Red Scare - The Novelist w/ Jordan Castro

Episode Date: June 19, 2022

Author Jordan Castro joins the ladies to talk about his new book, The Novelist: A Novel, scatology, eschatology, "the program," jealousy vs. envy, pride vs. vanity

We have a special guest today. The author of the novelist, a novel, Jordan Castro. Welcome to Red Square Blind. Thanks for having me. Congratulations on the novel. Thanks. It's a big deal. Thank you.

How do you feel? Good. Yeah, I feel good. I'm happy to be here. The novelist comes out on June 14th. That's right. On June 14th? Is this June 14th?

No, I don't think so. But it is around then. I think it's the 19th. The new Juneteenth novelist release. But Juneteenth's the emancipation proclamation? I think so. I think it's also, is it also flag day? Am I remembering that correctly?

I don't think they do flag day anymore. I don't know what that means. Apple calendar says. It says flag day, Juneteenth and flag day and Pride month. A lot of cooks in the kitchen. I could be totally wrong. I'm trying to look for it now. June 14th.

Oh, no, no. June 14th is flag day. So that's when the book comes out. Oh, Father's Day is June 19th. So who is the novelist? Who is the novelist? You know what I mean? What is the novelist up to?

I think it's just a character in the book. He's the protagonist of the book. He's contained within the pages of the novel, I guess. Yeah. But Jordan Castro is also kind of a background character in the book. The novelist has a somewhat admiring but also somewhat envious relationship with. Yeah. Yeah.

Jordan Castro is also a novelist. There are many novelists. There are many novelists. The Eric Carrick is a novelist. On June 14th, I will be officially a novelist. And prior to being a novelist, you wrote poetry? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Back in the day.

And what made you want to undertake the novel as a form? I think I just like reading novels and I wanted to write a novel. I also didn't really set out to write a novel, I don't think. But then eventually I realized I was writing a novel. That's probably the best way to do it. Because as the novelist of your book, the novelist finds out, setting out to write a novel is basically paralyzing and torturous experience. Definitely.

Yeah. Definitely. Yeah. I had to do some writing this week. Really, yeah. You had to do some? I had to make some revisions to my screenplay. Not even actually very technical writing.

I knew exactly the words I had to type. And still I was like, okay, are you going to get on the computer? Are you going to open it up today the day? Did you do it? Yeah, yeah, I did. Nice. Congrats. Do you think it's harder to write a novel in this day and age than it was before,

even though so many more novels seem to be being published? I don't know. I didn't write one before. What do you mean, I guess, if you have like a... Well, it seems like a lot of the novelists' existential pain and dread comes from the huge amount of procrastination and rationalization that he undertakes in the course of trying to write a novel. It could be worse now, but I would imagine that back in the day, people had stuff to

distract them to their families. Some guy at your chrismation yesterday was telling me about the British guy, or Ed. Ed, yeah. And he told me that Cormac McCarthy's wife used to lock him in a room and make him stay there until he slid two pages under the door. Wow. So it's possible that he was also like... Just spazzing.

Spazzing. Yeah, exactly. Is that also a classic narcissist-BPD relationship? Very well could be. Yeah, well, procrastination, but also addiction. The novelist struggles at one point with the fact that he is attempting to write a drug novel while detailing his own less, maybe insidious, addictions to caffeine and social media and stuff.

What do you make... Someone asked this recently about addictive personalities on the love line. What do they ask? Will you be in addictive personalities if we consider ourselves as having addictive personalities? Do you think there's a difference between having an addictive personality and being an addict? I don't really know. I think that people can get addicted to all sorts of things.

You can have this kind of infinite desire and apply it to a finite thing and it can just wreck you. I do think that in terms of drug addiction or alcoholism, it's specific and is a particular kind of spiritual malady or whatever, but people get addicted to all kinds of stuff. Writing novels. Writing novels, yeah. I do think that it has to do with your whole personality as well. It's not just like an isolated trait or something like that, but it has to do with the constellation

of your kind of self or something. I guess... Well, the common coin I think that I, myself, have been recently subscribed to is that drug addiction and creative motivation come from the same place, but if you really look at what drug addiction is, it seems to me like at least a large part of it is also about creating defense mechanisms and managing anxiety. It is like a rationalization because it's such a kind of consuming process to be a drug addict.

You're constantly trying to figure out how to score, where to steal money from. Your whole life revolves around your drug addiction. In a way, that's probably very harmful to any sort of creative process, and yet many people throughout history have been great artists and also raging drug addicts. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's... Sounds right.

Yeah, but it's hard to reconcile those two because they seem to stem from the same thing, but then they seem to actively curb each other. I guess the other thing though is that I sort of do feel like the... I struggle to think of examples of writers who were raging drug addicts and active raging drug addicts and who kind of had a consistently meaningful and quality output. A lot of... After I got sober, it was kind of shocking the amount of writers that Raymond Carver or other people who have this kind of persona of...

He writes about drinking all the time, but his career didn't really take off until he got sober. I'm pretty sure even Hemingway, who has that reputation, would wake up in the morning and write until noon, and he wouldn't be drinking that. I don't know. I think it is... That's like a romantic myth of the drunk writer. Do you think writers and artists dramatize their drug addiction for...

If you look at somebody like William S. Burroughs, right? Right. Who also had long stretches of getting off the stuff, back on it, and you know what I mean? Yeah. But yeah, I think they romanticize it. I think a lot of the time, too, writers have this kind of self-centered, narcissistic sort of inward-looking compulsion, and a lot of their writing has to do with foisting their

neuroticism on the reader or something. That can be entertaining and good, but I think it ultimately is kind of cheap and a dead end. Yeah. Well, the novelist distinguishes between writers and writer types as he laments the realities of the publishing industry and the way that most literature just sort of self-reproduces itself. Yeah.

I had an epiphany, I think, when I was reading a Rachel Kushner book or something, and I was like, so novelist as a person who sits down and types a bunch of words. Rachel Kushner is a good example. So anyone can just do this crap? Yeah. I don't read anything about her, but I remember watching the interview and feeling like she was very tight-lipped and kind of stern. Am I remembering correctly, or is that right?

I don't know how she is in her personally, but the writer type is definitely. But she's a fastidious researcher. A lot of her books read to me almost like a student research project by a very precocious mind at the expense of certain, like, greater, like, profundity or mystique or something. Yeah, I haven't read. I was going to start talking, I was like, we're dynamism, I feel like I could, I already feel like I could rant. But I was, I was reminded of that, the forward that Sylvia Plath's mom wrote to the bell

jar where she talks about kind of in this almost like backhanded way, how Plath sort of caricaturized the people around her to serve her own needs and purpose. Oh, I'm so sure. There's this kind of picture of the writer as like a profoundly narcissistic person who inflicts themselves on the rest of the world or inflicts their subjectivity. And when they're really good, it becomes canonical, I mean, auteurs too, I think. Are writers the worst people in the world? Novel, or novelists are the worst people in the world?

I'm not. No, yeah. Besides me. Besides you. Yeah, probably. But it's also hard to say because I feel like a lot of that is like the kind of, you know, memetic rivalry thing where it's like, of course, I would feel like they're the worst in the world because I'm also like in some sense competing with them or whatever, even

if I think I'm not. And I'm not, you know, I kind of believe so. Yeah. You're doing your own thing. I really enjoyed your book very much, and it was a great read. I struggled a lot with the bathroom stuff. That's what the girls keep saying. Yeah.

The women are like, a lot of them bring it up, but the guys just don't bring it up. It's been described as scatological. Yeah, I know. I know people, all the women are like, I have two female blurbs and they each say scatological. But there was like some bookstore grammar, like a normie bookstore grammar who like posted a big thing about it today, and she said she loved the wiping stuff. Full clean. Well, I love, I think, which is nice.

You got it. I mean, it's, you know, when it happens, it's a good, well, two of your greatest profundities in the book come from this like, scatological, I'll pull it up. Thank you for recognizing that. Because I really did try to make it the part where you say that like successfully wiping your ass on the first try, like one and done produces the same effect as standing over the dead body of a vanquished enemy. And then the kind of like more mundane, but no less profound observation that everyone

now poops with their phone in the room, which led me to think like, could anybody poop if they didn't have their phone? You know, I stopped. I stopped. You had to untrain yourself? Yeah. Because it was like, I would sit on the toilet for too long. It was no good.

It's like not good to do that. It gives you hemorrhoids and stuff like that. I think people, I think people pretend to excuse themselves to the bathroom. Yeah. So that they could sit on their phone uninterrupted. That's definitely true. I would just sit there and leave. Dasha's got her like.

Dasha looks horrified. No. I just, well, you know, like, like all great works of art forced me to, you know, confront my own, my own life. Yeah. And why? Right. Because I'm, yeah, I was like, I'm like offended by this.

Like I, and like just today we were talking with Megan Kelly about how we don't get offended by anything. These are cool reactionary girls and I was like, this is like offensive, like this, this is offensive to me. And then I was like, well, why is it offensive to me? Because I'm probably so stunted. I never like made it to like the anal stage. And that's why I like have an oral fixation, you know, what's the order or oral than anal.

