We are offered bushels of writing advice. Most of it isn’t helpful. “Show don’t tell” is one notorious example. Every good writer does both. I’m currently re-reading War and Peace. Tolstoy didn’t get the memo about show-don’t-tell. He’s Leo-damn-Tolstoy and he “tells” whenever he feels like it.

But in this short post I offer something actually useful, even — dare I say it, in violation of another rule — very useful!

I recently stumbled on an article entitled Hunting Weasel Words on the Substack of Matt Bell, a gentleman with whom I am not otherwise acquainted.

My sincere thanks to Mr. Bell for this article.

(I think I was tipped off to Bell’s article by Denise Robbins, so thanks also to her.)

Bell says this:

Weasel words are the empty calories of sentence writing, little bits of filler that, while technically correct, either don’t add anything meaningful or prevent you from writing the best sentences you can. Some of them can be simply deleted, while others will need to be replaced with something better; doing so will make your fiction more concise, more interesting, and more unique.

Right. A nice concise summary.

I find these words make my sentences hedged, tentative, stiff, mushy, unclear, hard to follow … .

Mr. Bell provided this list of weasel words in his article:

finally, suddenly, always, sometimes, again, really, even, still, like, something, anything, everything, thing, mostly, almost, surely, perhaps, maybe, at last, quite, then, and then, of them, of the, once, else, just, merely, seem, large, huge, big, wide, great, long, massive, giant, enormous, vast, tiny, small, little, hard, soft, weak, thick, thin, strong, strange, weird, think, understand, wonder, know, find, very, every, grin, smile, shrug, nod, look, see, watch

That’s a good starter pack.

Before reading Bell’s article, I noticed that I overused certain terms — “as well as” is one example. So, before finding his article, I’d already hunted for those, and took out most of them.

So I had some idea of the process I would use hunting for weasel words.

I have a draft of a multi-volume novel. I’ve been working on it since 2018. It is about 350,000 words long, so far. It is about 80% finished. I plan to finish it and start publishing book-length installments later this year.

Before I make the final push to finish drafting, I decided to hunt down weasel words.

Most likely — I thought! — there will be a few cases where these words show up and I can make an improvement.

Using CTRL-F searchs, I began digging through my manuscript for the words on Mr. Bell’s list.

I was appalled.

The document was saturated with weasel words.

Thousands of them.

As I searched, I noted other over-used words, which I added to my “search and destroy” list. I found other articles about weasel words, and added more words to search for and target for removal.

The process of searching for weasel words and removing most of them accomplished three things.

1. Removing the weasel words, or replacing them, always made the sentence better.

2. Looking at a sentence with a weasel word often caused me to rewrite the sentence, and sometimes also the surrounding sentences, improving them.

3. I saw the entire manuscript with fresh eyes, allowing me to revise it usefully in many places.

My draft is better as a result.

It was time consuming, but worth it.

Hopefully, I will now be immunized against using weasel words in the initial drafting process for the remainder of this project, and future projects.

I strongly recommend searching through your draft document, finding each weasel word, removing it where it will improve the sentence, and rewriting the sentence as needed.

If you find that you overuse some word or phrase which is not on anyone else’s list of weasel words, hunt those down, too.

Relatedly, this process is also good for checking on contractions, and being consistent in how you use them, e.g. “I am” → “I’m” — for each case, ask yourself, which works better? It’s usually the contraction, especially if a character is speaking.

Also, relatedly I suggest stripping down the use of powerful words. Such words are heavy artillery shells. Use them only for major impact. For example, I use the word “sob” only in important instances of characters weeping, not minor ones!

I’d be interested to hear about the practice others follow to eliminate such words.

Appended below is the list of weasel words I searched for, how many I found, and how many remained after I edited.

I hope this post will be helpful.

You may want to use my list below for your own searches.

******

Weasel Words: Before/After

Actually: 28/11

A few: 13/0

Again: 40/28

Agree: 362/52

And then: 34/1

Almost: 186/55

Always: 207/76

Anything: 155/41

Appear: 26/7

Argu: 29/15

As if: 43/161

As well: 54/11

Attentive: 11/2

At least: 72/4

At the time: 99/2

At that time: 38/3

Basically: 2/0

Began to: 60/ 2

Big: 161/86

Case: 52/33

Challenge: 60/16

Could have: 25/5

Could not: 164/20

Course of: 14/0

Devastate, Devastating: 8/2

Did not: 348/28

Directly: 36/15

Direct: 25/16

Else: 43/17

End up: 11/8

Ended up: 18/5

Enormous: 11/5

Essential: 33/7

Even: 395/201

Every: 149/84

Everything: 134/35

Few: 309/10

Finally: 86/19

Find: 103/53

Found: 180/76

Giant: 1/1

Gigantic: 6/2

Going to: 206/18

Great: 173/78

Hard: 119/73

Had not: 97/21

Had to: 109/8

Have to: 61/16

Have not: 6/4

Hear: 85/61

He had: 617/345

He has: 10/7

He is: 55/20

He knew: 155/7

He noted: 1/0

He said he: 90/0

He said she: 16/0

He said that: 1/0

He would: 518/151

He said they: 18/0

Huge: 12/6

I am: 158/47

I have: 53/32

I will: 100/60

Important: 90/16

Increas: 133/6

In fact: 19/4

In part: 38/9

In reality: 8/0

It is: 80/22

Just: 408/165

Kind of: 14/9

Know: 207/118

Large: 204/47

Like: 499/ 383

Likely: 90/7

Little: 107/49

Long: 293/65

Look: 775/206

Looks like: 2/2

Lot of: 79/2

Many: 407/83

Massive: 31/11

Maybe: 81/59

Merely: 12/2

Most: 403/110

Mostly: 87/13

Need to: 35/14

Needed to: 33/6

Nod: 31/14

No idea: 26/9

Notice:107/26

Often: 113/27

Of the: 2241/1123

Of them: 188/35

Once: 111/28

Once,: 18/11

Overcome: 18/6

Partially: 12/8

Perhaps: 18/3

Possibl: 168/25

Powerful: 17/13

Probably: 51/9

Prompt: 47/9

Prove: 26/11

Quite: 20/14

Quizzica: 16/1

Rather: 53/2

Reality: 14/10

Realiz : 130/4

Really: 125/68

Recent: 74/8

Recogniz: 33/17

Resolv: 46/15

Searching: 18/12

See: 351/235

Seek:18/3

Seem: 244/ 77

She said she: 48/0

Shrug: 7/3

Simply: 33/11

Slight, slightly: 14/3

Smile: 30/23

Smiled: 70/30

Smiling: 70/30

So: 524/245

Soft: 105/100

Some: 546/124

Some of: 73/25

Something: 177/51

Sometimes: 92/32

Somewhat: 12/0

Started to: 31/4

Started to: 5/4

Starting to: 10/1

Still: 188/111

Strange: 22/19

Strong: 85/51

Suddenly: 44/8

Surely: 0/0

Swarm: 11/11

That: 4401/219

Then: 733/287

There is: 54/19

They are: 29/14

They had: 201/8

They would: 264/65

Thick: 22/10

Thin: 8/5

Thing: 85/33

Think: 201/115

Thought: 315/83

Thoughts: 21/12

Tiny: 17/9

Tried to: 111/60

Try to: 44/6

Typical: 81/7

Understand: 77/29

Various: 75/2

Vast: 6/4

Very: 115/46

Was not: 326/116

Was told: 1/0

Watch: 36/10

Weak: 29/23

We are: 78/22

We have: 49/19

We will: 116/33

We would: 5/3

Weird: 26/24

What is: 15/2

Who had: 62/22

Wide: 70/22

Will not: 32/19

Within: 99/18

Wonder: 4/4

Would have: 159/51

You are: 137/42

You had: 10/5

You will: 56/24

Sandwich Salvage

At the Shell station, there is a deli. They make sandwiches in the morning. You get back into the neighborhood at night, after work, around 8:00 p.m. The sandwiches that remain unsold in the evening have been there for 12 hours or more. The sandwiches are in an open-topped refrigerator, tightly wrapped in plastic. Not terribly appetizing, though edible, and you are hungry. You purchase a sandwich. You are tempted to eat the sandwich immediately, sitting in your car, in the parking lot of the Shell station. But no. You exercise some self-discipline, and bring it home, and invest 15 minutes. You will transform that sandwich. Disassemble it on a cutting board. Put some olive oil down in a pan. Put the soggy roll down, on medium low heat, with a steak weight on top of it to press it down. The roll was probably from Turano, so it started out as a good roll. Give it a few minutes to get some crunchy brown surface on the bread, and to dry it out. Then flip the roll over and let the other side warm up so the roll is dried out all the way through. Put the two halves of the roll on a plate. You have now salvaged the roll. While that’s going on, you have got the lettuce and tomato on your cutting board. Dry off the lettuce with a paper towel. Put some salt and pepper on the lettuce and tomato. Now put the salami and ham down in the pan, with a little oil so they don’t stick. Lunch meat ham is injected with water, so it needs to dry out. Spread out the slices of ham and salami in the pan, so that you cook out some of the liquid, and to get them a little brown. When there’s some brown on the ham and salami slices, flip them over. Now, break up the cheese slices into pieces and put the cheese on top of the lunch meat in the pan. Next, turn the heat down all the way to low, and put a lid on the pan. This will permit the steam from the remaining liquid in the lunchmeat to melt the cheese. While the cheese is melting, put a little bit of mayo on one half of the roll, Duke’s if you have it. Put a little bit of yellow mustard on the other half. Schmear the condiments evenly on the two halves of the roll. Put the lettuce and tomato on top of one of the roll-halves. You must periodically look under the lid to see how the cheese is doing. When the cheese has melted, carefully remove the lunch meat and cheese and place it on top of the lettuce and tomato. Place the other half-roll on top. Put the now-reassembled sandwich on a plate, and using a serrated knife, cut it diagonally in the center. If you have any pickles, this is the moment to place a few pickles on the plate. Open a beer. Enjoy the beer and sandwich standing up in the kitchen. This transformed sandwich is about 1000X better than eating it cold in the parking lot of the Shell station.

[Photos of the foregoing sandwich salvage steps are appended at the end of this post.]

Roasted Red Peppers

Roasted red peppers are a nice ingredient to include in a salad or a sandwich.

However, the instructions usually provided for preparing these delicious tidbits are wrongheaded. We typically see people holding a pepper over open flame on the stove and moving it around with a pair of tongs. This is labor-intensive, messy, and does a poor job of blackening the outside of the pepper.

The correct way is as follows:

Ingredients:

Four (4) red bell peppers.

Instructions:

Turn the oven broiler on, so the oven warms up while you do the prep. Put parchment paper on a cookie sheet. We are going to let the oven do the work.

Cut off off the rounded ends of the peppers. Do not discard these. Cut them up and put in the fridge. Use them later in a salad, or fry them up with some scrambled eggs. Don’t waste food.

Following the natural division of the pepper, cut it in thirds or fourths, so that you have flat segments.

Lay the flat segments on the parchment paper on the cookie sheet. Do not have them overlapping, you want them exposed to the broiler flame.

Place the cookie sheet in the oven under the broiler. This can be smoky, particularly if the edges of the parchment paper start to blacken. Turn on the fan on your oven, which may prevent the smoke alarm from going off.

Look in the oven from time to time, and see how they are doing. If you’ve done this for a while, you know by instinct when to take them out, in fact, by the smell.

Typically the broiler element is in the center of a gas oven, so the segments near the center of the cookie sheet will blacken first. When you see that the segments in the center have fully blackened, remove the cookie sheet from the oven.

Put the fully blackened segments in a glass bowl, and cover the bowl with a plate. Cover it with whatever you want but I use a plate. They will be very hot, so remove them with a spatula so you don’t burn your fingers. The heated blackened segments, now under the plate in the glass bowl, will steam and continue to cook. This is part of the cooking process. Do not skip this step. Further, place the blackened segments in the glass bowl immediately after you take them out of the oven, so that the heat doesn’t dissipate.

Move the comparatively un-blackened segments toward the center of the cookie sheet as needed, and place it back in the oven under the broiler.

The second batch will cook faster because they’ve already been heated up. Be alert to that. If you overcook them, they are no good. The uncovered edges of the parchment paper may blacken and smoke a little, so be alert to that as well.

When the second batch is done, remove them with the spatula, place them in the bowl, cover it with the plate, and leave it alone for whatever amount of time is convenient for you. Minimally enough time to handle the peppers without burning your fingers. In fact, you could go to work and come back and deal with this in the evening if necessary. It can sit on the counter all day, and you won’t get food poisoning, you’ll be fine.

Let the cookie sheet cool off before you throw away the blackened paper and rinse it off and put it away.

The blackened pepper segments, having steamed, will now be easy to handle. It will just take a few minutes to peel off all of the burnt skin by hand. Discard the burnt skin.

You will now have a pile of cooked red pepper segments. Sliced these into strips and put them in a container to keep in the refrigerator. You can put them in as-is, or toss them with some olive oil.

This process is simpler, neater, more efficient, and yields a better final product than the traditional Italian grandma-style of cooking over an open flame, which we see in countless YouTube cooking videos. Generally I yield in all matters of cooking to Italian grandmas. This is a rare exception.

As an aside: My sister reminded me that the roasted peppers can also be included as an ingredient in a creamy pasta sauce, which adds color as well as texture and flavor.

Potato Salad

[There are no extant photographs of the potato salad]

Ingredients:

Potatoes, onions (green onions optional), garlic, olive oil, mustard, mayonnaise, tabasco, red wine vinegar, eggs (optional),

Instructions:

Use about two pounds of potatoes, but this is not rigid. You must do this by eyeball.

Yellow potatoes are favored (waxy, what you want), red are disfavored (they fall apart), brown skinned white ones are ok, but should probably be peeled. If the skins are thick you will certainly want to peel them so it is not like eating cardboard.

Slices should be disks or half-disks about 1/4 inch thick, and all should be a uniform thickness, so they all finish cooking at the same time. This point about uniform thickness is important.

Boil potatoes in salted water. Cook until they are just penetrable by a fork without forcing it. Do not overcook. Do not undercook. This is the only part of this recipe where it can go irretrievably wrong. So, as the potatoes are cooking and are almost ready, be alert and hover over them, testing with a fork frequently. Undercooked potatoes ruin the dish. Overcooked potatoes become something like cold mashed potatoes, which is edible but not optimal. You want the potatoes to be softened yet retaining some structural integrity.

Immediately drain.

Prepare the sauce while the potatoes are cooking, or before. But it is best if the sauce and potatoes finish at about the same time so the still-hot sauce goes onto the still-hot potatoes.

It is important that the finished sauce to be ready to hand when the potatoes are finished. This allows you to put the sauce on the potatoes just after removimg them from the boiling water, which causes the sauce to infuse into the cooked potatoes. Do not delay applying the sauce. Put the drained potatoes in a large bowl, pour on the sauce, toss gently so the potatoes do not break up too much, and let sit for about 1/2 hour. You may then, if you want, refrigerate. This dish is good at room temperature, so if you are going to be eating soon after making it, you may want to cover it and leave it on the counter.

Here is how you make the sauce.

Cut up one small onion into small diced bits, or use a medium onion if you particularly like onion. Cook in a lavish amount of olive oil (roughly 2/3 cup, but I never measure) in the pan. The point is to flavor the oil. Cook until the onions are translucent but not brown. If there is garlic handy, slice a few cloves thinly and put in when the onions are almost done. Do not brown the garlic. Garlic is good but not essential here.

