of things to destroy and be destroyed. When you phrase it like that, it sounds sort of silly, getting upset about things that are the way they are and always have been.
Technology fails, people will leave you or die, and the best we can do is control our thoughts and feelings. Exploiting that capacity is what the organization does -- we can choose our way into suffering on its behalf, if we're not careful. The radical freedom that existentialism tells us we have to make the choices we want, that also means we can choose self-destruction. And by the choices we make, we become what we are. We can choose ourselves out of existence.
My Kind Of Weird: In your mind, what is the biggest threat to independent authors right here, right now?
Charlene Elsby: I feel like I'm supposed to say AI, but I won't. I think people are better than that, by which I mean they care about whether a book was written by a human or a simulacrum. I remember when pop stars were going to be replaced by holograms, and that hasn't happened. The worry for independent authors is that it's going to be harder to find us underneath all the generated vomit that a corporation would prefer you to buy.
It's just like when they take food products and start slipping in cheaper ingredients, trying to save a few pennies. And then they say, "well, if you don't like it, read the labels and buy something else!" It shifts a huge burden of labour onto consumers to ensure what they're consuming is real.
Maybe the independent authors will actually be a little more fine than people who write books as if they're products. There are certainly people willing to put in the effort to find us independents, and there's enough of them. We'll find a way forward.
My Kind Of Weird: Where can my readers find you online?
Charlene Elsby: Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Bluesky, and I even have three TikTok videos about books. My website, charleneelsby.com is just a gallery of my books with links to the publishers' websites.