Um, but I'm so, yeah, emotionally stunted that I'm like. That is probably why you were about. My novelist would be like, yeah, like biting her nails or something, but there is, there is, I'm like, too, I'm too, um, what are you, did you have a, were you, um, offended by this? Well, I'm first off, I'm too fried to, to articulate the exact connection, but it seems that we do live in a like a very anal age and a very anxious age and they're, and they're somehow related, but, um, no, I, I, when I cracked the book, me too, it was a bridge

too far. So happy when it was over, but then as I kept reading the book and it really went on and on and on. I went on and on and I was like, Oh, finally he's done going to the bathroom, but then I kept thinking about how he had gone to the bathroom for so long and then he would sort of look into it at moments and yeah, I like never really left my consciousness once that like was there because I didn't find it so, yeah, abjagt. Yeah.

And like you forget that he's going to the bathroom because he forgets and he goes on this whole like metaphysical philosophical tangent, um, in the course of taking a dump or whatever. Now I, when I cracked the book initially, I was kind of angered and offended because I was like, this is so tedious and monotonous, the first page, right? The first two pages. And I realized after getting like 10 pages into it, before you even mentioned Thomas Bernhardt, I was like, Oh, this is Bernhardtian, right?

And then the, the kind of novelist obsession with woodcutters comes in and he's trying it. He, he even calls it my woodcutters novel. Yeah. Yeah. He starts to make some headway. He's so mad about a guy named Eric who expresses some anti-natalist sentiments. Yeah.

And that's when, yeah, then that's when the novelist says, finally, I was writing a novel. Yeah. Manically typing about what a narcissist Eric is. But there, yeah, it's very kind of like self-aware and funny. I'm, I'm curious if woodcutters is your fave Bernhardt book, IRL, or if you have another one and what about what is what is so about an angry guy? I haven't read. Yeah.

He's like sitting in the corner of like a artistic dinner is what he calls it. It's like that. He's like waiting for an actor to appear after a performance at the theater and like seething about the other attendees of this party. So it sounds like the guy in the corner where they don't even know that he's a novelist. Yeah, definitely. I think like, yeah, woodcutters and the loser in concrete are probably like my favorite. He wrote them within the span of like three years.

Oh, wow. My favorite ones. Yeah. My trusty woodcutters and loser copies displayed on the good bookshelf. We had Sheila Hetty here a couple of weeks ago and it's very nice because the guests face toward the good bookshelf and then the bad bookshelf is behind me. And it's like the comma sutra work out and sadly porn. Sadly porn.

That's that's by the last psychiatrist. So that one might be good. I haven't finished. It's hard to get. It's hard to get through. I don't know if we could say it's free. Free women, free men is kind of good. That one's good.

Yeah. I listen to the audiobook and she's got this like she like stops herself and she's like, this is the best, I'm going to read this again because it's the best line I've ever read. So cute. Yeah, it's nice. Oh, I love her. Yeah.

I love her. She's the only one who can get away with like stunting. It's awesome. It's like natural and organic when she does it. So I, Sheila Hetty asked me after she came on the pod and then probably read a bunch of hateful comments about her on the internet. How it was that I, you know, dealt with being, you know, so scrutinized all the time. And I wanted to ask you in the context of like the Jordan Castro character because initially

it sort of seemed like the Jordan Castro on the novelist is almost like an avatar for like name searching. But then as the novel went on, I felt less that way. Yeah. I think it was sort of like, um, originally it was just sort of like a stand in for like all these various, various like problematic quote unquote, like people who I would like see getting kind of, you know, lambasted online. And then like at a certain point, I just started like engaging with people's work directly

when I would see that happening. And I would realize like almost all the time it was like people acting in bad faith and taking quotes out of context and stuff. And I think it was also just sort of, um, Nicolette, my wife actually told me to name it Jordan Castro. And so like it wasn't originally named that, but then eventually it sort of became like a place for me to like put, um, some of my anxieties about publishing and stuff. But then I thought of like, have you seen Eight Mile with like, you know, when he's

like, uh, in the last battle and he's like has to go first and he's like, uh, saying all the stuff that the dude might say to him or whatever. Yeah. I feel like it was sort of like that where I was like, uh, anticipating criticism and stuff and just dismissing them and having fun. So yeah, I realized that after I was like, I did that today on Twitter, but it didn't go over too well. I think I saw that where your nipples protruding on Megan Kelly.

I was wearing a mesh shirt and a see-through bra, but I think they actually weren't, um, we looked modest. We thought they were. I thought they might be, um, but I was willing to take that risk, um, um, Megan Kelly. Um, should I, should we read the passage about Jordan Castro? Cause I think it's really good and it, and it sort of, um, captures a lot of the, you could even say like leftist resentment that characterizes the art and literary scenes. Um, I had felt something like shame while reading this interview because I'd expected

to hate it, but found myself agreeing with a large portion of it. Journalists often group Jordan Castro's name with figures I found utterly disagreeable and he was often described using highly charged, but ultimately meaningless political terms, all of which I discovered after reading his books and interviews were based on egregious misrepresentations of things he had said or written, or more often had no bearing on his actual views and were simply slurs meant to slander him until Violette, who had never heard of Jordan Castro sat down next to me and immediately began agreeing with what he was saying to, um, fuck, I thought in reference to the passing fragment fragmented all I felt

about my laptop working. For most of my life, I'd believed everything was broken. I'd believed everything was broken in a manner that I'd only recently begun to understand. Blindly assumed things weren't true. My whole life I'd been oriented toward the world in a manner that reflected me back. I'd always started with myself only pretending to look outward and only pretending to look inward too. I'd always viewed malice and tragedy as the only true facts of my life, ignoring everything

else that didn't fit my self-serving narrative. And I think like the character of Jordan Castro in the book is this like avatar for a guy who managed to break three from that kind of like toxic internal monologue or dynamic that we all have with ourselves, which is why he's such a compelling figure for the novelist. Yeah, he's like the chatted version of what the novelist wants to be or whatever. Yeah, and the novelist is so embodied, right? He's like undertaking this cerebral task, but it's thwarted, I feel like by the limitations of his like physical being.

And I feel like, I don't know, a lot of writers, a lot of novelists, the novelist experience is about like giving form to something because you do feel so dissociated from your body, you know? Like, I mean, I've been rereading Nietzsche because I'm regressing, but I feel like his whole like body of work was him like struggling with being like a sickly weird freak and like trying to actualize through writing as like an ubermensch as like a strong, which is what the Jordan Caster character sort of does, no? Yeah, kind of, yeah, definitely.

I was just thinking about how, yeah, I have a lot of thoughts about Nietzsche's personal life. I was like, yeah, there's like, I read a great essay analyzing his like relationship with Wagner and Cosima Wagner and about how like he was kind of in this like triangular relationship with Wagner where he like, you know, kind of worshiped him as almost like a God or whatever. And they like fell in love with the same woman. And like, originally the woman was married to someone else. And when Wagner eventually took this dude's wife, the dude was like, well, you know, if

your wife has to choose between a man and a God, like you can't blame her for choosing God, you know, this guy loved Wagner. But then when Nietzsche tried to send this guy his music that he had written, he just like utterly trashed him, you know, and Nietzsche would like go to parties with Cosima and Wagner and he would like bring them gifts and all. So he was always like the third. Yeah, exactly. You know, and he was always kind of like impotently desiring, you know, Wagner's like sort of

life and just coming up against it every time. Well, isn't that sort of like what happens in woodcutters at the end? There's like that moment where like the actor arrives and like delivers this like scathing monologue, right? And like the, the, the seething rancorous narrator is like temporarily lifted from his like myopic view of the world where everyone else is succeeding because they're a shitty person. Mm hmm.

And what's weird about that part in woodcutters too is that the actor who he's been kind of seething about the whole time sounds almost exactly like the narrator. Right. You know, it's sort of like hard to tell in these like memetic relationships, like, you know, what is like kind of impotent desire and like resentment and so on and what's like actually kind of like a principled critique, you know. Mm hmm. Well, because everything, not everything, but a lot of things do sound like a principled

critique or they take the form, they're like a simulacrum or whatever of a principled critique and then you like look further and realize, and that's like a function of social media. Well, they can go ahead and say that's exactly what happened with like the rant about the Eric character, which was the first part of the book that I wrote, which was me sort of just chimping out about an old friend, you know, and it was like, you know, well, you know, whatever, whatever. And I thought Berlin girl friend.

Yeah, exactly. And when I was writing it, I was like, yeah, you know, like I'm, I'm kind of like, like, pawning him or whatever. And then when I went back in red, I was like, this is like, you know, even if some of it is true, a lot of it is cope. And I feel like I had to sort of like, René Girard talks about having this like existential downfall where you realize that you've been trying to scapegoat one of your characters and you are able to then describe the evil of the other from within yourself, you know,

and I think like, even for me, it's like a lot of the time when I feel like I have a kind of righteous critique of something, it's, you know, even if it's partly true, it can also be motivated by a kind of like, envy or projection. Well, I mean, all, all cope is like 98% true, but it doesn't make it any less cope. Right. Right. Yeah. Which is the scary thing.