When the onions and garlic are done, transfer the oil and onions and garlic to a bowl. Use a rubber spatula to get all of the flavored olive oil. Add a substantial amount of yellow mustard, and some brown mustard as well if you have it. Put in some mayonnaise. Add salt and pepper. Put in a few splashes of tabasco and a splash of red wine vinegar -- be sparing with these last two. Stir this mixture. Taste and adjust seasoning. The mayonnaise will be clumpy and unappealing looking in the bowl, but it will spread evenly when applied to the potatoes, so don’t worry about that.

If the potato salad looks insufficiently sauced, mix up a little more using olive oil, mustard, and mayo, or just put on a little more olive oil.

(As to the inclusion or exclusion of eggs, we are acutely aware of the cultural conflicts surrounding their inclusion in potato salad. We have no desire here to revive old ethnic animosities which we may hope are finally fading from living memory. We leave this question solely as a matter of personal choice.)

If you want to add eggs, do the following. Before you begin to cook the potatoes, already have half a dozen eggs boiling, or already cooked. When they are thoroughly hard boiled, drain, rinse with cool water, peel. Once the eggs are peeled, cut in half. Add cooked yolks to the sauce, and mash it into the sauce with the back of a fork so that the yolks are uniformly dissolved and mixed into the sauce. Cut the cooked egg whites into chunks, with each chunk perhaps 1/8 of the cooked egg white. Toss the egg whites with the potatoes immediately after applying the sauce to the potatoes, as described above.

One good variant is to use green onions. Use the white ends for the sauce. Reserve the green ends, cut into little circlets. Toss half of the green circlets into the potato salad, and sprinkle the rest over the top as a garnish, to enhance the presentation.

This potato salad recipe has been a success on many occasions.

Banana Pudding

Ingredients

2 large boxes of Vanilla Jell-O Cook & Serve Pudding & Pie Filling
1 quart of half-and-half
six eggs
1/2 cup (or so) of milk
1 bunch of ripe bananas
1 box of vanilla wafers

Instructions:

Place a layer of vanilla wafers on the bottom of a rectangular baking pan, using about 40% of the box. Slice 2/3 of the bananas 1/2 inch thick or so evenly on top of the wafers. Put wafers vertically around the perimeter of the pan, as shown, about 20% of the box.

Put the vanilla pudding powder in a mixing bowl. Beat in the eggs using an electric beater to a uniform consistency. You do not want clumps of cooked egg in the pudding. Pour in the half-and-half and beat the mixture so that it is uniform and not lumpy. Pour in a little bit of regular milk to get it up to six cups.

Pour the mixture into the top of a double boiler, over medium heat. If you do not have a double boiler, a field expedient is to use a small metal mixing bowl over a regular sauce pan, but be sure to use an insulated mitt while holding the metal mixing bowl, so you do not burn your fingers. Stir constantly until it comes to a full boil so it does not get lumpy or burn. The stirring process is slow and boring, but it is critical, so be patient. You may need to put the top pan directly on the burner at the end to get the pudding to a full boil, but be careful. Stir constantly and use a low flame so you don’t burn any on the bottom.

Once the pudding has reached a boil, or a steady simmer with steam coming off, you can rely on it firming up. You do not want to under-cook the pudding.

Pour about half of the cooked pudding evenly over the first layer of wafers and bananas.

Put another layer of wafers, about 30% of the box, on top of the poured pudding, and then the rest of the bananas. Pour the rest of the pudding on top of that.

Crush the remaining wafers, 10% of the box, inside the bag with the heel of your hand, and sprinkle the crumbs over the top.

Do this final assembly rapidly. You want the heat and moisture of the still-hot pudding to dissolve the vanilla wafers into a paste or crust.

Put plastic wrap over the dish and let it sit on the counter for 30 minutes or so so the wafers can soften up.

Cool in refrigerator, several hours or overnight.

Serve as is or — much better — with whipped cream.

The use of half-and-half and eggs makes this pudding very rich and custardy.

This is not a diet dish. Make it as fatty as directed, or don’t bother.

This is a traditional Southern / Black dessert frequently found in soul food or barbecue places. My version is superior to any I have tried in such places.

One of my neighbors used to have an annual Super Bowl party. He usually had ribs and chicken, and people brought sides and desserts. I brought the banana pudding, and it was always a hit. I served it in styrofoam cups, with plastic spoons stuck in each one, with a dollop of whip cream. By setting out the first few servings, it gets people situated. Few desserts routinely cause people to have “seconds” but this one does. Once people have some, they often go back for a little more.

Pictorial Depiction of the Sandwich Salvage Described Above

INCEL by ARX-Han is a well-wrought and engaging journey into the mind and life of a young man, known only as anon, without any other name. Set in an unnamed large city circa 2012, anon seeks female love and companionship. He treats this as a technical problem, with his potential female partners as puzzles to be solved using social Darwinian analysis. He sets himself a seemingly unobtainable goal: To engage in penetrative sexual intercourse before his birthday. Failing that, he has committed himself to suicide. His purely material theories run afoul of his inner pain and feelings of loss. The book has a distinct atmosphere and meticulous, distinctive style. It is a mature work from a first-time novelist. I was struck by the book, and I recommend it.

Since the appearance of INCEL, ARX-Han has written many insightful reviews and thoughtful posts on Substack.

ARX-Han kindly agreed to an interview about INCEL, his own background, his thoughts on writing, and future projects.

CA: You have preserved your anonymity, and my questions will try to avoid any risk of doxxing. Can you tell us where you grew up, your early interests in books, movies, or anything else that influenced your writing?

ARX-Han: I’m a middle-aged millennial who grew up in a major multiracial American metropolitan city—a fairly mixed environment in terms of class, race, and so on. In terms of cultural touchpoints, my formative immersion in 90’s culture and aesthetics certainly had a significant influence on me, but because my memory is generally very poor, it’s more of an impressionistic influence than it is something anchored to very particular films or shows that I can recall with any specificity. As a young boy I read science fiction—Animorphs, Star Wars—but I lost interest in books by the time I was in high school, partly since this was the peak era of 16-bit and 32-bit video games.

Given how much I love literary fiction now, as an adult, I think the way we teach literature in high schools is tremendously broken. I remember being extremely bored by having to read Shakespeare or write literary analysis essays about his work. That shit just absolutely put me to sleep. Writing was something that hardly interested me.

What changed for me was my time in college, when I more or less stumbled upon the two staples of Gen-X androgenic fiction: Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho and Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club. I still remember making my way through American Psycho on the bus to class and being absolutely drawn in. Ellis’ narrative voice was so shockingly strong to me, and I felt the medium click for me for the first time. Apart from the thematic resonance, Fight Club made me feel like I was at least latently capable of writing a good minimalist novel. A couple of years later, I discovered Houellebecq (based on someone’s Twitter recommendation, I think).

All in all, I’d say it was a pretty typical trajectory for a writer in my category, with one exception: in my early twenties, I read a fair amount of academic philosophy, and this has really bled into my work. Most of the reading was around theories of consciousness (e.g. panpsychism), free will and moral responsibility, and also philosophy of religion (the problem of evil, arguments for and against the existence of God, and so on).

Although I certainly wouldn’t say that it’s an absolute requirement for greatness, I think many novels can really be deepened with the right injection of philosophy (e.g. Noah Kumin’s Stop All The Clocks has some very interesting ideas).

CA: When did you first begin writing?

ARX-Han: I started in my early twenties. When I first released my debut, INCEL, I included an Afterword that provides a fairly detailed account of transitioning from philosophy essays into literary fiction, and how that trajectory was ultimately a means of coping with the unexpected death of my friend and the nihilism this engendered in me personally.

There’s some added context there around the over-securitization of the young American male—which is why I ultimately cut the Afterword from the novel—but the essential account of my entry into fiction remains unchanged.

CA: What was the original inspiration for INCEL? When did you get the idea to write it?

ARX-Han: I’ve been asked this question a number of times and I always give a relatively vague, non-specific answer, because I don’t remember the exact moment it came into my mind with any real fidelity, so my answers tend to be all over the place.

The short answer is that this book came from spending time reading various anonymous Manosphere forums on the internet.

The character of anon is a distillation, a congealed mass of voices from the internet. Forums, by virtue of their anonymity, are like direct, unfiltered channels into human consciousness and what people really think. For that reason they are not only sociologically useful, but useful insofar as they have the power to directly window into psychological reality by reducing social desirability bias in self-presentation.

I simply felt that this character demanded to be written.

CA: In INCEL we have a troubled and at best partially sympathetic protagonist. This is a risky move, since readers generally want to like and identify with the main character. The two books that came to mind as I read it were Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground and Camus’s The Stranger. What earlier books, if any, influenced how you imagined and wrote about anon?

ARX-Han: American Psycho, Fight Club, and The Elementary Particles were the primary influences on the book and form the base of the style.

In the beginning, I sort of alternated between aping Bret Easton Ellis and Chuck Palahniuk, respectively, but as time went on, the manuscript evolved in a more maximalist and pseudo-scientific direction. I wanted to create a character profoundly alienated from his veridical experience—a person who needlessly used computational metaphors to distance himself from his own feelings as a sort of coping device for the turbulence of actually experiencing his emotions.

Thus, the style evolved into a more aggressive maximalist style through which I leaned into the “brain as computer” metaphor as strongly as I could, drawing upon abstractions from cognitive psychology and evolutionary psychology, which use “modules” as constructs for functionally-specialized regions of the brain.

CA: Did anon come to you as a seemingly real person? Did he stay generally the same in the writing or did he evolve? How much autobiography is there? Tell us about your relationship to your protagonist.

ARX-Han: Anon was always a fully formed person to me, largely because his pain and his humiliation are totally real to him even though they’re wildly divergent from the experiences of most people. This is always apparent when you read confessional text from other people online—even people who may or may not hate you. The subjectivity of suffering is absolute in that sense.

I’m not one of those people who writes autofiction and to the extent that autofiction has become a macro-trend in the alt-lit or online-lit space, it trends toward boredom because writers tend to start “doing a bit” and it becomes tiresome and repetitive.

Thus, rather than being some kind of thinly-veiled autobiography, for me, the character of anon is merely a vessel for a white-hot existential question that I have pondered for years—how to find meaning in a world that has been disenchanted, naturalized, and reduced to the motion of elementary particles.

Partly this is why I was so interested in theories of consciousness: it seemed to me that if the mind could not be reduced to particles—if there was something irreducible about it—that some form of meaning could be retained.

CA: I’d like to ask about nuts and bolts of how you wrote INCEL. Once you had the basic idea in mind, what was the process of writing? Did you make an outline? Did you write according a schedule? Did the characters come to you or did you construct them? Did you find inspiration coming at odd times? Did you make notes? Where were you physically located? How long did it take? Did you write it straight through, or in segments out of order? I assume you wrote in on a computer? How did you keep track of drafts and revisions and inserts? Did you do any writing on paper? That’s a lot of questions: TL/DR: Take us inside ARX-Han’s workshop.

ARX-Han: There’s a ton of process here that I could get into but I’ll try and summarize the experience for me. The first thing to flag is that I basically learned to write a novel as I was writing this novel. INCEL is in fact my first fully finished work—an abandoned science fiction novel aside—and it’s something I almost entirely gave up on around 2018.

I started with a notebook and a basic outline in 2011. I’d sketch ideas into the book, and, following the general outline, I’d free-write each individual chapter based on that. Perhaps 1 or 2 years into the process, I got a content editor/mentor who provided line-by-line feedback, which really pushed my learning rate tremendously. I had a hybrid system where I’d write some things in paper notebooks and filled up a couple of them with scattered ideas and outlines before switching to a 100% digital system. For a couple of years I used Scrivener until I got to the point where the draft was much more mature. I got some beta readers to take a look at the manuscript in 2014 who had some good things to say about it, but I felt the ending wasn’t ready at that time. After some period of struggle the ending came to me in a single burst of writing in 2015 and at that point the basic skeleton of the book was done.

The characters came to me in increments where they progressively clarified themselves. So much of a novel is a mental map formed by the writer and discovering adjacent nodes of possibility. The character of Jason evolved considerably both in terms of his ideological content and his arc, which was dictated by the narrative trajectory of anon himself.

Inspiration came to me all the time. For awhile I had a small notebook for this, I think, but eventually I started writing new ideas into Apple notes, which is a great minimalist note-taking app. I mostly wrote the novel straight through, but added some new chapters in 2022 or 2023 when I had some very interesting ideas come into view—anon’s debate with his professor was one of these newer scenes, along with his meltdown over the internet. Those final-stretch new scenes were perhaps the most fun to write because they required less re-working since my skills had matured as a writer.

The main thing I did, which, in retrospect, is somewhat insane, was spend eight years rewriting the prose to make it as interesting, maximalist, and dynamic that it could be.

Now, it wasn’t eight continuous years (from 2015 to 2023) that I spent doing it, since I took various breaks from the manuscript (e.g. abandoning it from 2018 to 2020 or so, if memory serves me correctly), but it’s still a ridiculous amount of time.

Once the draft was mature there weren’t any copies of it on paper, and I only kept track of the most up to date version with reverting to any previous versions.

CA: The book clearly contains research, which lends plausibility to anon’s thinking and behavior. Tell us about the research process. How did you it, how did you record and then incorporate your findings in the novel?

ARX-Han: The research process didn’t need to be formalized at all since my practice has always been to collect links to interesting papers, abstracts, or articles. To a limited extent I did refer to certain notes I’d written from various philosophy books I’d read over the years, but that wasn’t particularly important in the course of the book’s development.

CA: (SPOILER ALERT ON THIS Q&A) INCEL is a “downer” of a book, which makes it a tough sell for many readers. Without doing any spoilers, I can say that there is no conventional happy ending. Nonetheless, there are rays of sunlight. The friendship between anon and Jason is convincing, and adds a necessary comic and non-cerebral element. And his lingering and hopeless love for Elizabeth is genuinely moving. Please tell us something about the role of these figures in the book.

ARX-Han: I actually disagree with this response—for me, the ending is very hopeful, because anon (spoiler alert!) comes to understand the universality of suffering, and this is a very profound discovery for him, because up until that point, he mostly can understand and conceptualize his own suffering.

This is something beyond just the inflection point of “learning empathy” per se, and points in the direction of a kind of neo-Buddhist understanding of compassion.

Jason, disimilarly, does not find the same kind of redemption, and chooses to sort of dissociate into a fully depersonalized account of human agency’s non-existence and the evacuation of meaning from all freely-willed choices.

Elizabeth, I think, comes around sometime after the ending of the book.

At least, that’s my canonical epilogue for the readers of the novel!

CA: How did you know when the book was finished?

ARX-Han: In summer of 2023 I realized I was being hyper-obsessive and perfectionistic about polishing the prose, and I felt it was good enough on a line-by-line level to lock.

It was a purely intuitive call based on how well I felt the book was written on a line-by-line basis.

Hilariously, I kept editing it in one last round of minor revisions I released about 3 months after it was finished!

I polished one big block of text and modified the ending into something more understated.

I do not recommend being this obsessive about your work.

CA: Back to practical issues. Once you had the novel thought-up and drafted, what was the process of editing and proofreading? How did you get into clean, publishable form?

ARX-Han: Apart from my perfectionistic multi-year process of drafting and re-drafting (perhaps 15 total significant rewrites on a line-by-line basis), I paid a copy-editor for feedback.