And I think like Eric and Jordan Castro really kind of foils for each other, like the narrator is sympathetic to Jordan Castro for some arbitrary reason and unsympathetic to Eric. But like, you could just as well accuse the, the narrator of all the same. Well, so many of his anxieties about Eric's surface when he thinks about his own like inability to provide for his family. Right. Yeah. Like he, there is like, I thought that portion was, was very beautiful kind of in like the,

through the, yeah, the seething chimp out that there was like this reflexive kind of like empathy in like bringing mindfulness to why you feel a certain way. That definitely got added in later. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, but yeah, oftentimes, yeah, the people that, um, bother us the most just remind us

of like aspects of ourselves that we just actually can't tolerate at all. Or they remind us of like more fully realized and fulfilled versions of ourselves, which isn't in some ways flattering because you can intuit that you have it in you to be like them. And of course you have to find some kind of like arbitrary, if not entirely invalid reason for why they are a shitty person with bad politics and you aren't right. And I think I was thinking a lot about kind of the Gerardian concept of envy because I read that book, um, that one that's on this bookshelf, I see Satan fall lightning.

That was the first one I read. Yeah, it's about the scapegoat and what dawned on me is like, I think also people, this might be also an arbitrary cinematic distinction, but in my mind, jealousy means coveting something that somebody else has and wanting it for yourself, whereas envy means wishing that the other person didn't have those things wanting it robbed or stolen from them, which is a much seedier and more evil emotion. Right. Yeah.

I like that distinction. And resentment, resentment, yeah, it's like the driving, the driving force, I think. That was like, that was kind of like how I, uh, I did this thing where I like looked at the resentment Wikipedia page and I like read almost every book that was like referenced on it. Oh, wow. I don't know, I became convinced that that was really the thing that's been kind of like motive or animating so much of like the discourse and also the, um, just the way that people

are online and, and, you know, inside themselves or whatever, and it's something that people just don't talk, like people don't talk about resentment or envy at all anymore. Yeah, yeah. Like it's sort of, um, absent from the discourse and at some point I just became convinced that it was actually the thing kind of, you know, I've been thinking of, right. Writing something about jealousy versus envy, like I thought because I'm so bored, I don't want to write like critique, but there, nobody's has really written like, actually, that's why I love the last psychiatrist cause he writes a lot about this.

But I remember that quote, that famous quote from Gourvidal where he said, um, I think envy is the central fact of American life. And I remember being completely like thrilled and impressed by that quote because it seemed so right at the time. And I think actually when he was saying it, that was wrong because at that point jealousy was the central fact of American life. People were locked in productive competition with one another, like keeping up with the Joneses.

I think now envy is the central fact of American life because people want other people to not have the things that they've attained. Well, there's a scarcity mentality, right? Yeah. And there's also, um, you know, everything is so, I think flattened especially because of the internet and like our material conditions haven't gotten better and, you know, a very long time or, you know, um, but, uh, I was thinking about when you were talking about that, I was thinking about there's a interview with the riffraff where he, uh, and I think

with Theo, Theo Vaughn and he's talking about how like back in the day, people used to hit him up and be like, your music really inspires me to go to my, my job at the post office. But now he said that social media has been around for a long time. People hit him up and they always say, your music really inspires me to become a rapper. I thought that was like actually kind of profound because it's like people, especially with social media, um, you know, they, they take different people for models and they're all kind of on the same level and they want to become like the other people, which I think leads to envy because not everyone can be, uh, well, you know, from, from riffraff to Eminem to

Chet Hank, stupid little wiggers are often very profound. They're the prophets of profundity in our culture when I was a kid, I wanted to be Eminem so bad. I took a picture of him to the barber and he's like, this is how I want my hair. Did you get like the stan like blonde? No, but I did get, um, I did get like, uh, blonde, like what is it, streaks or whatever. Tips. Not just the tips.

I think the whole thing. Oh, uh-huh. Um, I don't know. What did you like about Eminem so much? I don't know. I just, uh, I was like in third grade and, um, uh, but yeah, I wrote on like, uh, uh, one of the like state tests or whatever that I wanted to become a rapper and my dad, I told my dad about it and he like made me, uh, made me rap for him and, and he was like laying

on my bed and I wrapped for him and then he was like, if you're going to be a rapper, you're going to have to like get into it more. I thought you were going to say like, he like slapped you upside the head and said no son of mine. What's crazy is like my mom, uh, was like, you shouldn't listen to this stuff. Let me listen to it first and make, you know, and she, and it was like an edited version, but then she still let me listen to it. I was like probably 10 or whatever and I was in the gym the other day advisory.

Are you, are you into bone thugs? You know, I think I'm a bit too young. I went to camp with Lazy Bone's son because I'm from Cleveland. Are you kidding? And actually another jealous that you went to camp with some guys, I like worship his group. I don't know. I guess I'm, uh, but I act another, I don't know why I'm telling these rap stories from

my like, uh, very young age, but I, the camp counselor had a stay after one time and had me and Lazy Bone's son rap for him as well. Those are the two, uh, one member. Was it a contest or just no, it was just like, he just wanted cause, cause, uh, you guys were like at a hip hop camp or something. He was in my high school for, for, for a period of time. And so, um, it was just like a normal camp. Was it a sleepaway camp or like a day camp?

Yeah. Well, when I was reading the book, I noticed that some of the rap references seemed like cause you're, you were born like 91 or 92, right? 92. Yes. I was like, those are like, like rap references from like my like generation, which is like a quarter generation ahead of yours or something like juvenile. Oh yeah.

But that was just sort of like freeze. That was just like, uh, coolio. That was a weird owl reference though. No, I know, I know, but weird, but even weird owl. I guess weird owl was like, weird owl was right. I listened to weird owl and I was, you know, I was like, is this guy 40? That's a good point though. Were you pirating music as a, as a youth?

Yeah. Cause that was how I got into weird owl and Tom green and stuff. Cause I was like, I would go on Kazar or like Morpheus or whatever and type in like funny song and put it on and burn it on a CDR and listen to some funny, funny music for fun. You look like you could be a rapper. Like if you shaved your head or something. Don't encourage him. He just wrote a novel.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, he was a poet. You never know. I guess. Rap is poetry. It is. Yeah.

I remember my mom used to pretend to field my rap albums, but she just actually really liked them. My mom was like really big into bone thugs. And I remember, I have this vivid memory of like being in Connecticut and listening to bone thugs with my mom. It's a very kind of Ohio memory. One time I made my mom listen to, um, I think like a heroin by the velvet underground and I was like high school.

I was like, the song's really meaningful to me and she was like, she was like, yeah. She was like, okay, no. I was like, this is a song that you need to hear. My immigrant mother needs to, she was like, is this a man or a woman singing? And I was like, it doesn't matter. Don't worry about it. Um, Jordan, I'm curious if you can explain to me, um, why Bernhard's seething and rancorous narrative tone has the opposite effect of what you think it would have and makes you

actually feel alive and energized. Yeah. It's very funny. Yeah. Um, but it doesn't make you feel like a bitter and miserable and red pilled. It actually makes you feel like alive in the way that like Bronze Age mindset makes me feel alive. Yeah, it's kind of a bit at this point, but I'm curious why, because I can't explain

it to myself. And like Eli was like, it's art, baby. Don't worry about it. It's not nonverbal. I was like, no, I need to know. Uh, yeah, I'm not sure. I mean, one, one thing is that I think it's just sort of like funny in that it's sort of like takes a sort of like a kind of like impotency thing to its like logical extreme

and just kind of like gets, you know, even more negative or something. But I, maybe the other, I mean, I read something about, uh, that I thought was interesting where this guy was saying how Bernard's novels aren't necessarily pessimistic because like even though his narrators are caught up in this thing, like there's the kind of like, I don't know if metatextual is the word, but like you read it understanding that Bernard himself wasn't actually, he was able to write, you know, so many of his books are about trying to write and failing to write or failure to get started on stuff and like, um, but you know, you're reading a book.

And so there's like a kind of like understanding that like, you know, But there isn't that anymore because I can anticipate like when this book comes out that there will be some critiques professional or otherwise that will literally conflate you with the author and be like, this guy is seething and miserable and coping. I mean, I tried to like, uh, the Jordan Casper character. I mean, I hope that people like pause before they accuse me of being my narrator. Do you? Yeah.

Do you? That's very clever. Yeah. I'll, I'll credit some. Nicolette. Yeah. Yeah. Do you think that, um, like, are you bracing yourself for bad reviews?

I feel sort of ready for it, you know, I mean, I think I, I've spent so, I mean, I spent a lot of time working on the book and also like, you know, watching the cultural movements. Well, I could tell because the reference to me wearing the tweedie bird shirt is from like 2019. And I was like, have you spent like four years of working on this book? I finished it actually the first draft in January of 2019. So like for me, it feels kind of like old, you know? Yeah.

But, um, and I was bracing, I mean, I'm not even bracing myself. I sort of at this point have, I think the kind of like literary establishment media has like absolutely no credibility in terms of their moral posturing and the, you know, but I, but I also have been surprised because like the books to grammars or like the norm, like they've all been really loving the book. And so it's possible that, you know, people would, would the legacy media even review a guy like you? I don't mean that in like a pejorative way.

But like, no, no, no, I don't mean that in a pejorative way because it occurs to me that they don't really review anyone worth reviewing these days. Right. Right. Um, I don't know. I guess we'll see. Yeah. Like I'm curious, do you think that you'll get a Christian Lorenzen review?

He should do it Christian. If you're listening, you should, uh, you know, it's possible. I don't know. We'll see. I mean, I know someone's reviewing it for book forum. It could be. Well, that's, that's main, I would say on that as mainstream. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. It'd be nice if you did. Do you think that the novelist would have been more poorly received, had it been written even maybe like, or but published like four years ago. Totally. Yeah. Yeah.

Definitely. I think it's sort of the perfect time. I was originally like kind of bummed that it was like, uh, you know, I finished it and then, um, and it was just going to take so long to come out, but now I've sort of feel like it's the perfect time, um, because I do think things are changing and, uh, I'm kind of optimistic, you know, we'll see. Yeah. Yeah.

The white male novelist is back baby. That's right. That's right. Yeah. We're letting them, we're giving them another shot. Thank you. I appreciate it. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Great white American hope, long, long really Eminem and now Jordan Castro. Yeah. What Eminem did for, uh, what Eminem did for, for, for rap and hip hop, I'm trying to do for the novel, you know, just, uh, Um, uh, there's like kind of a repentant theme throughout the novel. Maybe he just says it once and, but I think it, he eludes sort of to the idea a few times

of, um, changing your life by the, by the choices you make. And for the novelists, like, yeah, the struggle of writing the novel is like the struggle of like attempting to will for, to make the choice to will something or to create something. Um, and I guess I wanted to ask about that in the context of like sobriety. Hmm. I thought you were going to ask about Christianity. Well, that too. Yeah.

We can, yeah. We can get into Christianity. I don't know about the, the, um, but the two are very, I mean, the Venn diagram of Christianity and sobriety is practically a circle. You'd be surprised. Yeah. I mean, I guess one of the things is like, uh, I sort of realized this other day that the book might be somewhat pessimistic on that point because he doesn't actually will

himself to like, like he chimps at his friend and thinks he's writing a novel. He doesn't actually do it. Like he, he, uh, leaves the house and, and then kind of starts to feel a little better or whatever. And, but the novel itself, you know, the meta, the artifact of the novel itself to me is like a testament to the triumph of, of the well rather than he can't write a whole novel within the novel. No, no, no.

I mean, I guess, I guess he should have kind of like, uh, Edward teach over there. Uh huh. Have you thought about writing a novel in the footnote, it's not a novel. Um, yeah, actually, Nicholson Baker, who influenced me does like a lot of footnote stuff. I'm just going to ask who influenced you and who influences you in general? Who are your influences? Um, Jesus Christ, our Lord and savior and, uh, Nicholson Baker and, uh, and, uh, Thomas

Bernard. I mean, I, it's, it's hard to say. I mean, I haven't read in terms of like novel writing, I think, I think like, um, those two are big. I also ask you is like huge for me, um, hung like Newt Hampson, I think is, is, is one. Why are you rolling your eyes? No, no, I'm not. No, no, no.

That's another. You want to name any female writers? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Um, you might want to rethink that. Okay. Well, what's funny? Uh, yeah. Joy Williams, Lydia Davis is big. Um, all right. Now we're talking. Yeah.

So Joy Williams and, and, uh, Lydia Davis were Virginia Wolf. Um, I don't know how much of an influence she was on me, but I, no, I, I wasn't rolling my eyes. I was just, I was touched because I think our reference points are similar and I'm also a Hampson head. Yeah. Yeah. From back in the day.

I thought about hunger, um, during this book too, because I think like, um, I love novels that are sort of, um, pessimistic about our, uh, kind of like, uh, the conception of humans as like fundamentally like rational and like having like enlightened self-interest or, or something like that. And, and, um, and yeah, that novel or like notes from underground or whatever are kind of like great books that sort of show how we're like conflicted and pulled in all these different ways. And that's why when you were talking about like the triumph of the will, like I, I do

think that, cause at one point I think the narrator says like, I can change my life through, through actions, you know, but then he like doesn't do just what he was like resolving to do like moments before. And I do think that there's like, um, I don't know, the will can sort of like, if you're just focused kind of pridefully on your will, you can kind of like it, it almost always, um, creates effects like opposed to it or leads to a kind of like impotence or, or something like that. You know, I think at least for me, I should say for me, like, um, I, I, I, I, I, I, I,

um, well, I think part of sobriety and Christianity is the relinquishing of ones, right? Exactly. Or the aligning your will with, uh, with, you know, a greater, um, will, like a, like a something more perfect or outside of yourself, but also the sort of like the idea of grace cause in terms of sobriety, like there are a lot of things that I've done to stay sober or whatever, but like my brother, for example, I don't know if I should talk, well, whatever. You know, yeah. Well, so like, I mean, I think it's probably, well, whatever.

So like, you know, two people can grow up in the same, like household, the same, whatever. And, um, and he, you know, went to the same treatment center as me and he like, you know, has had all of the same kind of like, uh, social, whatever is me, um, and just has not been able to get it, you know, for like a decade plus. And I do think that there's, at some point, uh, you know, grace is, is involved or whatever. Like, you know, I don't know, like when I, when I was in treatment, I like didn't want to be there. I kept trying to leave.

You know what I mean? I don't know. I, it's, it's, it's hard for me to explain things. That's natural. Yeah. Right. Well, in the program, don't they say, um, you know, you're going to do whatever you have to do for as long as you have to do it.

I actually haven't heard that. That's what they told me. That's possible. I was like, okay. Yeah. Um, yeah. And one of my friends in the program, um, who was like, you know, relapsing with some frequency for a while, um, would refer to it as like, I need to do more research.

Like I need to do more research about my addiction to like break on through to the other, to the other side and like rock bottom looks very different, you know, sort of. For everyone. So I'm confused. But when you say that there's grace and like you're talking about the difference between you and your brother, which I also feel very dearly because like two people can literally, I've thought about this a lot. Two people can grow up in the same household and even have radically different experiences

of their upbringing and of like the same memory and that sort of thing. But is that grace or is that actually will like what the, like, isn't there some moment where you decided to take responsibility? See, that's the thing. Like I can't trace it to like a moment of like resolve, you know. Yeah. I mean, it doesn't have to be like something that's apparent to you or anybody else, but yeah, it's hard to say.

I mean, I, I, I attribute like I, it's like, I mean, it gets, um, I think it gets complicated in terms of like, um, yeah, I'm not sure. I'm not sure what I'm not sure. I mean, I'm not either. I'm like curious like what, I mean, to me, like, um, I just, I sort of at some point became convinced, especially looking back that like, um, you know, so much about my kind of like cognitive processes and my behavior and my like deepest desires and so on were like kind of twisted up in, um, such a profound way, um, and like everything I would have

said or everything that I was like thinking, you know, or not everything, but, you know, a lot of it was sort of like, um, just like oriented toward like, uh, like a dark end, I guess. Um, and even, you know, it's like, it's like writing a novel, you know, but, you know, and then, and, and well, and even with writing the novel, it's like, you know, you're, you know, I think and, and addicts a lot of the time, you know, they like wake up and they resolve, I'm not going to do it again and they go and do it again, you know, and so like, well, yeah, sorry, go ahead.

Well, and in some ways I think, so like, I think of addiction as a kind of like spiritual malady where you have this like infinite desire that you place onto like a finite thing and you, and, you know, you come up against it repeatedly, you know, and you sort of become addicted to this, you know, this thing or whatever, because the object of your infinite desire is something finite and in the world, I think when you properly align that with the truly infinite, you know, with God, um, yeah, so how is chasing the dragon of writing the next great American novel similar to chasing the regular dragon? No, I'm kidding, but no, but I think it is, it is like drug addiction is really a misallocation of energy and resources,

but I think that that's why it's like one of the ultimate defense mechanisms, but also on the flip side, like this over emphasis that you see, especially like on the sort of like right wing or like right wing Twitter, uh, uh, over emphasis on the will is also a defense mechanism, which I think comes through in this book where he has this kind of epiphany that he can take action and change his life and that it's up to his own will. And that is a mechanism of buying more time and kicking the can down the road because the epiphany itself feels so good that you can kind of delay action until a later date. Right, right. Yeah, there's several sort of, yes, like small breakthroughs throughout.

Um, there's a point where he ponders like first versus third person and then has like a small breakthrough about how to how writing a drug novel in the third person will sort of redeem it because it won't have the like narcissistic naval gazing quality like a first person drug novel. But yeah, ultimately he doesn't do anything with those insights. But this felt like a drug novel. It felt like a person breaking free of addiction. It did in a way. No, no, I don't mean it in like Hunter S. Thompson kind of way. Like it is the same kind of mechanism, right? Um, I remember, um, this guy when, when uncut gems came out and I was like, this movie is not like a formal movie as such. It's like a collection of memes

that represents like a new turn in cinema. There's really no action in the film. It's all kind of like deceptive or superficial. Um, and this film about addiction. And as well, this guy kind of a shout out to Alex Vartan, Armenian guy, fan of friend of the pod said, well, it's obviously a movie about a guy's inner battle with addiction where actually like no action occurs in the outside world. And it's like a man against his like psyche and his urges. And he was right. Yeah. I'm thinking, I guess too about like, um, it could also be that in some ways, like the kind of like, um, unmediated like man of action or something that people like back or, you know, other people kind of like put on a pet.

But one is that like, you know, a lot of the stuff about the will was popularized by Nietzsche and in his life, of course, like we just said, you know, he wasn't able to kind of, but I think, but I think like it can also just be that we live in a more like a Kierkegaard called it like a reflective age or something like that, where, um, we're kind of like inundated with possibilities and options and we can kind of endlessly just reflect on things and that sort of is just crippling and, you know, like we kind of open to this, like the floodgates of like consciousness or whatever. And it makes it very difficult to kind of like act in a sort of.