He was very good and helped tighten things up a lot in terms of grammar, with some good feedback on style here and there as well.

CA: Once Incel was finished, tell us about the process you followed to publish it. Did you consider submitting it to a publisher, or were you always committed to self-publishing?

ARX-Han: The closer I got to finishing it, the more obvious it was that I would never find a publisher (much less a literary agent). There were perhaps 1 or 2 potentially viable options for unagented direct submissions like Terror House and Expat Press, but they weren’t taking submissions when I finished the novel.

Thus, my plan to treat the release artisanally and put a lot of effort into the design process, which included making a cool manga cover (which I since completely abandoned, lol) and put a ton of work into paying a designer and providing art direction. I later cut the anime visual influence due to marketing-related reasons and updated the cover to something more literary.

CA: Did you have a plan for promoting INCEL? Or did you make it up as you went along? What was your process here, if any?

ARX-Han: The short story here is that I designed the launch to rely almost exclusively on an advertising campaign on the /lit/erature board on 4chan.

This was a massive, somewhat embarrassing failure which I wrote about here.

The thing that actually worked was just (a) consistently blogging on Substack and (b) trying to connect with other writers on Substack, Twitter, and even Discord. The guys over at Tooky's Mag were nice enough to give me some advice about book marketing and later reviewed the novel in their Sidebar literary podcast, which kicked off a virtuous cycle where it got more and more positive critical attention.

CA: Taking on a project like this, which is controversial and counter-cultural, and which has virtually no prospect of paying any cash, is a huge undertaking. For what it’s worth, I have the greatest respect for the effort, and the artistic success of the book. What were your goals, your hopes, when you wrote INCEL? What was your “combat motivation” to stick with this project?

ARX-Han: I’d say my external goal—if I’m being truthful—was to write a work of androgenic fiction that would reach a massively successful, cult-classic status and become a literary peer to American Psycho, Fight Club, or The Elementary Particles. In this respect I was very much looking for recognition.

With the benefit of hindsight and knowledge, I now understand how ridiculous this dream was, but I still view the book as a success because I was ultimately able to reach my internal goal and to achieve a reasonable level of critical success in niche literary circles online.

At the end of the day, my internal goal was simpler. I wanted to write the best possible novel that I was capable of writing—a strong, dense debut that would reach a level of literary quality that I could be proud of even years after publication. And I more or less reached that goal in that there are very few things, if any, that I’d change about the book now—even in spite of my perfectionism.

So in the final analysis, I’m basically pleased with the result.

Motivation was rarely a problem because I so deeply enjoy the process of writing fiction, which for me, is a flow-state activity that I find deeply connected to music (I would often listen to the same song on repeat when editing or writing a first draft).

CA: INCEL has been deservedly well received. Do you feel like people understand the book, and what you were trying to do? What do you think about the idea that the author of a book does not have a privileged opinion about his own work, once it is created, the book is out in the world, and everyone will find their own meaning in it?

ARX-Han: I think most people understand the main idea of the novel if not all of its core philosophical themes. I think that insofar as the novel presents a very specific critique of scientism and neuroscientific reductionism in particular, this is sometimes lost on people, but people like Scott Litts have more recently been picking up on it.

I don’t have a strong view about objective meaning vs. subjective meaning as it pertains to the novel. I think, insofar as everyone has a personal experience of a work of art, then definitionally they will find their own meaning in it (since meaning is veridically experienced through a subjective experience of the reader’s own consciousness).

I have to say I am sometimes surprised by how much of a downer people find it to be—especially the ending.

For me, the ending is transformative for the character, redemptive.

It’s almost a Christian story in that sense.

CA: You have been scrupulous about maintaining your anonymity, your “OpSec.” This means you cannot go to IRL events, for example. The book certainly does not submit to current norms, it is not remotely “woke.” You are taking some personal and professional risks by writing it and promoting it. There has been a weakening of those forces lately, but I do not think they are gone or that they won’t return. Tell us about your thinking on these issues, and the personal cost you have paid, and if the tradeoffs are worth it.

ARX-Han: Broadly speaking I wildly over-calibrated for this. I’m not actually analogous to some dissident journalist in an Eastern bloc country in the 80’s or whatever. Frankly, I had a little too much fun with the pseudonymity aspect and was basically LARPing—partly because of how self-important it made me feel (lol). The effort wasn’t anywhere near worth it and essentially nobody cares who I am. I plan to be much looser on this front because ultimately my work just isn’t very spicy at all and I’m more or less broke anyway—so who really cares?

That being said, the sole caveat here—what makes any kind of judgment perhaps somewhat tricky—is how rapidly political conditions are changing in the US.

For example, there are some fiction writers who write online and who are politically active and may therefore alternately become regime targets for the red or blue factions of the US government, depending on who currently holds the reins of power.

I am not anywhere near being one of these people. To the extent that I (sometimes) write about politics, they’re constrained discussions around largely macro-level geopolitical issues rather than anything controversial.

That said, I do think the political environment and freedom of speech in the United States are about to massively deteriorate.

My advice is to use your own judgment about what makes sense for your personal situation.

CA: Do you have new writing projects under way? Are you going to write another book? What can you tell us about your current work?

ARX-Han: I have some very rough outline notes for a new project, which I more or less feel compelled to put out at this point. I was kind of burnt out of fiction after a very intensive 3.5 year final stretch of redrafting and needed 2023 to 2025 to kind of recuperate, but I think the itch has returned.

My next novel, broadly speaking, will probably be about transhumanism: one part William Gibson mixed with one part Houellebecq, thrown into a blender with a mixed style. Likely not as stylistically maximalist, but we’ll see!

CA: Let’s shift gears and talk about some of the things you have been doing since INCEL came out. You have been active on Substack, and you have had a few themes in your posts and notes. You have used the phrase “literary maximalism.” What does that term mean to you, and why is it important?

ARX-Han: “Maximalism” in this context just means long, complex sentences that are imprinted with a particular style. It stands in opposition to the more restrained literary minimalist realism that is in vogue among contemporary writers and (apparently) most MFA-fiction writers as well.

CA: You have also been critical of the traditional publishing industry, and encouraged independent writing and publishing. Where do you see things going in the next few years? What is the best achievable case?

ARX-Han: Best case is (a) Amazon and other book distributors don’t start censoring fiction (or even non-fiction) at the behest of the NGO-academic-MSM complex or the federal government, and (b) small, innovative new presses spring up, reach the point of financial viability, and cultivate an IRL scene with good parties and good people.

I believe in the optimistic case—or at least I choose to.

CA: You wrote about the importance of books as physical objects. Tell us briefly what you think about that, and what price should writers be willing to pay to ensure that their books are well presented?

ARX-Han: You cannot understate the value of this.

The packaging and design of a novel is extremely important.

A novel should be a beautiful physical object. It should not be devalued as worthless digital ephemera. It should be corporeal and physically substantive.

For the love of god, respect the form, and don’t give up on the dimensional beauty of a physical object.

CA: You wrote about Christianity as an “exhausted memeplex.” I respectfully disagree, and I stole the word memeplex for my own use. Can you tell us about your personal philosophy and faith? Are things works in progress, or do you have it all figured out? You will have to imagine a winking emoji.

ARX-Han: I’m tempted to respond at length here, but theism will be a major theme in my next work.

To summarize, I’ve thought about philosophy of religion a great deal. As part of this intellectual exercise, I have also read through various arguments for and against Christianity and considered them.

My personal belief is that Christianity is false and that most people understand this, which is why it is a spent force in cultural, moral, and civilizational terms. Very few American elites are, in my view, genuine Christians (Thiel doesn’t count), and that trickles down to the base population-level: most of the Western world is in some kind of metaphysical meaning-spiral as a result of the death of God.

I’m persuaded that the evidential problem of evil is insoluble for theism in general and that something like cosmo-psychism might best capture reality (a good book on this is Philip Goff’s Why? The Purpose of the Universe).

CA: You have called for a new literary movement. That provoked a — hopefully — humorous response from me. But I find the idea hopeful. Do you see that happening? What does it look like?

ARX-Han: It’s already happening in various forms here. Ross Barkan’s New Romanticism is one cohort—his novel Glass Century has done very well. New York also has Matthew Gasda’s The Sleepers, another novel which I also enjoyed. Lastly, there’s Dan Baltic and Mattp969’s New Ritual Press, which was just featured in Rolling Stone magazine. I’ve written about all of these books and writers on my blog, and enjoyed the novels they’ve released.

CA: Please name some of your favorite books or other artistic works, and tell us what they meant to you, including any current works that strike you as especially good or important.

ARX-Han: Aside from those I’ve already mentioned, I’d like to briefly mention two books I rarely mention: Stoner, by John Williams and Territory of Light, by Yuko Tsushima.

I found Stoner quite moving—a perfect novel, basically—but Territory of Light was, for me, an aesthetic experience on par with John Williams. There’s just something magical about the voice in this book, which is about a young single mother struggling after being abandoned by her husband. It’s a beautiful, evocative translation that just felt like it perfectly captured the bittersweet elements of life.

CA: Do you have any thoughts, advice, warnings, admonitions, for other writers?

ARX-Han: The craft and the love for process is the most important thing above all else. Writing literary fiction remains a source of great meaning.

Marketing your novel is a largely orthogonal skillset but can be learned, but the sales figures are ultimately not up to you.

CA: Is there anything I didn’t ask you that you want to mention?

ARX-Han: If you enjoyed this interview, read my book!

CA: Here’s the link to buy INCEL. And ARX-Han’s Substack page is here.

He was six.

It was dark. It was very early in the morning.

It was before the sun came up.

The door to his room opened, and the light from the hall came in.

He woke up.

His father was there. Usually his mother woke him up.

His father said, “Come and see the comet.”

He got out of bed.

They went down the stairs. His father opened the front door.

He was wearing pajamas, and he was barefoot.

His father picked him up. His father was strong and big.

It was cold outside. His father was warm. He hugged up against his father.

His father carried him out onto the front porch.

The front porch was a grey-painted concrete slab, only one step up from the front walk. It’s still there. The metal railings on each side, painted black, are still there, too.

There was a rhododendron to the right of the front porch. It’s gone now. There was a bush with red berries, on the left. That’s gone, too.

The large oak tree, with three trunks, on the lawn, to the right, was there.

The oak tree was part of the world. He didn’t know it could go away.

This was before they put the bright streetlights on the telephone poles.

You could still see the stars, in those days.

His father had a telescope. It had a tripod. His father would hold him up so he could look through it. He saw the rings of Saturn. He saw the craters on the Moon.

His father had a book that showed the constellations. The stars had hazy outlines of the Bear and the Centaur and the rest of them. Those names and pictures came from stories the Ancient Greeks made up thousands of years ago.

He knew Orion’s belt. He knew the Big Dipper, and how to find the North Star.

His father pointed to the sky.

“Look.”

The sky was turning pink and white behind the trees in front of him.

But up higher, it was still black, and clear, and there were stars.

And there was a comet.

He saw it. It was in the sky. It was white. It had a tail

His father said the comet was made of ice. As it fell out of space toward the sun, the heat from the sun made some of the ice melt. The melted ice was the tail of the comet.

The comet went around the sun, like the Earth.

One year was how long it took the Earth to go around the sun.

But the comet went far, far out into space.

The comet took thousands of years to go around the sun.

His father said this was their only chance to ever see the comet.

When the comet came back again, in thousands of years, they would both be gone.

He felt sad thinking about his father being gone, or him being gone.

He hugged his father tighter.

His father brought him back upstairs and put him back into bed.

[A friend was researching the life and career of Benjamin Disraeli. As it happened, at the same time, I was in the midst of my own informal immersion in Disraeli, reading biographies and his own literary work. (My Substack pseudonym is derived from Disraeli’s novel Contarini Fleming.) As I read Disraeli’s novels — I’ve read all of them, and liked them all — I sent some commentary along to my friend. What follows is the longest such piece I wrote. It seemed a waste that only one person saw it. It may be of interest to my Substack readers.]

Dear ________:

I have, at long last, finished Disraeli’s first novel, Vivian Grey. It is the first thing by him I have read that was not entirely enjoyable. Since Disraeli was 21 when he wrote it, it is to be treated with indulgence. To be fair, we should probably be surprised at how much of it is good, given his youth, his lack of experience as an author of fiction, and his purely imaginative grasp of politics, where he was not yet even a novice. It foreshadows his later and superior efforts in many ways. And as a glimpse into the mind of the later politician and statesman, it is of great interest and value despite its strictly literary imperfections.

I will pass on here some thoughts while it is still comparatively fresh in my mind.

The early chapters are almost literally autobiographical, and depict his school days and childhood. Disraeli is open about his self-perception as brilliantly talented but lacking wealth and connections. He sees the path forward as attaching himself to a nobleman, and serving as the directing intelligence of a team effort. Young Vivian says the only thing wanting to put this scheme into practice is “courage, pure, perfect courage; and does Vivian Grey know fear? He laughed an answer in bitterest derision.” This is a remarkable example of Disraeli’s massive ambition, his vision of himself forcing his way into the great world, which requires only courage. Yet at the same time, as he always does in his fiction, though more subtly in his later works, he mocks his own pretensions. A complex man, our Benjamin! He seems to have always had an ironic distance from his own ambition, his own activities, even from the crafted public persona which he showed to the world.

The depiction of his father in the early chapters is affectionate, gently humourous, and also autobiographical. This foreshadows the surprising undercurrent of kindliness which marks much of his fiction. His wordliness is not cynical or bitter. Rather it is sympathetic to the foibles and weaknesses of his characters, and of the struggling, striving mass of people. This gives something approaching sweetness to the authorial voice. There is some of this already in Vivian Grey. Yet another oddly mature thing from a very young man.

Books II-IV depict the rise of Vivian into society, the maneuvers by which he attaches himself to the Marquess of Carabas, including winning the favor of influential women, and Vivian’s persuading him to break with the leadership of his party, form a faction, and assume the reins of power himself. The prescience of this in light of Disraeli’s own later destruction of Robert Peel and the creation of the Protectionist faction with Lord George Bentinck, is uncanny. Vivian manages to assemble a Carabas faction, but the effort ends in failure, and Carabas banishes Vivian. Vivian fights a duel, and kills the critically important, and principled, politician whom he tried to inveigle into joining with Carabas and his allies. At the end of Book IV, Vivian flees the country to the Continent forever. Incidentally, one of the fictional members of the Carabas cabal is named Beaconsfield!

This story shows several strands of Disraeli’s thought. One is the idea of politics as a secret struggle of factions or conspiracies, which he always seemed to favor. He liked the idea that hidden forces drove real events. Another idea is that the closed shop of the British political elite might be penetrable by an outsider, like himself, but that it would be hazardous. He also seems to be meditating on principle in politics. Mr. Cleveland, the politician of principle, is in exile at the beginning, and ends up being killed in a duel by Vivian. This suggests such a man may be admirable, and Cleveland is depicted as admirable, but that too much principle is unlikely to lead to success, or even survival.

Another notion is that Disraeli sees the aristocracy as possessing wealth and power by inheritance and luck, but they are not smart enough to know what to do with it. They need outsiders of intelligence and drive to make use of the things they hold but cannot employ usefully. This is an idea which he seems to have held onto throughout his career, and one which he struggled against in vain, trying, during his Young England phase to revive the Crown, the Church, and especially the aristocracy as an estate of the realm, to offset the rising tide of popular democracy. He failed. Disraeli’s later saying, that power came too late, may mean too late in his own life, when his physical and mental powers were in decline, but I speculate that he also meant too late to achieve his early aim of restoring a balanced constitution to Britain. Instead, he went with the tide, promoted an expanded suffrage, and made the most of the inevitable. In this he reminds me of Churchill, who similarly had great causes he believed in, such as Britain’s role in India, or its primacy in the world, but when a cause was lost, he did not look back. Both men were romantics by inclination and temperament, but stone cold realists when making political calculations.

Most people writing about Vivian Grey say no more about it other than that it depicts the rise and fall of a political schemer. True enough! But that all occurs in Books II-IV, and there are yet V-VIII to go, and those comprise 67% of the total pages! It wouldn’t surprise me if I was the only living person who has actually read the final 2/3 of Vivian Grey since Jane Ridley was researching Young Disraeli over twenty years ago.

So, what happens in this lengthy and scarcely-referenced bulk of the text?

First, there is too much verbiage in this portion of the book, including many pages of comedic hijinks which don’t actually come off as funny. Disraeli does not include much farce or ribaldry in his later fiction, which is good, since it is not his strong suit. Disraeli introduces a comic character, Essper George, who is a magician, clown, and prankster, who attaches himself to Vivian, and is useful and important to him. This is perhaps a subtle and critical self-depiction. Disraeli was himself a man who made himself useful and amusing as a way to participate in the great world, but who is not legitimately part of it.

Disraeli’s descriptions of scenery and buildings in Germany are good. He is generally good at such things, and the passages related to Vivian’s travels are nicely done. The Continental portion of the book is a series of semi-connected incidents, and Disraeli does not seen sure about what he is up to. Nonetheless, there are many interesting passages worth mentioning. I will refer to a few.

There is a long section regarding a mediatized German prince who is involved in a conspiracy to restore his lost authority. It is good that I recently read Wolfram Siemann’s biography of Metternich, so this portion might otherwise have been incomprehensible. Vivian is drawn once more into political machinations, and is again frustrated when his political patron switches sides. There is a character named Beckendorff, who is Disraeli’s imaginative depiction of Metternich. It is interesting to see his depiction of Beckendorff as a man of cunning and deception, who manages to arrange everything in his own favor, all while playing the part of a buffoon. Again, perhaps Disraeli is meditating on his own methods and role. And of course, he later befriended the real Metternich.

One funny line occurs when Vivian is in Beckendorff’s library, and he wants to look at some of the books: “The sense of propriety struggled for a moment with the passion of curiosity; but nothing is more difficult for the man who loves books, than to refrain from examining a volume which he fancies may be unknown to him.” I have felt this, and I am sure you have too!

There is one passage, where Beckendorff is speaking to Disraeli, and we see a typical scene in Disraeli’s fiction, where an older and worldly man explains things to the young and rising man:

Man is not the creature of circumstances. Circumstances are the creatures of men. We are free agents, and man is more powerful than matter. I recognize no intervening influence between that of the established course of Nature, and my own mind. Truth may be distorted, may be stifled, be suppressed. The invention of cunning deceits may, and in most instances does, prevent man from exercising his own powers. They have made him responsible to a realm of shadows, and a suitor in a court of shades. He is ever dreading authority which does not exist, and fearing the occurrence of penalties which there are none to enforce. But the mind that dares to extricate itself from these vulgar prejudices, that proves its loyalty to its Creator by devoting all its adoration to his glory, such a spirit as this becomes a master-mind, and that master-mind will invariably find that circumstances are its slaves.

The “vulgar prejudices” here may be hostility to Disraeli’s Jewish background. Rising above such prejudices permits “man”, i.e. Disraeli, to become the master of circumstances and a “master mind.”

Mark what I say: it is truth. No minister ever yet fell, but from his own inefficiency. If his downfall be occasioned, as it generally is, by the intrigues of one of his own creatures, his downfall is merited for having been the dupe of a tool, which in all probability he should never have employed. If he fall through the open attacks of his political opponents, his downfall is equally deserved, for having occasioned by his impolicy the formation of a party; for having allowed it to be formed; or for not having crushed it when formed.

Again, Disraeli is foreshadowing, and justifying, his own later actions.

At one point Vivian is asked what position he hopes to have in the German kingdom where he is conspiring, and he says: “my ambition is so exalted, that I cannot condescend to take any thing under the Premiership.” More foreshadowing!

This bleak passage is also a foreshadowing of Disraeli’s action with regard to Sir Robert Peel.

… in politics there positively is no feeling of honour. Every one is conscious that not only himself, but his colleagues and his rivals, are working for their own private purpose; and that however a party may apparently be assisting in bringing about a result of common benefit, that nevertheless, and in fact, each is conscious that he is the tool of another. With such an understanding, treason is an expected affair; and the only point to consider is, who shall be so unfortunate as to be the deserted, instead of the deserter...

This certainly sounds like British, and perhaps especially Conservative, politics.

Disraeli also has a nice depiction of the dandy, a role he played himself:

Then there was that mysterious being whose influence is perhaps even more surprising than the dominion of the female despot of manners, for she wields a power which can be analysed and comprehended, I mean the male authority in coats, cravats, and chargers; who, without fortune and without rank, and sometimes merely through the bold obtrusion of a fantastic taste, becomes the glass of fashion, in which even Royal Dukes and the most aristocratic nobles hasten to adjust themselves; and the mould by which the ingenious youth of a whole nation is enthusiastically formed. There is a Brummell in every country.

One self-revealing quip: “I am such a restless person, that I never regulate my movements by those of other people.” And another: “Madame Carolina reproved her, and the reproof was endured rather than submitted to.” A subtle distinction, but one a proud spirit would be aware of.

Disraeli was of course enamored of The East, and invoked frequently, especially in his favorites among his own works, Alroy and Tancred. Yet, being Disraeli, he humorously mocks his own devotion:

“… the East; that mysterious portion of the globe,” continued Madame Carolina with renewed energy, “from which we should frankly confess that we derive every thing: for the South is but the pupil of the East, through the mediation of Egypt. Of this opinion,” said Madame with increased fervour, “I have no doubt: of this opinion,” continued the lady with additional enthusiasm, “I have boldly avowed myself a votary in a dissertation appended to the second volume of Haroun: for this opinion I would die at the stake! Oh, lovely East! Why was I not oriental! Land where the voice of the nightingale is never mute! Land of the cedar and the citron, the turtle and the myrtle of ever-blooming flowers, and ever-shining skies! Illustrious East! Cradle of Philosophy! Oh, my dearest Baroness, why do not you feel as I do ! From the East we obtain every thing!”

“Indeed!: said the Baroness, with great simplicity; “I thought we only got Cachemere shawls.”

During a performance of Othello by Verdi, Vivian notes with approval that the lead character is not in Moorish garb.

He was more surprised, however, but not less pleased, on the entrance of Othello himself. In England we are accustomed to deck this adventurous Moor in the costume of his native country but is this correct? The Grand Duke of Reisenburg thought not. Othello was an adventurer; at an early age he entered, as many foreigners did, into the service of Venice. In that service he rose to the highest dignities, became General of their armies, and of their fleets; and finally the Viceroy of their favourite kingdom. Is it natural to suppose, that such a man should have retained, during his successful career, the manners and dress of his original country? Ought we not rather to admit, that, had he done so, his career would, in fact, not have been successful? In all probability, he imitated to affectation the manners of the country which he had adopted. It is not probable that in such, or in any age, the turbaned Moor would have been treated with great deference by the common Christian soldier of Venice or indeed, that the scandal of a heathen leading the armies of one of the most powerful of European States, would have been tolerated for an instant by indignant Christendom. If Shylock even, the Jew merchant, confined to his quarter, and herding with his own sect, were bearded on the Rialto, in what spirit would the Venetians have witnessed their doge and nobles, whom they ranked above kings, holding equal converse, and loading with the most splendid honours of the Republic, a follower of Mahound? Such were the sentiments of the Grand Duke of Reisenburg on this subject, a subject interesting to Englishmen; and I confess I think, that they are worthy of attention. In accordance with his opinions, the actor who performed Othello, appeared in the full dress of a Venetian magnifico of the middle ages; a fit companion for Cornaro, or Grimani, or Barberigo, or Foscari.

The analogy to Disraeli’s Jewishness is clear. The Moor would have “imitated to affectation the manners of the country which he had adopted”, as Disraeli did with the English. He had to reject his foreign garb and faith to rise to the “highest dignities” of England, as he fully intended to do.

And as to being “a fit companion for Cornaro, or Grimani, or Barberigo, or Foscari”, Disraeli claimed to believe that he was descended from such Venetian magnificos himself. He seemed to like the mouth-feel of this litany of names, and no doubt he appended “… or Disraeli” to the list, sotto voce.

Yet another amusing quip, by one who regaled listeners and readers with his memories of his travels: “Like all great travellers … I have seen more than I remember, and remember more than I have seen.”

Near the end, Vivian engages in an unconsummated romance with a beautiful stranger, who turns out to be an Austrian Archduchess traveling incognito. She falls in love with Vivian, but of course, duty is a higher calling. Disraeli has a pleasant tone throughout this section. He is very good at writing about women, often, as usual with him, in a gently mocking way:

Vivian and the Baroness were left alone, and conversed together the whole evening. The lady displayed, on every subject, the most engaging ignorance; and requested information on obvious topics with the most artless naivete. Vivian was convinced that her ignorance was not affected, and equally sure that it could not arise from imbecility of intellect; for while she surprised him by her crude questions, and her want of acquaintance with all those topics which generally form the staple of conversation; she equally amused him with her poignant wit, and the imperious and energetic manner in which she instantly expected satisfactory information on every possible subject.

Even the ignorance of a young, wealthy, beautiful, blonde woman is engaging. Life is indeed unfair.

And while Napoleon himself received an Austrian Archduchess as a bride, and a political bribe, almost as a prize of war, Disraeli’s hero wins a royal heart simply by his charm, character and good looks. Make no small plans, Mr. Disraeli! As it turned out, his Mary Anne was not a beautiful Archduchess, but she was pretty, loyal, wealthy enough, and she loved him, and he loved her in return. So, that all worked out very well, if not quite as a young man of twenty-one may have dreamed of it.

Overall the book is worth your time skimming for pertinent passages related to Disraeli’s thinking and development. Book I, on his childhood is probably worth ransacking. Books II-IV worth a perusal for Disraeli’s very youthful thoughts on practical politics. The rest can mostly be dispensed with, though the passages with the Baroness and with Madame Carolina in particular are amusing, since Disraeli loved repartee with women.

This is a lengthy missive, but it is all typed up now, so I will send it along without any trimming.

Cheers,

“Contarini”

[Despite my middling review, the book has stuck with me after a few years, and I would give it a higher grade now. If you are interested in the man, or the era, it is worth reading. Disraeli’s bizarrely accurate prescience about his own future career would not be believable if it were fiction. At 21 he seems to have mapped out his own spectacular political rise to the Premiership of Britain in many details. As he wrote in Tancred: “The enterprising are often fortunate.” He was both.]

Seven Nation Flemmes1

They call us Flemme Fatale2

It took us forty years to play again3

You thought you’d seen it all4

But you will lick our boots and say Amen5

And we’re rockin’ at the Phi Delt house6

Because we can’t forget

And we’re hard and sweet and trashy

Like a candy cigarette7

And the message comin' from your eyes

Is: “Just go home!”8

*

I’m goin’ to Alpha Delt9

Gonna stagger down the basement stairs

I just might hurt myself

I’m flying high and I’m unawares10

And the Men from the Manly Planet

are shaking the walls11

And their girlfriends are all cryin’

in the shower stalls12

And the feeling coming from my bones

Says: “We’ll sink like a stone!”

*

Guitar solo

*

I'm goin' to Wichita13

All day I think of ancient Rome14

I gotta practice law15

Gonna bring it home to Jerome16

And I remember in the dawn’s grey light

How it used to be17

Severin, taste the whip and now

Bleed for me18

We’re gonna clear the room

And we’ll be standin’ here all alone!19

He was far from home, in our nation’s capital, for many weeks, part of the army of back-office lawyers supporting the trial team on the big trial.

He worked day and night.

His wife tried to keep family ties alive between him and their young children, despite the long absence.

One day he got a manila envelope in the mail from his unbearably brilliant, highly artistic, and precociously literate ten year old son. Enclosed was a remarkable drawing. In the foreground was a dragon, with a spooky graveyard in the background on the left, a castle in the distance on the right, with a wizard off in the corner, standing next to a pile of treasure, guarded by what appeared to be leprechauns … and other stuff.

He was inspired by this masterpiece to respond, in pertinent part, as follows:

Thank you for the picture of the dragon with the many interesting details in the background. … I like the wizard, the graveyard and the castle, as well, which add a lot to the picture. The entire thing suggests a more complex story which can only be guessed at. Is the wizard an enemy or ally of the dragon? Is the castle bustling and full of the clatter and chatter of its busy inhabitants, or is it a ruin, long ago plundered by the dragon? And who lies buried in the cemetery? The charred remains of valiant knights who sought in vain to slay the dragon but were incinerated in their armor by his fiery breath? And do their ghosts prowl the countryside on dark and windy midnights, terrifying travelers on the deserted roads, vowing in spectral whispers never to rest until their malign and reptilian foe has been slain at last? And what of the princess, kidnapped so long ago by the dragon, who, while still lovely, is no longer in the first blush of womanhood, but has reached middle age, whose hair is now streaked with gray, who has long-since accepted her fate as a captive, and her role as knight-bait, and who lives cheerfully enough in the cave amidst the dragon’s treasure trove, having long ago neatened and straightened-up and arranged and decorated the interior of the cave in a very feminine style much to her own liking, and who is actually remarkably well cared-for by the dragon, and who in fact has her pick of the gowns and jewelry and mirrors and furniture of a dozen queens despoiled by the dragon (at her request, if you must know the sorry truth), and who smiles pleasantly at the knights who ride up so boldly to what they think will be her glorious rescue, but will only be their own sizzling doom — and among the last earthly thoughts of these ill-fated heroes is wonderment to see the captive damsel so oddly un-distressed, sitting idly on a golden bench at the mouth of the cave, twirling the fingers of her right hand in the long silken tassel which dangles from the tip of her cone-shaped princess hat, and chatting and laughing with the dragon, scratching him behind his ear with a long silver backscratcher held in her left hand … . Perhaps you can add these details to a future picture.

(He had always wondered about the motivations of the major players in this traditional drama, and suspected that all was not as it seemed.)

He looked forward eagerly to the lad’s artistic sequel.

Photo from this site.

From The Art of Tying the Cravat, by H. Le Blanc

***

ARX-Han posted a thoughtful essay entitled What does it take to make a successful literary scene? It was a follow-up to an earlier post from him entitled New Wave fiction: escaping the energy suck of the culture war in literary fiction.

He starts with the rhetorical question:

Can you meme a literary scene into existence?

He does not give an unambiguous answer to his question.

Maybe yes.

I’ll come back to it.

What he does do is assert that any new literary scene must not be homogeneous. It should be diverse — artistically diverse, diverse in style, diverse in subject matter, not fake diverse:

Perhaps the meta problem here is the aesthetic dominance of any one group within an artistic field like film, literature, or music. That group can be demographically homogenous, politically homogenous, class homogenous, ideologically homogenous, or aesthetically homogenous. But the core problem is the homogeneity, not the message.

In this regard, it’s not so much that we’re optimizing for diversity of opinion or aesthetic orientation, but for chaos.