But I think like if you look at somebody like that, like if you really pressed him, he would probably admit that the man of will of his conception is also like a character in his novel also because he's he's an artist, not a plunder or like a self-help guru, which I think he's commonly confused for being. But that is also, it seems to me like a kind of fictional protagonist that doesn't really exist for him or for anybody as such. Yeah. I agree. Do you think about the reconciliation of like, uh, being an artist with being a Christian

ever? What do you mean the reconciliation? Like, I mean, when I had like a, when I did like a general confession, one of the things I confessed to was like, um, you know, depicting, uh, like impure sort of acts or processes or like, you know, art requiring one to sort of deal with sin in a, in a nuanced and potentially unvirtuous way. Yeah. But I do think that, I mean, like, you know, Christian art, like if you go to a museum or something like that, like the great Christian paintings and stuff, it's like all bloody

and all this type of, I think like Christians at some point became prudish for no reason and they became afraid of that kind of thing. And for me, like, um, like Dostoevsky or these other great, um, novelists who are also Christian, like, um, you know, that's, it's one of the weirdest things. I think Christianity has such a deep understanding of like human sin, even the stories in the Bible are full of like, you know, you know, getting your dad drunk and, or your, I think dad drunk and having sex with them and this, you know, I mean, all, what, you know, there's all kinds of stuff in that, you know, and like, and I think like, um, you know, the,

the story of the, of the cross is like people getting together and just like killing, killing God and stuff. And so I think like Christians that are scandalized by like depictions of sin are, uh, I think doing a huge disservice to, to Christian Christian art, because I think you can infuse that stuff with a, with a, with a Christian perspective without, you don't have to like uncritically adopt that kind of, uh, you know, Yeah, you can be like Mel Gibson and make a perfect, perfect, perfect fashion. So Christ, um, yeah, I had, uh, um, when I was attending like Latin masses in 2019, do you remember that rock climbing documentary free solo?

No, it was about a guy who rock climbed like, I think it like won an Oscar. It was like whatever. It was some like prestige documentary about a guy who rock climbed without like ropes. Oh, okay. Yes. Okay. I know what you're talking about. Yeah. You watched this too. I didn't watch it, but I've heard of it. But some like, um, very Asperge and kind of a trad Catholic guy was like talking to me once after church about how watching that movie was, uh, a blast, a blast for me and like a sin. Why? Because the rock climbing guy has so little regard for life that even like participating

and viewing it. And I like, I remember like my, it could be feeling so twisted up and like, what can you even do? Like, how do you? I did not like that. I think that's totally wrong. I think like it is true that you should like, um, I mean, that's sort of, that's like, But I've never seen that movie. I have no idea. Yeah. Okay. Um,

But so many things. I mean, people, you know, last temptation of Christ, for example, is a very, um, the Scorsese movie. I don't think I've seen it. The book is banned by the Catholic church. And so the film is sort of also considered like blasphemous and like, you're not, you're not supposed to watch it. Right. But that's different than like depicting sin in a book or something like that or in a movie. Even like, I mean, if it's like, uh, you know, right?

Yeah. I mean, I think so. Yeah. I certainly do. But I've, maybe that's, you know, an epic kind of cope on my end to like, you know, tell the sorts of stories that I want to tell. Well, actually, I mean, this is, this is a, um, insight that I pilfered from Brad Tremell. Um, but he said to me once that, um, today's kind of like woke leftists like go to a movie theater and think that the kind of like 18 wheeler or train barreling through the scene in the film will burst out of the screen and like kill them because there's a collapse

between like the literal and the figurative, right? And that's true certainly of like, yeah, like the modern like woke movement or whatever. But I think it's also true of like religious sellouts. They're literalists, which is why there's this kind of like not entirely convincing, but certainly compelling analogy between like wokeness and being like the new religion or whatever. Yeah. Like a fun, like a literal interpretation of things that should be figuratively interpreted as like messages or metaphors.

Yeah. And I mean, stuff does, I mean, I do think that stuff has like an effect on you, you know, like if you're, if I just like watched, uh, if I spent the week watching like, um, I don't know, gore, gore, yeah, that's, yeah, exactly. Then like that would have an effect on my soul and my like psychology and so on. Yeah. And I just think that like, um, I just think in terms of, you know, Christian art or Christians, um, I don't know, there are just tons of the Bible starts, you know, with Kane killing his brother and it just gets worse from there in terms of, and I just think that part of

its power is it's, um, it's realistic, like anthropology, you know, like it's, and I think that like, It's Macavelian. What's that? It's Macavelian. Oh, wait, what do you mean? Nothing. We've been on this James Burnham tip, but yeah, it describes, it sees ethics as, um,

a consideration of like a reality versus a utopian ideal, right? It considers reality and its definition of ethics and the Bible is the most pessimistic about human nature. So then when you say, I think like maybe that's like actually, I mean, I guess I said this to on Megan Kelly earlier today when we were talking about like Russian versus American sensibility, I think just like it's an act of optimism to even acknowledge the depths of depravity that human nature is capable of because from there you can go on to kind of envision positive, optimistic alternatives.

But if you can, if you can't even cop to that, then you're truly screwed. There's no redemption. Yeah. Which is probably also to answer my own question, why Bernhard is so vitalizing rather than innervating. That makes sense. Yeah. There's a leaf.

Yeah. Do you feel like you achieve that in this novel? Like the novel itself ends on a rather pessimistic cliffhanger type note. It's unclear what's going to happen to the novelist and whether he'll ever write his great novel. Right. You're asking me, do I feel like I achieved what exactly? Like some kind of, I mean, I don't know, I don't know if that's what you were intending

or not, I assume it's not, but like some kind of not entirely like pessimistic or bleak insight or like. I'm confused about what you're. Are you an optimist or pessimist? Yeah. Oh. I think both. Is the novelist an optimistic or a pessimistic book?

I think both. Is it a Christian book? I hope so. Well, I wrote it, I wrote it before I was, I mean, like I wrote it before. Before I was a Christian and like I edited it sort of from, you know, that perspective. But I think, I think, I think in some ways it is, you know. It did have the quality of like the kind of those passion scenes of a saint wandering into the woods or into a cave and having like being struck by an epiphany or something.

I think it's Christian novel in the way that like notes from underground is or something like that. Yeah. But yeah, I think I'm both a pessimist and an optimist and in some ways, yeah, I think that's, I think that's kind of the. Why the scatology? Can we circle back? Dasha.

Just why? I mean, you know, I'm not even, you know, it didn't, it didn't, it did not detract from my experience of reading the novel. It sounds like it did. You seem. No, but that's like what art should do. It should cause you to feel some type of way that is like, you know, I mean, it disturbs and causes you to question and uncomfortable.

And like to question. Yeah. What it is about, you know, excrement and waste that I find to be so, you know, abhorrent, whereas I'm so comfortable, for example, with like your depictions of extreme violence and gore. Right. Yeah. You know, like, I feel so, yeah, I think that, yeah, I mean, I, I think part of it was just

like, I think about death, right, all the time, but I don't like to dwell on like excrement. Right. Well, I don't think I like like to dwell on. You seem like you like to dwell on, I'm obsessed with it. All right. Look, I think, um, part of it was just came from like, it takes place over the course of a morning that happens in the, you know, that can happen in the morning. Um, I wanted to, I also think that in some ways I got some pleasure out of like, um,

you know, coming up with what like should be, uh, like an incredibly boring or like tedious conceit or something like this, like, you know, and, and trying to like make it literary and good, you know, even things like using the internet or making tea or I think like using the bathroom is, is sort of similar to that. And I also, I mean, I did try to, um, sort of like map. I do think that like almost every major theme in the book is like mapped on to his thoughts about like pooping and wiping. And I don't know if that will like come across to people on the first read, but I tried to

like, um, It sticks with you. Mm hmm. Yeah. That's what you said. It really, you're like, yeah, you know, um, but I think this guy gets it. Well, it's very, yeah, I'm, yeah, I can't even type and barely talk about it. There's also like, my editor was like, people are going to ask you this question.

Like you should figure out why, and it was cut down to like someone wrote a review recently and they said the 22 page and I was like, Nicola was like, you know, your poop scene is 22 pages. And I was like, wow. I was going to ask you how long it was because I was like this is just the gift that keeps you think, um, but, uh, I mean, my editor was saying stuff about like the similarities between like kind of like the narcissistic pursuit of writing and like pooping and so on.

And that's probably there too. I think the, the, um, uh, I'll just leave it to the, to the explainers, I guess, to explain why it's there, but, um, yeah, I might have just gotten some satisfaction of like making this task for myself and trying to make it as literary as possible. It's effective. I mean, have you seen Peter Vax assholes? I have not. I got to though.

It's, yeah. Is there a ton of poop in it? Very much about, yeah, yeah, anal fixation, yeah, um, which yeah, I, I, I just, I do struggle with, but not for, yeah, not for any like moral reasons or, you know, and it's, but it is like infuriating and ingering. Yeah. Well, it caused me to think about, yeah, my screenplay, for example, where I was like, I don't even think about anyone in this film use going to the bathroom ever, like, you

know, and how limited I am actually in my like inability to con to like, uh, integrate or conceive of this very like highly mundane human every day experience. Well, it made me, it made me angry, like I said, because it was like this kind of like inflicting of, um, or not even inflicting, it was, um, a explicit articulation of the tedium and monotony that we all privately acknowledge, but seek to avoid in our lives. Yeah. I mean, in some way, I'm thinking too, like that, um, in some ways the book is like a almost like a satire about like a kind of, uh, you know, self-centered novelist or whatever.