Chaos is the thing that’s missing from modern literature and its professionalization, over-credentialism, sensitivity readers, and pastel-covered pablum.

Chaos. Yes. OK.

I like the sound of this.

Things are a little bit stale, or so I am told.

The current literary scene is barely on my radar.

I mostly read old books.

But we need new books, too.

I like where ARX-Han is going with all this.

Notably, ARX-Han has standing to say these things, because he actually wrote a terrific book, which he published as recently as 2023, called Incel, which you should buy and read if you haven’t yet.

He did it his way.

Money and the traditional rules of the game be damned.

When money and fame and success happen anyway, for some people, groovy.

And, when they do … Don’t forget your old pals, man.

But it’s not for that.

It is because the Muse is beating the door down, shaking you by the collar, demanding that you write and capture this moment, the world you are seeing and hearing and feeling, because you, just you, only you, can do it.

Do you feel that?

Are you reading, writing, thinking, and typing all the time?

Do you fight against all the stuff in your life that is in the way?

Do fight the resistance?

Then you’re in. Or, no. To be accurate, you are potentially in.

You — I — need to actually write things, and overcome all the obstacles, internal and external, as real as they are, and publish what we write, and take the risks.

But that is all standard admonitory stuff.

We all know that. Easy to say, hard to do.

But what ARX-Han has done is notice out loud that there does seem to be a shift in the breeze.

Do you feel it, too? Cool things may be happening.

Don’t you want to get in on it? I do.

That is what ARX-Han put his finger on.

And that hopeful feeling adds a little extra impetus to things we all already know.

***

Some (many?) of the people reading this have already done many great things, including writing and publishing a book, or multiple books, even some good ones, or founding literary magazines, or founding a publisher, or getting (and deserving) a pack of paid subscribers on Substack, or even one or more rare cases of already (deservedly) being a legend.

Such people need no advice or encouragement from me.

Good, if that’s you.

Bravo.

Unironically.

The rest of you — us — we — may benefit from just noticing the vibe shift and being a little more hopeful — and motivated — than usual.

***

On this business of a literary scene, Hyun Woo Kim wisely said: “maybe it will be better to let my novel do the talking.”

Wise words, and I eagerly await his novel.

I have proceeded here — unwisely — nonetheless.

And further to the notion of letting a novel do the talking …

“Where’s yours, Contarini? Eh? You’re a big talker. Where is it?”

I am working on it.

It is slow. Very slow. Too slow.

Other things … . The job …. . The money … .

But I am. Really.

***

The foregoing is the semi-serious part.

Now for the facetious thing that popped into my head, and got me thinking about this.

How will we know who is in this hypothetical, hoped-for diverse scene?

One proposal occurs to me, for the men, at least.

Unusual neckwear.

A visual cue. A cravat? A neckerchief? An accot?

Wear more or less normal clothes, but throw this in.

Note: This proposed scheme will require IRL activities, including going outside, personally visiting places where there are other people, moving about and doing things where they can see you, and where you might have to interact with them.

I know that’s hard.

I don’t like it either.

But, maybe, it will be worth it.

It may even meme something into existence.

***

Scenario:

You see someone at a coffee shop, perhaps someone who, like you, lives under a deep layer of operational security, a guy who is scrupulously anon.

And you will see his neckwear.

Maybe that guy is in the scene …?

And then he will see your neckwear.

And he will pretend to look at his phone for a while, then he will look both ways, and then, nonchalantly, he will walk up, and says:

“Hey, man, cool cravate.”

And you say, “Thanks. Yours is cool too.”

Then, sotto voce, he says:

“Ah … So, are you by any chance, part of the ah … — this is not a gay thing, OK? —but, I mean, you know … ?”

And here he trails off.

You respond, just audibly:

“Dude. Yeah. So, to answer your question: Yes. Well, actually, OK, not gonna lie. Sort of? I guess, maybe yes? I don’t want to claim too much. Honestly, I am faking it. At least until I finish my book.”

And he says:

“Yeah. No worries. Same here. Totally get it. Me too.” He points to his cravate. “It is sort of more aspirational, right? Working on my book today, actually. Hey, stick with it, bro.”

And you give him a little salute with your mostly empty cup of tepid coffee, and you say:

“Thanks, man, you too.“

***

Some exemplars and role models:

Syd Barrett

Keith Richards

Brian Jones

Jimi Hendrix

Lord Byron

Edgar Allen Poe

Isidore Ducasse, Comte de Lautréamont

Contarini

Books by other people which I read in 2024 are depicted below, with a few short comments.

I re-read this for the first time since high school. Timeless, classic science fiction from the 1940s and 1950s. We may finally be entering the spacefaring age Heinlein depicted. I hope so.

I am a fan of Rachel Cusk. I have read 9/12 of her novels and 2/4 of her nonfiction books. This book is harsh, but excellent. It depicts her divorce, and she is hard on her ex-spouse and on herself. Worth the trip.

Noah Rhymer’s prose poem collection Harvest. A little too gratuitously ugly and bloody for me, but good. Noah suggested I write “a punk rock story“ for an anthology he wanted to compile. So I wrote Radius of Trust, which is the first work of fiction I completed in about 35 years. Then he disappeared, so I published it on Substack. I am glad I wrote it, it was fun. Thanks, Noah, wherever you are.

This novel about the adventures of an Austro-Hungarian submarine commander in World War I, was excellent. If you have an interest in the Habsburg Empire, or submarine warfare, you will enjoy this book.

Honor Levy has provoked a lot of animosity with this book, for reasons related to politics among authors and publishers and various other group dynamics to which I am not a party. I enjoyed the book, and found the insight into a person raised from childhood with unfettered Internet access to be interesting. I may have more to say about this book.

Rachel Cusk’s most recent novel. I liked it, but found it diffuse and hard to follow, compared to her other books. I notice that she got dismissive reviews. My guess is that she is being punished for getting a little out of line with mandatory wokeness. I may revisit it.

A recognized classic. This book, which compiles Cecil’s The Young Melbourne and the Story of his Marriage with Caroline Lamb (1939) and Lord M, or the Later Life of Lord Melbourne (1954), is beautifully written and is an immersive evocation of a lost world. Highly recommended.

A classic. Very good. Different than I expected. Episodic and discontinuous. Those of us who did not live in Russia during World War I, the Revolution, the Civil War, and the early Soviet period are very lucky. A terrible time, captured here in the story of one life.

An outstanding discussion of AI, focused on the unlikelihood of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). Highly recommended to understand some of the major issues at stake. I hope to have more to say about this book. It touches on important issues in my own novel as well.

Golden Age science fiction adventure, with wild twists and turns. Van Vogt is reliably entertaining.

The barebones autobiography of the greatest test pilot of them all. He started in biplanes and ended flying F-4 Phantoms, and he flew all the major British and captured German aircraft in between. For military aviation buffs, this should be on the short list.

Another old-time Science fiction classic and adolescent favorite. Heinlein’s science fiction reimagining of Kipling’s Kim.

A terrific book. A history of men’s style, followed by several fiction pieces by Chensvold.

A wild ride. Limonov went from penniless punk in New York, to acclaimed author, to leader of the radical National Bolshevik Party in post-Soviet Russia, and a stint in a Russian prison. Carrere is a great writer, and this unlikely tale is a thrill a minute.

A humorous but perhaps overly cruel depiction of a wealthy, eccentric, and unhappy family.

A very good book about writing and reading. Recommended. You have to love an author who entitles her recommended reading list: Books to be Read Immediately.

Good but not great. O’Brien’s other books were so good I expected more. Still, I learned a few things. Possibly a good introduction if you are not already familiar with the early career’s and wartime leadership of these five men. The Allies were lucky that Mussolini and Hitler made so many mistakes. It could have been worse.

Two science fiction classics. Double Star is a re-imagining of the theme of the leader replaced by a double in a crisis, which was the theme of, inter alia, The Prisoner of Zenda. It is a page-turner. Still good. I, Robot is a collection of early Asimov stories about robots, and it holds up as a solid collection now. Asimov shows remarkable flashes of prescience. Worth revisiting.

I reread At the Mountains of Madness for the first time since high school. Still good, with some classic moments. Lovecraft had an epic imagination.

This is a page-turning thriller about a Catholic soldier and father who confronts evil in various guises. Solid work from my friend Steve.

This is an instant classic. I could not put it down. It is a hard science fiction thriller with one crisis after another. Eager for the sequel.

Much good information, but disappointing overall. The parts of the book about the ballistic missile program were excellent, but the book is overly padded in to a “life and times” written from a New York Times liberal perspective, which is eye-glazing. If you read it, skip the editorializing, and just read about the amazing feat of building the ICBM in record time, preserving deterrence, and probably winning the Cold War in the process.

An excellent science fiction novel with a classic feel. I interview Lisa Kuznak about the book — read that if you want more detail. But better yet, buy it and support an outstanding independent author.

Frederick Forsyth is the maestro of thrillers. This one has lots of gritty detail about smuggling a nuclear bomb into Britain, and a race against time as the intelligence services try to stop the attack. You are in good hands with Forsyth.

A solidly written novel about intrigue, betrayal, and warfare in Renaissance Italy. Packed with historical detail. Recommended.

Written soon after the Second World War, while many of the key players were still alive, focusing mostly on the British effort, and the Italians who preceded them, and gave them a lot of ideas. These men did things so dangerous and daring that no fiction writer will ever match it.

Interesting discussion of Kerouac as a man of conservative sensibilities who did not like much of the beatnik baggage that was imposed on him by others. Makes me want to go back and read him. I have only read On the Road, which I read over forty years ago. It would be good to spend some more time with Jack.

A brilliant book, and a slice of modern life. Highly recommended. Buy it and support an outstanding independent author. I plan to have more to say about this book.

Read both of these while traveling. Almayer’s Folly is Joseph Conrad’s first novel, and it is so good the rest of us might be tempted to despair. I love Conrad and I have read almost everything and he has never let me down. The Martian Chronicles was an adolescent favorite and I have not read it since, probably, the early 1980s. It is more of a series of prose poems than stories, and there is a unique sense of loss and sadness to it. A classic, worth revisiting. And it is not really about Mars, or not any Mars that anyone else knows about. It is strictly Ray’s Mars.

Currently reading this one. Not surprisingly, it is good so far!

Looking forward to many good books in 2025.

(Joan Didion’s last typewriter. She (probably) typed The Year of Magical Thinking on it.)

Once upon a time I had a one-year gig as a clerk for a Federal Court of Appeals Judge. He had three clerks. Our windowless offices were in a row in the back hall of his chambers. We spent our days, mostly, writing drafts of appellate opinions. Once one of my co-clerks had a complicated opinion to write. She was deep down a research rat-hole, and she was not feeling confident about how to justify the result the court had reached.

The Judge was an exceptionally calm, steady, and undemonstrative man. But the Chief Judge of the Circuit had laid down a rule that draft opinions must be circulated to all the other members of the Court within some number of days — I think it was sixty days — after the oral argument. Our Judge was not going to miss that deadline.

One day the Judge walked down the hall past my door, and stopped in the doorway of my co-clerk. I heard him ask when he was going to see the draft. She responded with a lot of reasons — to be fair, legitimate ones, she was not slacking off — why she was having trouble finishing the draft. My door was open and I could hear all of this. She finished her explanation and there was a long pause. Then the Judge responded:

“Just type it.”

Then he walked past my door, back to his office. My co-clerk came into my office, sat down, and said “Did you hear that? Just type it!” And she burst out laughing.

So she did it. She just typed it. Then she turned it in. It was fine. Whatever shortcomings the opinion may have had, the world continued to revolve on its axis, as always, and the opinion was published, and it disappeared into the Federal reporter, where it resides, probably mostly forgotten, to this day.

The Judge was right.

Just type it.

(Ernest Hemingway’s typewriter. He just typed A Moveable Feast on it.)

There is lot of discussion on Substack about having trouble writing.

There have been some helpful suggestions about overcoming the chronic malaise known as writer’s block.

I have a few ideas of my own on the matter.

These are my credentials: I have co-authored one book, had a few published stories and poems, and done an enormous volume of professional legal writing. Professionally, I am always writing to a deadline. It has to be done, on time.

I, too, have screamed (internally) at the sight of the blank page.

My thoughts herein are not novel.

But sometimes it is helpful to hear what we already know, to motivate us.

Think of what follows as a pep talk, which may be of some use to some of you.

(Phillip K. Dick just typed The Man in the High Castle on a typewriter like this one.)

Writing is both intellectual and corporeal.

We write with our minds and our bodies.

We tend to over-value the former and under-value the latter.

Writing is the process of sitting or standing at a keyboard and typing words.

Writing is typing.

The body starts working, and the brain follows.

We think it has to be the other way around, but that’s wrong.

Sometimes the body goes first — fingers, posture, location — and the thoughts and images follow.

Truman Capote famously dismissed Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, saying “That's not writing, that's typing.”

Even so, by typing, Kerouac wrote, and finished, and published, a book that is still in print, that people still read and enjoy.

Not bad for just typing it.

(Jack Kerouac just typed On the Road on a clunky old beast like this one.)

The world is a big place, and there is certainly someone, somewhere, who writes substantial works of prose in pen, on paper. A few stubborn souls may even still use mechanical typewriters, like the literary heroes I celebrate in this post.

These days, the rest of us, most of us, use computers.

Placing ourselves in front of the keyboard and compelling ourselves to “just type it” is a crucial discipline.

If you have thought about it for a few minutes, and you are still not sure what you are going to write, then just start typing.

The thinking in your head, that’s going on before you start typing, and even while you are typing, is preliminary to the writing.

The physical action of typing the words, generating the document, the work product, the text, is the writing.

The physical process of typing the words IS the writing.

(Robert E. Howard just typed “The Queen of the Black Coast” and “The Frost Giant’s Daughter” and “The Phoenix of the Sword” on a typewriter just like this one.)

It is a well known and truthful axiom that there is no such thing as a bad first draft.

But getting that first draft is hard.

You must persevere through the mental and physical exertion of just typing that first draft.

Then and only then can you enjoy the comparatively easy and fun part, revising, and cleaning up, and rephrasing more cleverly, and fitting the new mass of hard-won material into the larger body you have already built up.

But you can’t do any of that fun stuff until you have JUST TYPED that first draft.

(Frederick Forsyth just typed The Day of the Jackal on a typewriter much like this one.)

Writing is both intellectual and corporeal, as previously noted.

Writing is also spiritual.

We want inspiration, which means to have the spirit infused into us.

The Greeks spoke of the Muse, a Goddess, who provided that inspiration.

The Muse is real.

The Muse will not sing if we do not solicit her aid, and if we are not diligent in her service.

Even when we seem devoid of ideas, amidst all the anxieties and distractions of life, just type it.

When we do, we give reverence to the Muse, and she will smile on our efforts.

You were one of a kind, sir. You cannot be replaced.