And I think like, um, I don't know, it could have to do with that too. Like just taking a kind of like brutal realism to its logical end or something, you know, I think there's totally part of the, there are like passages in the book that I like think of as like critiquing like, um, auto fiction or this kind of like turn toward like oneself for some kind of, you know, and just like the everyday life for like, you know, a kind of like ultimate meaning or something. And, you know, maybe I just kind of took it to its logical extreme and 22 pages. I'm not really sure.

I really don't know. I just did it. And I didn't even think about it at the time. I wasn't like, I wasn't like, oh, yeah, this is going to be, it didn't even really occur to me. You know, Martin Luther was obsessed with going to the bathroom. I heard that's what, uh, that's what, that's what other matters. One could only call disgusting.

You know, on the drive here, I was like, uh, Nick, I was like, uh, on the phone with Nicolette and she was like, um, she was, she was reading the 95 theses today and I've never read them. And she was like, do you want me to read you the 95 theses? I was like, I think I was like, I don't think I could pay attention to the car. It's like a divider. Yeah. But I gotta read them. The first three, the first three, they were kind of hidden.

They were like pretty good. Yeah. And I realized, you know, recently an undergoing chrismation, um, is I was like, kind of like, damn, like, I don't know why the schism happened. And I don't even really know what Protestants are. Like I like was baptized Catholic. So always just sort of took for great, you know, I was kind of like, it was never, it was never even an option for me to be a Protestant at all.

And I was like talking to Matthew about it and I was like, if someone had asked me years ago, like, what's a Protestant, I would be like, Oh, they think they like don't decorate their churches. Like my whole idea of Protestants was kind of like, yeah, I think they just didn't like the like how beautiful Catholicism was or something. It's definitely not that. And then I was like, oh yeah, Martin Luther, right. But I haven't read the 95 theses.

No, no way. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of like, um, we don't have to, you know, we don't have to get into it. I mean, there's a lot of, I think, like straw man's that could be made about Protestantism and a lot of like, um, in America, especially the kind of like outward facing, um, display of Protestantism is like very tied up with like the neocon, like evangelical, whatever. And, uh, I don't know, but there's a rich intellectual tradition in places like, uh,

well, Hagel. Yeah. Hagel's one. I mean, you know, major prod and I, um, I feel like having even like a fundamental understanding of Hagel has greatly informed my understanding of like the Holy Trinity, for example. There's a lot of good stuff there. I'll never be. I mean, come on.

All right. You just, you just saw me get chrismated. I know. And I'm very happy for you. I am, I'm legitimately incredibly happy for you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Yeah. Um, we don't have to get into it. What? No, we can. Lana's just a Jew. No, I'm not. No, I'm just like nothing. I was robbed of any, uh, religious, uh, devotion by, uh, the Soviet state.

Mm hmm. Yeah. No, I'm kidding. But no, my parents, well, my parents didn't, I mean, both of them were secular. That's true. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

It's true. I mean, my parents, my family, they were not religious. Their grandparents were not religious. So we have like now what? Like three gens of secularism, that's kind of a hard to break. I mean, I think about that all the time because I'm like a quote spiritual person. Um, have you read this? And a very moral person and a very moral person.

Yeah. Like the kind of central, um, animating force in my life is thinking about ethics. Like literally that's like all I think about all the time. But, um, yeah, I think that that's like my grandfather actually, um, translated a memoir that was written by a great uncle of mine that was like never published. It was like strictly to be circulated within the family. Um, and he talks about, um, the Riga Jewry and like, uh, growing up in like a heavily like Orthodox Jewish community, which is so crazy and foreign because the Soviets really

to, I mean, I'm shocking that your family managed to preserve some level of religious faith because people were really kind of forced to secularize. Totally. I mean, I mean, my grandma's mom, Nicholas, um, from Slovakia, her parents are from Slovakia and like her mom was like a part of the underground church there and would have to like, you know, read the Bible like, you know, in basements or whatever and kind of like keep things under wraps. But, um, I wasn't raised religious at all. I sort of came to it, came to it late later.

But what do you have like a religious background like from your family? I mean, my, my grandpa was Filipino and he was like really Catholic. Um, but, um, oh yeah, Matthew was like, uh, he was like, are you, you should tell him you're a Jew? Cause my other grandpa was, uh, was 100% Astonazi Jew, which I found out recently. Wow. But he was like a secular Jew, I think. Yeah, yeah.

Well, they mostly are. Yeah. So it's sort of like in my blood, but besides that, no, like I didn't really, you know, maybe my great, great grandparents or something, but I don't really know. Okay. Can I ask how you came to Christianity? Wait, are you a Catholic? No, okay.

Um, um, yeah, I, yeah, no, no, no, I mean, I, it's, I think like, um, William James has this line about, uh, in varieties of religious experience about the educational variety of spiritual experience, you know, like I never had a kind of like white light moment or, uh, you know, a sort of like revelatory movement of my soul or something like that. And I think it was like, one, it was sort of like, um, being convinced of like how bad things could be with myself and with other people interpersonally and so on. And then it was sort of just like, and it started sort of like, well, Juan Nicolette had just become a Christian like right before we got together.

And so, and she was always sort of like chatted in her faith. Like she didn't, she couldn't explain it very well, but she did have a kind of like spiritual experience and so on. And so I was having to like contend with that. And I started like reading a lot and, um, you know, meeting Chris, I thought Christians were just kind of like stupid, you know, I, whatever, like I had this like caricature in my head. I started like meeting like smart Christians.

And like I was in this book club and I would like, you know, read the Gospels with this like, I lived in Maryland near the Catholic university. And so it'd be like philosophies, you know, guys and like this monk. And I just, I think, I think like eventually, um, it started making sense to me after, you know, I read more and learned more and, you know, prayed and so on. And well, it's shocking because actually like, I think even in my experience, the smartest people that I've ever met are of the faith in one way or another. I remember being like profoundly just like flabbergasted and struck by this one kid in

my AP history class in high school, who would just like quote the Bible verbatim and use it to like clarify and justify certain kind of like, uh, political rationales in a way that wasn't like tedious or boring, like it was actually like really spirited and beautiful. And I was just like stunned by his like capacious mind at like 16 or something. I think like something there's something about being an atheist, for example, that feels very immature to me. Well, I think so. I think few people are true atheists.

Yeah. That's also a bell curve thing. It's like 10% they're not willing to really double down on like, they're actually being no God. They'll take some kind of like agnostic position. But a lot of people from the program came into my chasmation who are either kind of like vaguely Catholic or not at all. And they remarked to me about very similar, you know, it is to the program which was started

by a Catholic. Yeah, yeah, it definitely, I mean, it definitely, I think, I think, um, I think getting sober sort of primed me for it in a certain way, um, um, but yeah, yeah, it, uh, that's sort of it. I mean, the other thing too is that like I was when I was young, I was like really, really kind of like strong, headedly relativistic, you know, like I would write these essays about how there's no good and bad and like everything is a normal, right? A phase for a precocious young man.

For sure. Yeah. For sure. And, um, and I think once I became convinced that like, um, you know, there was like good and bad and like right and wrong, like at the extreme ends of the spectrum, like everything else sort of followed, followed from there in a certain way, um, yeah. Well, drug addicts make great, um, Christians because I think they have like a very tangible understanding of sin as like a separation from, from God, um, that people who are sometimes

raised in the faith are like sort of traditionally religious, just don't, they don't, they don't have necessarily, they're not making those like connections necessarily. Yeah. And there is that, there is that cliche, like that was one thing I was really worried about too in the kind of like vain way where it's like that cliche of like, you know, oh, you got sober and like, you know, now you use God, like you use drugs or something like that. But I think that it's actually the inverse where it's like the lack of, I mean, I don't

know, you could just as easily understand it and just as convincingly understand it as the inverse where it's like the lack of, you know, you use God because of the lack or used drugs because of the lack of God. And like, I don't know why people, uh, you know, assume that the drugs are the kind of like primary thing and you know, whatever. Um, I, I think wellness is a way bigger kind of, uh, in LA because there's so much sobriety culture in Los Angeles and I, you know, people there get really into like health and wellness rather than, um, like a spiritual foundation, you know, and then they, yeah, then they were,

then they get into like wellness shots instead of like regular shots. Like the old Lashian argument that people are like replacing religion with like self help and wellness, like the culture of narcissism argument, but I don't know. It's hard to say because I think like, yeah, you can't, you can't really in good faith make the argument that drugs are like the primary thing, um, because they clearly are like I said, a proxy, a defense mechanism. But on the other hand, I am a Gerardian in this way. And I remember reading that, um, essay that he wrote about like anorexia and eating disorders

and he talks about how, you know, all of these different universalisms have tried to explain and intellectualize eating disorders. Like there's a, a Marxist interpretation of Freudian one, you know, a feminist one. And the simplest one is right under our noses. He says, right, people all want to be thin, but only a small minority take it to its extreme. So I guess you can apply that Gerardian argument to drug addiction and say, well, like all of us want to be kind of like to feel good temporarily, like escape our consciousness and only a small minority of people actually take it to its extreme.