I saw the Cramps five times. It was always MAYHEM. The crowds were scary. Who were those people? The vibe was very no-kidding rock’n’roll madness at an ultra-primal, reptile-brain level. Was it rockabilly? Yes … . But … The Cramps took rockabilly on a thirty year Hellride to places even its maddest and darkest practitioners never dreamed existed in their wildest nightmares. The Cramps were saturated in American music, the real stuff, home-made rockabilly and garage stuff, songs that the world had forgotten and denied and rejected, the voices of howling crazy people from long gone 45s from 1957, Ouija-boarded, their ghosts dragged screeching anew into the smokey glare at the foot of the stage: Lux channelling the undead. The Cramps absolutely lived and breathed in their own, unique universe, crafted from these grave-robbed relics, this detritus of rock and flying saucers and monster movies and scary rubber masks and less reputable sources … . They came to town, and you abandoned your better judgment (“I’ll be tired at work tomorrow … .”). You went. You entered Cramps-world. You did so of your own choice. The Cramps came not one inch to meet you. You … yes, you. Come. Into the cave. Into the smoky cloud behind the Green Door. Breathe the fumes. Step on the crunching layer of broken glass that somehow bestrewed the floor at all their shows. Push closer to the stage. Edge in there, there’s a space. Closer. Be with the Cramps. Drink deeply, drink a lot, keep drinking, down it. The room will spin. It is supposed to do that. Stage center: Lux, green, zombie-like, wiry, towering, clad in red leather or gold lamé, like Elvis, flinging his microphone stand with skull-splitting carelessness, climbing the amplifier stack like a doomed, pompadoured King Kong, emerging from the darkness into the stage lights like Dracula, with his dark-eyed bride, with her glossy black fingernals, Ivy, a pillar of ice, fishnet stockings, pristine rockabilly licks blazing, crystalline … Ivy, sneering …

I looked at my old emails. This was my status report from the last Cramps show I saw … the last one I will ever see:

The Cramps. They were insanely good. A hostile alien landing party. They destroyed Planet Earth. I alone lived to tell the tale … .

They die, our heroes.

Johnny Ramone, Joey Ramone, Joe Strummer … . Now, Lux.

We saw them.

They walked the Earth.

We saw.

The legends are real.

They are all true.

Tell the others … .

Once upon a time, about twenty years ago, I posted the following on a moderately successful blog, under the above title.

It got an Instanche — IYKYK — which was the aspiration of all mid-tier bloggers.

I imagine myself to be a hard-nosed realist who has to resist sinking into cynicism.

Yet, here I was, younger but not young, publicly indulging in gushing utopian optimism, and finding general agreement from others.

This may be of interest as a snapshot of what people were thinking, in the Blogosphere in 2004, about the future of news and of the Internet generally.

Instapundit quotes someone as saying the blogosphere is not “elevating the political debate”. The MSM gets outed by the guys in pajamas when they lie or when they are inept or both. They have no basis to whine about “elevating” anything.

The MSM is supposed to be doing a Big, Important Job. Just ask them. And it is failing to do it, as it has failed to do so for a long time. Just ask everybody else. But the peasants now have the will and the means to raise Hell about it. Good. Pointing out that the purported facts, which form the basis of all political debate, are all too often composed of partisan-motivated lies is a way to purge if not elevate the political debate. Once you have vomited out the poison, then you can stand up. That is the process our body politic is in right now, puking out Dan Rather and similar toxins into the porcelain memory hole of history. Elevation will come after the dry heaves are gone.

All the MSM really needs to do is be the professionals they have falsely claimed to be all these years. A real news organization which was devoted body and soul to getting the truth out, chips fall where they may, would embrace the new world that is growing up around it. It would draw on the blogs and other modern sources to get hot leads for stories, to fact-check, to get corroborating witnesses to events, or even photos or video footage, to get expert assistance and advice, almost all for free. Such a serious organization would issue swift corrections of mistakes and get on with it. Such an organization would be a blast to work for and would have the respect and admiration of all knowledgeable people. In fact, such an organization would be living up to what the MSM in its best moments has been and can be. The blogs have not replaced the MSM, and they cannot do so. They can enhance it or correct it, critique it, talk to it, question it, teach it, amplify it. The MSM won’t go away. Someone has to do this stuff for a living, full time, on a professional basis. Bloggers can’t replace that.

The real story is a happy one. The MSM is on the verge of a new golden age. If it would just learn to do its job, take advantage of these new developments, quit trying to be “gatekeepers” and drop the ideological and partisan shilling, good things would start to happen sooner rather than later. But nothing can stop the transformation which is happening now. You can surf the tsunami, or get crushed by it.

Technology changes the rules. It destroys cozy monopoly positions. It “disintermediates”. The Schumpeterian gale of creative destruction driven by modern technology is sweeping through all industries. That storm is now blowing the ceiling tiles off the MSM, the barometer is still falling, and the winds show no signs of abating. The hurricane will blow harder and the legacy media we have known will be swept up in one last swirling cloud of wreckage. Good riddance. The MSM will be compelled to adapt. The existing entities will mostly die, or their brands will be slapped on totally new operations. Those too senile to be transformed will be replaced by hardy new beasts suited for current conditions. And that is good and it is just and it is progress.

So much for predictions.

Boy, was I wrong.

The gatekeepers are still firmly in place.

It’s a bit of a drag to revisit this now, and remember how cool the imaginary future looked.

I am older and wiser now, and disillusioned.

The dream of an aggressive, competitive, honest, dirt-digging, non-partisan news media, enabled by exciting new technology, obviously didn’t happen.

But something like it may yet appear.

Could happen, right? Who knows?

Perhaps our illusions today also go too far, toward pessimism?

That’s about as optimistic as I can get in 2024 … .

[I made the pictures using the Bing AI image generator, using variations on this prompt: “gentlemen, your coats ... (black and white chiaroscuro, with stark light and shadow, a still from a film noir in 1948, with male and female reporters, symbolizing the end of the old news media)”]

Pallas by Lisa Kuznak is an excellent science fiction novel, which I recently read, and which I heartily recommend.  Click on the link and buy a copy. You won’t be disappointed.

Ms. Kuznak published Pallas in 2023.  Despite its recent publication, it has the feel of an older work, in a good way, from the 1960s or 1970s, when science fiction was open to character development and sexual themes, but still had clear prose and a coherent narrative line.  Pallas is hard science fiction, in the sense that the plot turns on the interaction between the characters and the plausible technology which underlies the story.  Pallas also has horror themes, which made me think that the ideal director of a film version of Pallas would be Ms. Kuznak’s fellow Canadian David Cronenberg.

John Carter, at Postcards from Barsoom has already blessed us with a thoughtful and enlightening review.  So, rather than produce a second-best version of the same approach, Ms. Kuznak has graciously agreed to a short interview about Pallas, her own background, and her other literary projects.

CA: Can you give us a little bit of background?  Where you grew up, your early interests in books, movies, or anything else that influenced your writing?

LK: Northwestern Ontario has long winters, tons of snow, and gorgeous summers. I grew up on a dead-end road in a neighbourhood that still feels like the 90s when you drive through—mostly because no one can afford a new car—and is walking distance to Lake Superior. I’d climb up the bluffs at the end of the road and pretend I was a fairy in the woods.

There were tons of books in the house, and I think I can thank my grandparents for that because I don’t recall seeing my parents, or my older sister, reading novels. Whenever my grandpa would visit he’d take me the bookstore and spoil me. When I’d visit my grandma first thing she’d do was take me to the library. I remember distinctly a huge chonker of a vintage fairytale book which I was obsessed with, which obviously gave me a love of fantasy. Labyrinth, Return to Oz, Last Unicorn, Conan, Neverending Story, He-Man/She-Ra—elder millennials, we didn’t know how good we had it.

My mom wrote a bit for the newspaper when I was really little. But I was a rather solitary kid, always daydreaming. My sister was 6 years older so I was pretty much solo most of the time. My dad and I bonded over movies, I think that was his only way he knew how to hang out in the house when he wasn’t working in the mines. TV, video games were a lot of fun, of course, but books? Books I could see in my head which, for a kid with an overactive imagination, was pretty much the closest thing to magic I could get. Enter Goosebumps: my first book obsession. I remember begging my mom for new releases at the Safeway checkout line. (Remember when paperbacks were everywhere?)

After my parents split and we moved across the province, I really didn’t have much but books and movies.

CA: When did you first begin writing?

LK: Other than school assignments, I wrote for fun all through my childhood. My first super-serious attempt at writing anything substantial I was 12/13 years old, and more than a hundred hand-written pages later, I had my first “book” which I plan on doing a live reading one day so everyone can listen to me cry-laughing at how terrible it is. I don’t know when that’ll be.

In high school I had a really encouraging creative writing teacher who wanted me to submit to youth contests, but of course I didn’t—a sweet combo of undiagnosed adhd and not being able to accept praise. Still, she didn’t give up. It was then I decided I wanted to write movie scripts. I took Film Production in college, but dropped out because I’m a terrible student (and the course didn’t have a huge focus on scriptwriting, which is what I was looking forward to the most.)

It wasn’t until I had kids that I finally figured out I’ve just always wanted to be an author and I should shut up, sit down, and write.

CA: What was the original inspiration for Pallas?

LK: Well, originally the book looked a lot different. I had an idea years before I started writing that I must’ve got from a clip from a BBC doc, where I first learned about “zombie ants”--ants that get infected with a fungus that affects their behaviour. But then Last Of Us came out, and I sat on that idea for a long time. The first attempt at Pallas was actually a thought: “has there ever been a folk horror set in space?” (Folk horror, like The Wicker Man, being one of my favourite subgenres of horror.) I couldn’t find any, so I wrote one. Later on, I revived/revised the mushroom ideas I had before. The book now looks nothing like the first draft!

CA: I don’t want to do any spoilers, but I would like to ask about some episodes and themes in Pallas.  Your protagonist Kylan Bence is a well-rounded, masculine character.  He is competent with tools, good at his job, self-reliant.  This is consistent with being a space-truck driver, on his own in the asteroid belt.  It seemed to me that he was a classic, Heinlein-type character, without a lot of hangups.  Tell us about Kylan, how his character came to you, how you first imagined him?

LK: Because the book now is so different from what it was when I first wrote it, instead of trying to remember how I thought of him then, I’ll talk about what he became. Well, other than the name: I wanted a one-two punch sound to it. Kyle Bence doesn’t roll off the tongue—stick “-an” on anything is the way of the future of naming, according to the years my kids were little. Kylan Bence—Bopbop Bop, in my head. So that’s his name.

As far as his personality, he’s a mash-up of a few blue-collar guys I’ve known, and I wanted someone who was competent in his area while being thrown head-first into something he couldn’t ever be prepared for. Plus, he really needed some time off work.

CA: Kylan’s one weakness seems to be that his judgment is poor in the presence of attractive women.  The frank and realistic depiction of Kylan’s male sexuality, without judgments or preachiness, is well done.  Was this intentional, or is it just the way the story came to you?

LK: Both. No matter how fantastical the story, it’s got to be have realism. Kylan going from frustrated in life, touch-starved, isolated space trucker to… well, that seemed pretty real to me.

CA: The character of Sarra seemed to have some features of romance heroine, or even a young adult heroine.  Can you tell us about the inspiration for Sarra?

LK: Sarra needed to exist not only as a sort of “opposite” to Thalie, but Kylan needed someone in his corner. She’s opposite to Kylan, too, in a different way—the way men and women often are, and I think that’s why they work well as a team (I’d like to think their strengths fill the gaps of the others’ weaknesses). Plus, Sarra is so different amongst her own people, I think she needed Kylan in her corner, too.

CA: Another feature of Pallas is a classic science fiction theme, a community which is living amidst superior technology they inherited, but which they no longer fully understand, with some mystery about its origins and purpose.  It also implies a deep backstory of at least a century in duration.  How thoroughly did you think about the backstory, and what influences do you recall that led you to take this approach?

LK: It’s no surprise to those who know my tastes, but I love retrofuturism, cassette futurism, whatever you want to call it. I love watching the original Star Trek or b-movies from the 60s/70s/80s, maybe partly for the kitsch but also because it’s just fun. Reading old science fiction where they’re thousands of miles from Earth but still taking analogue photos... that sort of thing. What better way to illustrate that this colony is stuck in the past than pulling at those retro influences? (There’s even a scene near the end of the book that I watched a bunch of old interviews with actresses from the 60s to get the speech pattern right. I hope it worked!)

CA: Many of the scenes in Pallas seem to have both literary and cinematic antecedents.  I detected imagery and visuals from, The Time Machine, The Book of the New Sun, The Shadow Over Innsmouth, Dune, Alien, Aliens, and others which I cannot recall at the moment.  To what extent did you intentionally evoke earlier works?  What other earlier work were you aware of influencing your work?

LK: Alien is a great guess! As I mentioned above, The Wicker Man (1973) and was a big one, as well as The Troop by Nick Cutter, to name a more recent book. (If you like body horror, that book is a MUST!) And, of course, Cronenberg movies. But, I will say, a big influence on the decisions with my prose didn’t come until after ALL the rest. I read Pynchon for the first time and decided to just go for it, and did another draft. I’m glad I did, I was way happier with it after that, otherwise I might not have published it. See, I kept having doubts about my voice as a writer, so I guess I just needed to read Gravity’s friggin Rainbow to get over that nonsense and lean into my voice and, well, experiment!

Non-fictional influences are all the pop-sci articles about how mushrooms are from space and are the future of humanity and key to immortality all that fun stuff… and technologies like 3D printed mycelium furniture, “silk” from protein etc—it’s all stuff we already have, so I took it a bit further!

CA: There are some plot threads in Pallas which are still open-ended at the end of the novel.  Have you given any thought to a sequel, or using the same fictional backstory in future writing?

LK: I have given thought to it, but I’m not sure if it’ll happen. Kind of like how Alien is horror but Aliens is action, or Terminator 1 vs 2, I think if I did a sequel it would have a totally different vibe, and I’m not sold on that just yet. I could be wrong and then 10 years from now you’ll see “Pallas 2” haha!

CA: How did you balance your writing with your family life?

LK: “If you see my headphones on, leave me alone!” (My kids were finally old enough to understand this!) Being a housewife, the rest is just a matter of neglecting chores. But, yeah, the kids had to be old enough for me to be able to really take writing seriously. Having a supportive husband is also a major blessing.

CA: What was your process for writing Pallas?  Did you outline it?  Did you edit as you wrote it?

LK: Although I’m typically a chaotic pantser, I actually did try to outline Pallas for the first draft—only to be incredibly unsatisfied and then rewrote the whole thing anyway! Everything is a learning experience!

CA: Tell us about how you went about publishing and promoting Pallas?

LK: I was always thinking of self-publishing as the route I’d likely take, because I’m really bad at doing what people tell me to do, so DIY is attractive for that reason, but I did submit it around. I almost published it through a small press, but they gave me bad vibes after I spoke to the guy a bit. So, I walked away and just did it myself! Go with your gut, as they say!

Marketing is incredibly difficult, especially as I’m such an introvert. I don’t like getting my face out there, self-promo gives me hives. Joining Substack was the smartest thing I ever did—just meeting people has been a lovely experience. I wish I could give better advice than that. Networking on Instagram and on Substack is pretty much it, and by networking I mean just chatting with likeminded people. That’s all I got!

CA: You have written another book entitled The Highwayman Kennedy Thornwick, which I have purchased but not yet read.  Please tell us about it.

LK: It is VERY different from Pallas, not just in genre but subject matter and tone, so just as a heads-up! The Highwayman is more akin to Snatch, Goodfellas, or even Barry Lyndon. It’s a dark comedy, or tragicomedy, whichever term you prefer. A big influence as I was writing was actually The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt, Catch-22 and... Goethe. Yep. A few readers have compared it to The Lies of Locke Lamorra by Scott Lynch, which makes sense, but there really aren’t too many other fantasy novels about criminals so it’s an inevitable comp, though the books themselves are very different.