Yeah. But what's strange about that though is that I feel like, um, I do feel like this, um, you know, drug addicts don't feel good all the time. I mean, of course, anorexic people don't either, but you know, it's, it's, it's even weirder because it's like an addict is addicted to something that makes them feel either, you know, they're feeling sick and bad or they're feeling kind of normal. It's not like they're actually feeling good. And so I think it, it isn't sort of about, you know, I mean, I, I, it isn't really about

feeling good so much as having like a, um, like a spiritual crutch. Yeah. Exactly. One of the things that, um, Gerard was actually big for me too, and like in, um, understanding Christianity, um, in part just because he, you know, he writes all the stuff about imitation or whatever, and just this idea that like, um, Christ enters into a world like that's already rife with imitation and says like, imitate me or whatever, like it's actually this sort of like, um, not simple, but like a realistic, um, you know, we need a model

and classic Jewish ethno-narcissism. What's that? No, no, no, no, no, I don't, I don't, I'm just, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh. And you know, he enters into a world and says, imitate me and I feel like I was kind of just like going on a, on a tangent there. I'm not, I wasn't really related to the anorexia thing, although, uh, I had a point, but I figure, oh, I was going to say drug addiction, I think doesn't actually, it's, we've been

talking about the bell curve a lot these days, but I think, I don't think it is something that is actually like isolated to an extreme because I think addiction is so insidious and so many people live kind of in this, because drugs are such a cope, um, like there are so many addicts who are functional, right, who like, will maybe never even hit the like the extreme of like a rock bottom, they just, but I mean, I guess the 10% of like people who like literally just like live on the street or whatever, like live in their car because they're so. Yeah, dysfunction.

Yeah. Yeah. The extreme, I guess, is then like a kind of extreme dysfunction, but I think so many people live in, especially with pharmaceuticals, you know, I think so many people like take Adderall and then they take like a Benzo and then they take, you know, they like so many people are regulating, um, their feelings and I, when I went on well butrin in like 2019 and Adderall, I was like, I did, I really just, my depression just really got to a point where I was like, I just actually need to pharmaceutical be regulating my emotion.

Like I was like, um, I was profoundly unchristian, like I was like, I shouldn't have to suffer. Did you see that Tom Cruise clip that's been circulating on Twitter of him like, um, it's like Matt Lauer. You're so glib. You don't even know where Dylan is, yeah, the Brook Shields thing, maybe I don't know if we're talking where he's like, well, Matt, you see the difference between you and me is I understand psychology and the research, but you, I watched for the first time like a couple of weeks ago with my uncle, he was like, uh, we were visiting my grandma in Florida

and he was like getting everyone hyped to watch top gun. That's nice. He was, you'll feel good movie for the whole family. Well, all the last few minutes at all, you think top gun by some Catholic metrics, like you can't really do anything. Yeah. I mean, I was, you can't do like weird pirouettes in the sky or like do your own stunts. Those seem like you found the evil practices.

What? I just said that stuff. I thought it was kind of cool. Yeah. By the grace of God, you know, it was hidden for me. Yeah. Um, what was I going to say? That's just in certain interpretations of Catholicism, everything is blasphemous in

a sin. You can't do anything. Yeah. The only thing you can really, or like in the Eastern right, I find this to be, you know, particularly, particularly true because I've been reading on a lot of like, um, early church fathers, like prior to the schism and it is, it's like, it's very much like, you um, Matthew and I were like having lunch a couple of weeks ago and he said, like, I'm really enjoying, we were fighting and he was like, I'm really enjoying my food and I'm

like really happy to be with you and I was like, and that's wrong. I was like, you should only be like the ladder of divine ascent is like, we need to be like in a constant state of like, I was in a very dark place, but I was like, you know, I was like, we, I'm, I'm advancing and like blessed morning and I would never enjoy this grilled cheese. Why would I, you know, why would I when I know the fewness of the saved? I mean, um, but I forget my point. I didn't have, I didn't have one moving on.

Um, cool. That's, uh, yeah, I really, I bet that's feast. It's kind of about that. Uh-uh. It's good. I also, yeah, I can really oscillate between like, um, scrupulosity and like, and as like a person of the melancholic persuasion, I'm obviously really drawn to like kind of like Eastern ideas of like, yeah, reveling in one's, in one's suffering, which actually is the

horseshoe theory of sin. Yeah. You don't want to be too happy, but you can't be too sad either. No, being, being sad is like being too sad is a great sin because it's a great indulgence. Yeah. Exactly. Um, oh, I had a question for you. Um, so there's, there's a passage in the book where he talks about how he's not as troubled

by Instagram as he has by Facebook or Twitter. Um, why, I found that to ring true. Why, I mean, I have not had Facebook in like 15 years or something. Yeah. I gotta delete mine. It's still there. Just like the ghost of it. Um, why is Instagram less troubling than something like Facebook or Twitter?

Um, and is it because vanity is a lesser sin than like pride? Yeah, it could be. Does it, I think, does it say in the book? Why? It says that. Yeah. It basically says that Instagram did not produce beauty or candor and lent itself only to a different kind of lie.

In short, Instagram was vanity and Twitter was pride. Twitter would kill everyone then kill itself. Because Instagram would only Peter out slowly disappearing into a kind of pleading void. Hmm. Very well. Yeah. It could, it could be. I mean, it could, it could just be that like, there's not that much text on Instagram.

Like people are arguing and so on. But I, I do. Well, some of us have been known to post a long winded, uh, textual Instagram stories such as myself and I was banned in 2019 from Twitter. Maybe I just don't see it. I mean, I don't know that. No, but you've never been on Reddit. That's just, that's true.

I don't know how to use it. I like look at it. That's what I thought too. Until I went on it. I was like, I can't use this. Yeah. Weird, get old, yet newfangled forum. It's hard.

You look at it and you're like, I don't even know what to do, but at least for me, I look at it. No, I feel the same way. I don't understand. Like upvotes or downvotes or like whatever awards, well that I think I understand you just click and it goes up or down, right? But I know it's, it's, yeah, but no, I mean, I don't know. I mean, I guess, um, is pride worse than that?

I mean, it's, it's. Pride is the worst. Yeah. I feel like, I feel like it probably is. Yeah. I mean, I've, but I've said this like a million times too, that like people, everybody has a very kind of fast and loose definition of narcissism these days. And I think that like narcissism to me fundamentally is, um, an, uh, incapacity for love.

Narcissism is being unable to love anyone but yourself who you also hate. Right. That's what it is for me. I mean, humanity on the other hand, while not exactly harmless is a lot less harmful. And I'm not just like coping here because I've posted copious amounts of selfies, but it, it really is true. I've known many people who are like, you know, vein and flamboyant and like, uh, yeah, that sort of thing, but like are capable of love.

Yeah. Narcissists are not necessarily vein. Yeah. Right. Or maybe rather a self-effacing or, or discreet cut you off from like your ability to, to love or, or whatever. Yeah. Maybe it is.

Maybe that is why. Yeah. And I think that in just as there's like a, a gross confusion of jealousy and envy, there's a gross confusion of vanity and narcissism. Those two things are very different. Hmm. Yeah. That makes sense to me.

Sure. Yeah. It's just a thing I feel like intuitively. Have you ever heard of fecal transplants? Are you? Come on. What? Um, is that when they, um, put somebody else's poop in your colon so that your biome re-

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I have heard of that. But then, but then it can change your whole personality. Oh yeah. I did hear about that. The gut biome is the whole, is the whole thing and they can give you a fecal transplant

to cure your like gayness or depression or something, but then you might take on the characteristics of like the host. I mean, I, you know, obviously it makes me really uncomfortable. I made this, uh, I made this, this meme about the, a while ago, I like, I like, I like anticipated like, uh, I was, but, um, it's kind of, kind of what's going on right now. Um, so, well, how do you not expect people to talk about it? I did expect people to talk about it, so I made the meme. I'm waiting for the right time to kind of, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm sorry. Okay. We won't divulge the meme. Oh, true. Yeah. I got to drop it when the. I've never seen you offended by anything. I know, right?

This is like a crazy moment in red scare history. Yeah. I finally did it and not, I don't know what it is about pooper. I don't think we're going to solve it now, but I don't know what to discuss, but a lot of things. I mean, Gore is disgusting. Right. Disgusting.

Like plenty of things in the world are discussed. Yeah. Yeah. Like, and they don't, and they don't trigger the same response. Yeah. I think it is a feminine. It's definitely a highly compartmentalized kind of like feminine attitude towards it's very Victorian, you know, where I, I ultimately, the, yeah, the novelist did cause me to confront

certain like, yeah, like highest ideas I had about, you know, appropriateness and decorum that I actually was like, wow, I, these, these must be very dear to me because. Is it because it's pathetic in the same way that we secretly think illness and aging are pathetic? Yeah. Like you lose control of your body. Totally. Maybe that's what it is.

It reminded me of that scene. I don't remember if it was in the Tropic of Cancer, the Tropic of Capricorn, where he's talking about like a paying for a hooker, but she demures when it comes time to like wash herself in front of them and he's like, Hey, bitch, I'm paying you for like the hour. You better wash your pussy in front of me. And I was like, you know what, he's not wrong, but she won't, she'll do anything, right? For him sexually cause she's a paid, she's a sex worker, but she won't do her intimate like pathetic little squalid toilet.