The book begins in a prison where the inmates are prevented from being able to use magic, which is likely the reason for their improsonment. To paraphrase a quote the book: “Not every magicker is a criminal … but every criminal is a magicker.” There has been a lot of social change in the outside world before the events of the novel begins—no more capital punishment is a big one, which reflects real ideas that started in the enlightenment era (and the book is set in a pseudo late-18th century, which isn’t a setting typically seen in fantasy. Anyway, I’m digressing) So our characters Tommy Fellham and Kennedy Thornwick are stuck in this limbo, and they need to get out. Along with a slew of other characters, Tommy and Kennedy get into a big pile of trouble.

It has a lot of action—heists, etc, but it really is a character driven novel. There’s some big emotions.

CA: You have a SubStack page called Mechanical Pulp.  What is the purpose of your page?  What is your assessment of SubStack?

LK: I started it on a whim, to be honest! Big advice in the indie sphere is “you need a newsletter!” So, I saw that some folks also used Substack to share fiction, I wanted to work on my short story skills, so I decided to give it a go. It was literally a decision I made in a day. I tend to be impulsive like that.

It’s been a lot of fun, and I’ve met so many talented people on here I’ve gotta say it’s been motivating me to up my game! Who knows what my first post-substack novel is going to look like! (I have another book coming out next year, which is the last of my pre-substack books!)

CA: You are preparing to publish an actual paper Zine.  Please tell us about that project.

LK: Again, it’s something I decided on a whim! “I’ve never done a zine before… I’ve always wanted to… Why not ask folks on Substack?” It’s definitely a big learning experience already!! Teaching myself how to format it currently!

CA: Anything else I should have asked about, but didn’t?

LK: Keep an eye out for updates regarding my next novel—The Ghosts of Tieros Kol, a sword-and-planet sort of affair, ETA 2025—on my substack, or you can keep up with what I’m reading on Instagram or Goodreads!

CA: Thank you, for the interview, and for Pallas.

LK: Thank you, Contarini, for reading!

Links:

Pallas

The Highwayman Kennedy Thornwick

Mechanical Pulp, Lisa Kuznak’s SubStack page

Mechanical Pulp, Lisa Kuznak’s Instagram page

The Day.  He thought about faking it.  He flirted with pretending that he knew what Martin Heidegger was talking about when he used the word “everydayness” — which Google told him is “Alltäglichkeit” in German.   It sounds more weighty in German.  It struck him as a word to be spoken slowly, with the chin lifted, and a knowing look, perhaps with a raised forefinger, or even a short series of soft raps on the desk, with the knuckle of that same finger, to emphasize the gravity, the centrality of the concept.  

The word, whether in German or English, would be spoken with the implication that something previously only felt or intuited by the listener, but not consciously understood, will at last be revealed, if the listener could but grasp the import of the four syllables.  

But he didn’t really know what it meant. He did have friends who had actually studied Heidegger, and even read him in German.  He had listened to them talk about Heidegger.  They actually knew what they were talking about.  He did not.  

One more area of knowledge he would never make his own.  

Nonetheless, the word “everydayness” popped into his head when he started thinking about how to start this narrative, which he asserts, with apparent sincerity, will be, in terms of its factual content, to the best of his recollection, an accurate recitation of events.    

What he imagined the word “everydayness” meant, in regard to the episode this narrative recounts was, more or less, a day that was nondescript, routine, unmemorable.  

That may or may not have anything to do with what Heidegger meant by it.

(He thought about leaving out this bit about Heidegger, and everydayness.  But since this tale is about actual events, and the recounting is, in a sense, itself an actual event, and since this was how he actually got started on the process of recounting the events, he decided to leave it in.)

Without regard to the foregoing, this section, entitled The Day, could have been more briefly stated as follows:  

He cannot remember anything whatsoever about what he did at his office, on his computer, at his desk, that day.  

The Anticipated Commute.  He left the office around 7:00 p.m.  At this latitude, in late summer, it is still daylight at 7:00.  Based upon several years of experience at this location, he knew that rush hour would be largely over.  The 30 mile trip from his workplace to his place of residence could be as short as 30 minutes.   

The Weather.  Sunny, blue skies, cumulus clouds, warm, with mild breezes, the sky just beginning to fade toward dusk.  Objectively, a pleasant, even beautiful day, weather-wise.  

The Automobile.  A grey 2016 Toyota Corolla with approximately 110,000 miles on it.  In his opinion, a good car.  He has been happy with all his Toyotas.  The car has Illinois plates. The reader may correctly infer from this detail that the events recounted herein occurred in Illinois.

The First Portion of the Commute.  He has no specific recollection of driving down the main street near his office, heading south, turning east onto another main street, then taking the exit onto a four lane highway, heading south.  

The Highway.  The highway was, as expected, busy but not backed up.  As he descended the on-ramp, it seemed to be moving along nicely.  He eased into the traffic and moved over to the left lane, where he would typically be able to drive at about 80 mph.   

The Tire.  The rear, driver’s-side tire was a Michelin Defender2.  It was less than a year old.  Any failure of that tire would not be due to wear and tear.

Note that all four tires were purchased at the same time, and presumably identical. The other three, though critical to what occurred, because they performed as they were supposed to, have, until now, gotten no thought, mention, or credit.  This injustice is hereby rectified.   

The Hypothetical Metal Object.  Afterwards, he hypothesized that at some point, on the on-ramp, or in the first few minutes on the highway, his car ran over some metal object which punctured the tire.  

The Blowout.  He noticed that the sound of the road under the car sounded odd, wrong.  It sounded rougher or louder.  Because the highway was undergoing the unending construction typical of Illinois highways, for the first moment, perhaps two seconds, he thought there was something wrong with texture of the highway surface.

Then the car began to shake slightly and veer oddly. 

The sound became a rapid:

dunt dunt dunt dunt dunt dunt dunt dunt dunt dunt

He thought:  

BLOWOUT

He looked in the rearview mirror, saw that it was open to his right behind him, and drove across three lanes to the right lane.

He assessed, wordlessly, that his odds of getting killed were lower over there. 

The car was vibrating and and weaving as he changed lanes and he was afraid the car would spin out.  

Next:

WHAP WHAP WHAP WHAP WHAP BLUNK! 

Clearly the tire had shredded and flown off.

He could feel he had broken a sweat.

He thought, again without words, that the car might not drive at all and he would be trapped in a fast-moving lane on the highway.

He felt that he really might get killed out here.

He was surprised and relieved that the car was still driving on three tires, at least for the moment.  

There was an exit to the right about a quarter of a mile ahead.  

The Prayer.  While the foregoing events and actions were occurring, his inner psychic machinery activated a Catholic emergency routine of internal prayer. 

It went like this:

Lord get me over. 

Lord get me over.

Lord get me over.

Lord keep me moving

Lord keep me moving

Lord keep me moving.

Lord Jesus get me off of here.

Get me off of here.

Get me to the exit.

Get me to the exit.

Mary my mother my queen pray for me.

Mary my mother my queen pray for me.

Mary pray for me.

Mary pray for me.

St. Michael defend me.  

St. Michael defend me.  

St. Michael defend me.  

This prayer-response occurred in tandem with his operation of the automobile described in the previous section.  

The Ongoing Stress Response. Note that, to his surprise, merely typing the foregoing two sections caused a recurrence of some of the physical sensations of stress which he experienced at the time of the blowout.  

This made it a little bit difficult to type.  

He paused to take a few deep breaths, and he took a quick bio-break before continuing.

The Exit.  He was surprised that the automobile was able to drive on three tires to the exit.  He prayed it would keep going.  He got off at the exit.  He was relieved that there was virtually no traffic.  He turned into a driveway.  The driveway led to a parking lot of a large, glassy office building where everyone seemed to have gone home for the evening.  

He stopped on the driveway.  

He got out of the car.  

He took some deep breaths.

He had reached a place of safety.

He thanked God.  

The Wheel.  The rear, driver’s-side tire was entirely gone. The rim of the wheel had black, melted-and-re-hardened tire material.  He was concerned that the wheel was damaged or that there was structural damage to the car.  

The Jack.  The automobile is equipped with a flimsy jack that has to be inserted into a slot under the car.  If he were in the middle of the Mojave Desert and had no other options he would use that jack.

He felt a twinge of shame.  It is a point of masculine honor to be able to change a tire.  He told himself that if he had to he would, and he could.  

But someone with a proper jack and a powered wrench could do the job quickly and safely.  

The Wait.  Like many motorists, he has AAA insurance.  In the past, he received prompt and good service when he called for roadside assistance.  He fully expected the same quality of service.  

He called the number on the AAA card.  He got someone who said they would send someone.  He waited a long time.  No one arrived.  He called again.  He was again told someone is coming.  He waited a long time yet again.  No one arrived.  He called a third time.  The third time a young woman who sounded African American and had a mild Southern accent, who was apparently working from home with a television on in the background, told him, as if divulging something he should have figured out by now, that no one is coming.  They put the request in once, and forget about it.

She told him he should call around and find someone on his own.

He was angry, and felt betrayed and let down.  But he did online searches on his phone, and made calls, and eventually a man came in a truck with a professional jack and the expected powered wrench.  In ten minutes the spare was installed and he was on his way.  

It was after midnight.

The total time spent in the driveway of the office building near the highway exit was over five hours. 

The Return Home.  He drove home by back roads, not the highway.   There were very few cars on the road.  It took over an hour to get home.  

He was relieved to be moving and that his car worked.  

He looked forward to sleeping.  

A Minor Mystery.  Two hubcaps on the unaffected tires somehow came off and were lost.  How this happened he does not know. 

The Assessment.

The episode was life-threatening, and dramatic, and upsetting — for him, anyway.  However, recounting the story to others the next day, and later, the story was met with little interest.  The conversation quickly moved to matters of immediate and future interest to his various interlocutors.  From the perspective of any other person, the blowout was a non-event.  The sole exception was his elderly mother, who commiserated and shared her own long-familiar tales of near-death on the highway.  

We do indeed come into this world alone, and leave it alone, at least in strictly human terms.  

He took the car to the auto repair place he uses.  He had a new tire put on.  The car was, and still is, fine.  

AAA, like many other previously valuable and important institutions in American life, has been thoroughly enshittified.  

He believes that it is miraculous that the tire blew out just before the exit.  Past that exit it was many miles until the next one.  A few more seconds and he would have missed it. A little further south there is construction under way, and there is no breakdown lane. He would have been in great danger, stopped, in a moving lane on a busy highway, after sunset.  

Whatever the reader may believe about the efficacy of prayer, he attributes his survival, unhurt,  with his car undamaged, to God’s Providence and to the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Prince of the Heavenly Host.  

Pathways

We cannot remember the start of the journey.

We cannot know its end.

We know the direction, but it goes through wilderness.

The pathway frequently yields to moor, or rocky barriers.

The pathway is sometimes lost in fields of bracken.

We are cutting the path by advancing, and hoping we are correct.

Sometimes we see markers left by those who went before.

We know that there have been false turns.

We can brood on those errors.

But better to get back on the path, to keep going.

We leave markers for travelers who follow.

We leave markers for friends we will never know.

The goal is far past the ridge-line before us.

It is over the crest of the hills we see beyond.

Far away, snowy peaks are gleaming.

The pathway lies over them all.

Do not be downcast.

Our companions on the journey make it possible.

Our companions on the journey make it worth the march.

I may be late to the party on this.

These days, I mostly read old things, often very old. Robert A. Heinlein and A.E. van Vogt, Joan Didion and Norman Mailer, Joseph Conrad and Henry James. But I have this nagging feeling that there are good new things. There always are.

That impulse led me, a couple of years ago to discover Rachel Cusk, who is good (sometimes rising to brilliant) but not really all that new. Her next book, Parade, is coming out in June. That will be new new. I am eager to read it.

But, to get to the point, someone on Substack today mentioned Honor Levy, a new name for me, in a way that sounded promising.

I looked her up.

She has two stories online. Both are good.

One story is called Cancel Me

I don’t think I have to apologize for the first few things I said, but I will type it out, tell you anyways because if you think I should apologize I will. I was drunk, but I could see the hosts’ eyes flash. Their eyes said, “Be careful” and this made me angry. I didn’t want to be careful. I was so tired of being careful. I said, “Trigger warnings trigger me.” I was trying to be clever. I was on the radio after all. I said that internet radio was great because it has no laws, no rules, no censorship. I asked the hosts if they wanted to ask me if I thought trigger warnings were a form of censorship. I wanted them to ask and I wanted to tell them that I don’t. I told the hosts and our one listener that although I don’t think trigger warnings are censorship I do think they encourage self-censorship. I told them that self-censorship is counter revolutionary and anti-academic. I told them that I came to college to be as revolutionary and as academic as I could possibly be. I told them that while I was here I realized that there is no way to be both academic and revolutionary. I told them that trigger warnings trigger me because they remind me of this. I don’t know why I sneered. I was being sincere.

The other story is called Internet Girl

Simone Weil says, attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer. Simone Weil starved to death. It was either anorexia or tuberculosis or too much Schopenhauer or in solidarity with the victims of war. No one knows. Not even Google. It might not even matter. Starving is starving and sometimes I starved. Through the immense possibilities for encounter and solidarity, I learned to look at photos of who I wanted to become, to stare at the empty spaces I wanted to have, to run to 7/11 and chug Diet Coke, to imagine maggots crawling through the birthday cake.

The stories are short and good.

These clips are teaser trailers.

I strongly suggest that you go read them both.

It won’t take long. You will like them.

She has a book of her stories called My First Book.

It appears that it was published TODAY.

So maybe I am not hopelessly late to the party.

I promptly ordered a copy of My First Book, and it is now winging its way to me in the U.S. Mail.

This interview is entertaining. It says this about Miss Levy, who is 26:

I was sent an advance copy and found it often quite adept at capturing our generation — there are lots of meme references, emojispeak, and a 54-page encyclopedia of zoomer lingo — without falling into blasé nihilism.

I cannot assess whether she captures her generation, one which came along much later than mine. But based on her two stories, she is indeed mercifully free of blasé nihilism. We don’t need more of that.

Here is another interview. This is nice:

During our first 90-minute Zoom, she mentions: Kathy Acker, H.P. Lovecraft, Dostoevsky, Stephenie Meyer, Eve Babitz, Dave Chappelle, Joan Didion, Yarvin, Robert Anton Wilson, Roberto Bolaño, Bronze Age Pervert, Cookie Mueller, Norman Mailer, Terence McKenna. The Bloomsbury Group and the Algonquin Round Table. Rookie mag.

Some of my own favorites are on there, Lovecraft, Joan Didion, Bolaño (his 2666), Norman Mailer — a name you don’t see very often these days.

An interesting mix of influences.

Ms. Levy’s story “Cancel Me” seems to challenge the notion of cancellation, without preaching about it.

But in the interview she says, about that story:

But there are bad people who deserve to be canceled. That story doesn’t take that into account at all. Reading it, I’m like, oh my God, I need to cancel this narrator.

Oh well. It was nice while it lasted.

Whatever backpedalling she may do, either out of conviction or prudence, the story is what it is, and like any work of art, the author’s assessment is one view, not an exclusive one.

It will be interesting to see if the book version and the online version are much different.

And whatever she may end up saying and doing, the two Honor Levy stories linked above provide a compact, forceful, and moving picture of one young woman’s early life in these strange current times.

So, brava for those.

I hope she can keep it up.

It will require some courage.

May God bless her and give her strength to follow her Muse, and to tell the truth as she sees it through her fiction, at whatever cost.

Honor Levy has a Substack, called My Blog, a play on My First Book. It is, so far, lightly populated. Three posts contain what looks like random junk. Maybe it isn’t even really hers? A parody of some kind? Who knows? She (or whoever) also provides two pages of Good Reads, other people’s stuff, some of which looks intriguing, and may merit further investigation.

Her two stories were published on the Tyrant Books website. Out of touch as I am, I never heard of it before. Looks like there is some other good stuff on there.

There is no shortage of stuff on the Internet … .

I am the dandy of the zombie apocalypse

Riding the underground tunnel amid blips,

The lights from $hining $creens, the undead’s sustenance,

 While, inconspicuous to avoid their wrath,

I read a volume of Byron bought for sixpence

 On a semester abroad in the town of Bath.

…

Click through to read the rest of “The Dandy Of The Apocalypse” by Christian Chensvold

Christian’s Dandyism site is a treasure trove. Click over and scroll through.

Take the helpful quiz to find the answer to the question How dandy are you? Full disclosure: My own score was pitiful. I am disclosed as a nullity. I nonetheless hold my head up, and do my poor best, here and there, now and then, as I can.

Christian was at one time the proprietor of the wonderful Ivy Style site. That also deserves a click-over visit. He kindly published two pieces by me under my IRL name on that site, so I have a particular fondness for it. Full disclosure: I am a man of fiery, volcanic egotism, smoldering beneath a thin crust of feigned self-effacement.

He also recently published The Philosophy of Style, which I know is brilliant. The Philosophy of Style “collects 25 years of his writings on menswear history and gentlemanly topics.” Full disclosure: I have not yet bought it, or read it. But I will. Order your own copy here.

An excerpt from The Philosophy of Style may be found here.

An excerpt of the excerpt:

A sort of rebellious chameleon, the dandy at once defines his era and defies it, exemplifying his cultural milieu while simultaneously subverting it. Though dandies have always been and forever will be like comets, their appearance is rare but inevitable. A rebel with no cause but himself, the dandy is ideally a man of leisure; “free,” as one historian writes, “of all entanglements that interfere with taste.”

Living the life of the Dandy in the vulgar, vapid, and vacuous mid-2020s could, with some justice, be dismissed as a scheme of utter foolhardiness and futility. Yet, was any prior age really any better? Beau Brummel and Charles Baudelaire, thou shouldst be with us at this hour! And as we imagine these men gazing down from their Valhalla of wit and style, a smile flickers across their haughty countenances at the sight of at least one paladin who yet serves the same Muse, defying his times, and setting his own standard …

The text from the back of the book:

Beginning in 2004, Chensvold founded two of the most original and stimulating menswear websites — Dandyism.net and Ivy-Style.com — which drew dozens of contributors, tens of thousands of followers, and international accolades and opprobrium. His articles on style theory, gentlemanly pursuits and menswear history have appeared in The Rake, L’Uomo Vogue, Robb Report and the Wall Street Journal. This book groups together his finest work, including previously undigitized articles on dandyism, as he shines his “diabolical monocle” on a diverse range of subjects all of which share a bittersweet nostalgia for gallant eras of the past.

Also included are three stylish works of fiction: “The Disengage,” a flamboyant pastiche of fin-de-siecle Decadence; “These Are Our Failures,” a rollicking James Bond-like tale on the fate of menswear; and “The Philosophy Of Style,” a culmination of three decades of contemplation on matters of style, and where the search must ultimately arrive.

“I highly recommend taking Master Chensvold’s tome out for a stroll,” writes legendary historian and haberdasher Alan Flusser in his foreword. “The book is a virtual Baedeker of classic male hunting grounds, unearthing style points in such diverse pleasures as pipe smoking and the tango to the evolution of the bachelor pad and go-to-hell pants. It’s with much appreciation for his scholarship that I was able to augment my recent Ralph Lauren biography with the addition of Chensvold’s writings.”

Deaf?  In his right ear he mostly was, he thought.  And he would get a crackling sensation in there, too.  He would shake his head, or bang his ear the way you do if there is water in it when you get out of the pool.

That side of his head had been toward the PA, at the show. He was down front, and it was blaring loud.  So causation was not in question.

At the show, he tried to push toward the middle, in front of the stage, away from the stack of speakers next to the stage.  But it was all elbows and shoulders, sometimes knees, and full-torso impacts in there.

The physicality, the occasional bruising impact, the contact-sportiveness of the hardcore thing was never going to be his bag.

Punk rock started out as dorky kids with guitars, skinny kids who collected records and started bands because they just could not contain the love and energy that the records infused into them, and that came exploding out of them.

Hardcore had energy and enthusiasm, yes.  But it was different.  It had an element of body-building and varsity athletics to it.  It changed the whole tenor of the scene.  And there was the sound, all he really cared about, which he could not love.

He was also dissuaded from pushing to the front and center by the stage diving.  There was a near-inevitability of a teenage kid suddenly appearing in midair, flailing, plunging without warning out of the stage lights, onto his head.  He didn’t want to catch the flying punk kids.  He was risk averse about a sprained finger or wrist.  But there they were, in midair, expecting, believing, that everyone was in this together.  So he felt guilty if he just got out of the way and let them crash.

And if he tried to actually dance, a form of bodily movement seemingly natural in response to music, which was once possible in the realm of punk rock, he became the target of glares, head shaking contempt, open derision, and calls to get the fuck out of the pit.

So he was stranded on the periphery.  He could have moved counterclockwise, in a quarter circle, to the center of the room, toward the back.  That would have been a rational response, a recognition of reality, of his own limitations in that environment.

But he wanted to be close because he loved these guys.

Radius of Trust, they were called.

They started out in, of all places, Weirton, West Virginia.  But they had recently relocated to Cleveland, Ohio.

He heard their first single on WMBR, college radio, one Saturday afternoon when he was back at his parents’ house in the Boston suburbs for a few days.  He and a friend from high school drove into the city, to Newbury Comics, the next day, just so he could buy it.  It had a black and white picture sleeve, with the band standing in an abandoned gas station, holding their guitars. 

The A side was “Madeline’s Mascara,” which was a romantic punk rock song, fast but not blazing fast, with an anthemic chorus and a great solo, clocking in at 2:35.  It was perfect. He loved it.  “Dentist Drill” was the B-Side, a seemingly mocking hardcore pastiche, with breathtaking guitar leads.  On that one, the song crashed to a stop after 2:03, and there was the sound of feedback and laughter, then ten seconds of outro that sounded like the beginning of “There She Goes Again” by the Velvet Underground, then it faded out.  That was tantalizing.

It was not disputable, in his view, that sound-wise Radius of Trust were more like a first wave punk band.  Maybe the cultural isolation of Weirton put them a few years behind the curve, in terms of style. Radius played fast, but they had melodies, and the tempos were not uniformly fast-fast-fast, hardcore fast.  And their tall gangly guitar player played Johnny Thunders-style leads, what he thought of as “blistering” solos, the thrilling kind, the kind he loved and lived for.

Before the band came on he showed the stamp on the back of his hand to the pretty but tough-looking bartender.  He was one of the old people who could drink at an all ages show.

He talked to some guy with a mohawk who was standing next to him.  He told the guy that Radius were like an uptempo Heartbreakers.  And the guy looked at him almost angrily and said, “What are you, an idiot?  Tom fucking Petty?”  And he tried unsuccessfully to explain about the towering greatness of Johnny Thunders and Jerry Nolan and Walter Lure and Billy Rath.  But the guy just tuned out, and turned his back, to talk to his friends, or just to other people.

Whatever his theories, the kids at the all ages show thought Radius were fucking hardcore man, and they yelled “FUCKING RADIUS!”

At age 24 he was already part of a slower-moving, impact-averse, now dying breed, or so it felt.

For an encore he hoped for that hinted-at Velvets cover. But they did “12XU” by Wire, which was cool, and they finished with an obscure one, “Screaming Fist” by the Viletones, which was even cooler.

The encore provoked, and fully deserved, frenzied thrashing during both songs.

He walked back to his apartment in the cool night.  It was breezy, and he was cold, because he’d gotten sweaty at the show.

He had on sneakers, jeans, a Mission of Burma t-shirt, a personal favorite, and a red cowboy style bandana tied around his wrist.

He was underdressed for the show.

The kids these days often wore more overtly punk regalia, including serious boots. They had weirder hair, even some legitimate Mohawks.

He had the side-part and short hair he had adopted ever since he fell in love with The Jam in high school.  One day, to everyone’s surprise, he just went to the barber shop at the mall and had them cut off his collar-length hair.  For him the 70s ended that day.  But he regressed to his dream of the Mod 60s, and perhaps to his own childhood, when his mother combed his hair before school, instead of facing whatever the 80s were going to be.

He went to the Radius show by himself.

Everybody had jobs.  No one but him was willing to be out late on a Wednesday.

He was tired at work the next day, but he just drank a lot of coffee.  Two of the other paralegals were rock’n’roll guys and expressed regret about missing the show.  He enjoyed regaling them with the details, only a little bit embellished, at lunch on Thursday.

Two days after the show, he got worried the ear issue would be permanent.

But it was mostly better when he got up on Saturday.

SOLILOQUY IN AN EBON TOWER

The poet speaks, addressing a framed picture of
Baudelaire upon a bookcase:

The lamp burns stilly in the standing air,
As in some ventless cavern. Through wide windows
The midnight brings a silence from the stars,
And perfumes that the planet dreams in sleep.
The hounds have ceased to bay; and the cicadas
To play their goblin harps. The owl that whilom
Hooted his famine to a full-chapped moon,
Has pounced upon his gopher, or has gone
To fresher woods behind a farther hill;
And Hecate has grounded all the witches
For some glade-hidden Sabbat.

In my room
The quick, malign, relentless clock ticks on,
Firm as a demon's undecaying pulse,
Or creak of Charon's oar locks as he plies
Between the shadow-crowded shores. Evoked
Within the vaults of my funereal brain,
Voices awaken, sibilant and restless —
Tongues of the viper's charnel-fostered brood,
Half-grown, amid the shreds of winding sheets
And crumbling wicker of old bones. They sing,
Those little voices, all the poisonous,
Importunate melodies you too have heard,
O Baudelaire, in midnights when the moon
Sank, followed by some cloudy hearse of dreams.
Into the skyless nadir of despond.
Black-flickering, cloven tongues! Though we distill
Quintessences of hemlock or nepenthe,
We cannot slay the small, the subtle serpents.
Whose mother is the Lamia Melancholy
That feeds upon our breath and sucks our veins,
Stifling us with her velvet volumes.

Now
My thoughts pursue the santal and sad myrrh
Sighed by the shrouds of all hesternal sorrows.
Busied with old regrets, they carry on
Such commerce as the burrowing necrophores
Conduct from grave to grave; or pause to mumble
Snatches of ancient amorous elegies,
Deploring still some splendid, stately love —
Gone like the pomps of void Ecbatana —
That only lives in epodes, but will rise
To ghost the goldless morrows, clothed about
With hues of suns declining and decayed,
And crowned with ruinous autumn.

Other thoughts
Exhume the withered wing-shards of ideals
Brittle and light as perished moths, or bring
To sight the mummied bats of blear mischance,
By dismal eves and moons disastrous flying,

But fallen now and dead as are the heavens
Their vans have darkened. On beloved deaths
I muse, and through my twice-wept tears re-gather
The threads that Clotho and Lachesis have spun
And Atropos has cut; and see the bleak
Sinister gleaming of the steely shears
Behind the riven arrasses of time ….

What weapon can we arm us with? What bulwark
Build against grief and time? What moat renewed
With waters mortal as those that shroud Gomorrah,
Will the sea-going termite never ferry
To gnaw the ebon tower, the ebon ark
Holding the Muses' covenant? Splendor-brimmed,
What grail of God or Satan will suffice
For all the breadless days, the unguerdoned labors?

Yet, for a toll so light, by Song transported,
To sail beyond Elysium and Thélème,
And see, from oblivion looming, balmier shores
Of fables infinite! To light our dreams
At rose Aldebaran or sky-huge Antares,
Then quench their heat, or temper Damascus thought
In cold aphelions and apastrons far!
To pace the sun's Typhoean ramparts vast!
To couch on Saturns's outmost ring, or roll
With Pluto through his orb of eventide
Whose Hesper is the dwindled sun! To flaunt
Before the blind an immarcesible purple
Won from the murex of Uranian seas,
And fire-plucked vermeil of Vulcan, worn against
These aguish mists and wintry shadows! Thus
We triumph; thus the laurel overtops
The upas and the yew; and we decline
No toil, no dolor of our votive doom.

High-housed within the Alchemic Citadel,
We are served by Azoth and by Alkahest.
Out of the gleamless mire and sand we make
Pactolian metal. Fumed from our alembics,
The world dissolves like vapors opium-wrought,
Or drips, condensed, to philtres and to venoms
That Circe nor Simaetha dreamed. We build,
Daedalus-like, a labyrinth of words
Wherein our thoughts are twi-shaped Minotaurs
The ages shall not slay. Our ironies,
Like marbled adders creeping on through time,
Shall fang the brains of poets yet to be.
Our nacred moons and corposants of beauty
Shall float on ever-mootful lands retained
By Lar and Lemur; where Chimera flies,
And still the Sphinx unanswerably rules;
Where the red phantoms we have loosed from Dis
Still haunt the thickets and the cities: where
Our phosphor lamps may serve as well as any
Along the rutted way to Charon's wharf.

— Clark Ashton Smith

Source for poem: The Eldritch Dark

NB, The Eldritch Dark is a valuable site for devotees of Clark Ashton Smith. However, I have found that the poems are often poorly edited, have typos, and must be used with caution. In this case I consulted my hardcopy of The Black Book of Clark Ashton Smith (1979), which contains “Soliloquy in an Ebon Tower.” I found several typos, and an entire omitted line, which I have corrected here.

This poem has been a favorite since I first read it in 1979.

That story which the bold Sir Bedivere, First made and latest left of all the knights, Told, when the man was no more than a voice In the white winter of his age, to those With whom he dwelt, new faces, other minds.

***

The stillness of the dead world’s winter dawn
Amazed him, and he groaned, ‘The King is gone.’
And therewithal came on him the weird rhyme,
‘From the great deep to the great deep he goes.’

***

Then from the dawn it seemed there came, but faint
As from beyond the limit of the world,
Like the last echo born of a great cry,
Sounds, as if some fair city were one voice
Around a king returning from his wars.

Thereat once more he moved about, and clomb
Even to the highest he could climb, and saw,
Straining his eyes beneath an arch of hand,
Or thought he saw, the speck that bare the King,
Down that long water opening on the deep
Somewhere far off, pass on and on, and go
From less to less and vanish into light.
And the new sun rose bringing the new year.

Alfred Lord Tennyson, Idylls of the King, “The Passing of Arthur”

If you have not read “"The Passing of Arthur” I highly recommend it. New Years day is a good time. It is linked above. I will read it tonight in the last hour of 2023.

Some years ago I wrote this:

The strifes and sadnesses and laughter and joy and work and play and songs and silences of another year are now sealed up and put aside and stored away in the attic of memory. And now the new year with its prospects and menaces, its and tediums and discoveries, its old friends and new ones, comes faintly into view.

We are entering a contentious and eventful year. Be good to each other. Keep your sense of humor. Do not personalize the political, and correct or avoid those who do. The personal is too valuable to be debased in that way. Be hopeful. Have gratitude. Fear God and dread nought.