That's a good theory in the pathetic, the patheticness of it is, uh, that is interesting. Yeah. You know. Yeah. And on a certain level, yeah, like there's like a short, a shortcoming, um, as a, for me as a Christian, you know, to be like so uncomfortable with this like fundamental daily like humiliation, right? Yeah.

Of like going to the bath. Nobody wants to envision themselves or others, it's like straining on the toilet bowl. Like dude in Jurassic Park, but there's so much about cleanliness and purity too and in the faith. And like, you know, yeah. And I mean, the other, the other, um, I was, uh, I'm not sure. I was listening to something and the guy was talking about how like, um, you know, I don't know.

I was, I was anyway, I was when you were talking about as a Christian or whatever, I was thinking like that it could be that like, you know, like we into it like a higher purpose for ourselves or something and like pooping and wiping is like one of the kind of most like animalistic as a, but again, though, sex is similar, you know, or not, not always, but like, um, yeah, I'm not, I don't know. I'm not sure it, uh, I mean, sex is pathetic and dirty at times, but it's also hot. And there's nothing hot about shitting unless you're some sort of sex pervert. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, definitely, um, the other thing is that it's funny because like you're talking about the stuff and I'm thinking like, you know, one of the things that I really do hate in general is like the kind of like normalization of just like being totally gross, you know, like people on online just being like, yeah, I actually don't like that stuff. So it's funny that like to hear you talk about it, like just personally, I'm like, I hate that kind of like, uh, movement toward like, look at me, I'm like at my grossest, like this should just be totally fine for me to be like, you know,

Well, he says at one point the novel was too vulgar and generally even for me, I did not want my first novel to be so vulgar as to not get taken seriously. I was a serious person who deserved to be taken seriously and I wanted to have a career. That's definitely true. Yeah. Um, but I can't take yourself seriously when you're taking a shit. That's what it is. You are revealed.

It's like, you know, there's this like kind of idea that like we're all kind of the same where we're all united because we all die in the end, you know, nobody escapes that fate, not even the extremely wealthy and attractive and accomplished, but it's not really that we all die. It's that we all shit. Hmm. Well, there, I mean, Chris, you know, you think about that. Well, Chris Davis, whole theory of, of, of the abject has to do with, um, with, with

waste, yeah, like a cadaver, excrement, fluid, anything that is like, um, the, the abject is necessarily connected, it is connected with a kind of like, with decay and death and like the boundaries between, between things because a dead body reminds us of like the boundary between death and life. She even in powers of horror, which is very influential book in my life. She even describes like how people are, uh, so repulsed even by like the film that forms over like milk, you know, like if you heat up milk, it'll get like when I'm having my night.

You're heating your raw milk. I'm making my night. Um, but yeah, if you, if milk gets too hot, it'll develop that film and how basically everyone finds that viscerally disgusting. And that's because the film is a kind of like boundary and that's really what we're like when we make contact with the abject is when we brush against the boundaries of like of death of death and decay. Yeah.

Um, so that's why poop was so gross. Well, well, Eli actually made a good point to me the other day where he says, he said that like you, when you have kids, you cease to be interested in gore because you've already experienced the gore in your day to day life and you finally understand what it's all about or whatever. That's interesting. Yeah. Yeah.

Were you interested in gore before? I mean, not, not like exclusively or particularly, but I had, I had in shitting, I had a higher appetite for it. And now I just don't care because, you know, what's gorier than literally shitting out another human being. Right. Yeah. Ah, some stuff.

Yeah. Well, cutting someone's face off, making it into a scary mask, the kind of twisted games that Jigsaw from the song plays up, amputations, well, when I was younger, I was very, you know, I was kind of the, had an addict mentality almost of like, yeah, I wanted to see like extremity. I really wanted to see like the goriest movies I wasn't allowed to see. And that's sort of stuck with me through the years, I guess. Yeah.

But gore because it's so extreme is not pathetic or mundane in a way where this shitting is. I like the pathetic. Yeah. I think that's really what it is. Nobody wants to like confront the fact that we're all pathetic losers in the end. Yeah. You just don't want to admit that you're pathetic. I don't.

Yeah. And I had so much, the splattering of the banisters or whatever, like when he does kind of get into the drug portion and I've read other like manuscripts of like drug novels that friends of mine have written where they do, well, also, you know, heroin addicts have such a problem with like constipation and stuff like that's a big part of heroin addiction too, so that's a big motif kind of in drug novels and yeah, and I have a higher tolerance for, yeah, for someone having like explosive diarrhea in the throes of like a relapse or like a drug problem because of the extremity, but like the everyday, yeah,

great work on the book. Well, we had a guy, you know, over yesterday, Paul Scala, say Kay Lindyman, we were talking about Alberto Moravia and his novel, Boredom, which is actually not that dissimilar from your novel. It's about like a thwarted artist seething with resentment, his mother, who falls in love with like an underage model muse. And there's this like very vivid scene where he sees her shit stain in the toilet bowl, which is shocking that Moravia wrote that in like, I don't know, the 50s or the 60s.

I don't remember when this novel was written, but it's that same kind of like forcing, forcing himself to, or being forced to reckon with the fact that this like beautiful angelic pristine woman is actually a pathetic loser, much like him. I've always felt that like, maybe this is like, I always thought that I was kind of like endearing, you know, to like, encounter that. I don't know. Yeah. Well, it's certainly a kind of intimacy, sure, that I'd like to avoid at all.

As you should, as you, you know, yeah, yeah, I'm so sorry, no, no, no, no, I'm all over cover. I'll recover. Yeah. All right. It's okay. Um, I mean, but you think like, thinking of what, so I'm like, God, we're going to keep talking.

No, I'm not like, uh, kind of like, uh, accepting of the anyway, sorry, it's, it's literally because I had a kid and, uh, which is congratulations. Thank you. But Eli and I had him in, in the bathroom, the site of everyone's day to day, like Monday and shitting. Oh yeah. Yeah. Welcome to my next great American night.

So I'm, it's not, I'm not, I'm not more accepting of it. I'm just more resigned to it, you know. Yeah. Yeah. You're more, you're more of a realist. Because I'm sort of, yeah, I'm, when, when it comes to shitting, I'm more of a McAvelli. You're dealing with things as they actually are whereas I'm dealing with a kind of utopian idea.

Oh, we're going to don't go to the bath, but go to the bathroom. Yeah. I'll stop talking. Yeah. I seem like you had another, uh, I know I had something else that was tangential actually. Oh, nice. Let's branch out. When you're rhetorically shitting on your peers and yourself, you know, I'm shitting

on them. And that's actually, that's actually why I put the pooping in the book because I was just shitting all over the literary world and every other novelist that came before me. Yeah. So I was just kind of like, you know, sending a message. Exactly. I kind of had to.

Yeah. That's a racist question. Yes. Yeah. Is the Lee character supposed to be Tao Lin? Uh, yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Shout out to Tao. You didn't want to come up with a less, less Asian name for that. It's the name that, uh, his, uh, in general, so. That's Chinese. Tao's Taiwanese.

That was racist. Okay. That's actually racist. Um, no, it's the name of his, uh, protagonist in Lee's society. I'm like a character in his novel Taipei. And so like there's just kind of like a small inter intertextual, whatever. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Some interplay. Sure. Yeah. But how's my boy? Um, uh, did you, was it, uh, did you make a decision to sort of keep, um, like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, like to refer to these, uh, platforms by their, by their given names rather than describing them abstractly, or was it like, well, kind of a no-brainer for

you to just be describing? Yeah. I didn't even think about it. I think it would have been hard to just describe them and then repeatedly refer to them like in the, in the abstract or come up with like gay and egregious, but I like that word appears so many times, like kind of like, like alternate names for them, like Twitter and I don't know. I'm trying to. I was on the micro blogging platform used by Michael Yew, Facebook Journal.

Yeah. I'm trying to think of, uh, no, it hadn't even, uh, occurred to me. The brutal realism. Yeah. Just the, yeah. And keeping it with the tradition of, uh, you know, I don't know, that would have been crazy. I'm trying.

If you like create a whole metaverse. Yeah. I feel sort of, I feel like. David Foster Ballas, I feel like sort of does, does that. I don't know if you're a fan of him. And you saw, you know, you know what happened to, happened to him. Wow. So, okay.

I'm just kidding. Yeah. I have a good point. Yeah. Suicide, by the way, has the same quality as shitting it's like taboo for the same reasons because there's something like very, I don't know, like frighteningly small and squalid about it. Yeah.

Though some people also, you know, can romanticize it and make Mishima who's an influence of the novelist. Yeah, for him, suicide was like the ultimate like aesthetic, aesthetic act. Yeah. They be loving, loving the suicide over there. Yeah. Yeah. So it's not like shitting in that it is, uh, like more extreme conclusion to, yeah.

Yeah. But not for everyone. Certainly. Yeah. I mean, there's something scary about like killing yourself because. Then you shake yourself when you die. Yeah. When you think about the aftermath of like somebody, most likely your friends or your

family discovering you, like the after, like the implications that come after the fact. Well, I. Sorry. It's a terrible thing to do. Yeah. I feel like there is, uh, it's way different. Killing yourself is way. No, of course.

Yeah. I used to tell my former roommate, Kyle Brown, um, when I was in a very suicidal season, uh, of my life where I was like, if I'm ever getting a colonic, like maybe I'm thinking about going through with that, you know, like if, yeah, yeah, cause that's so part of, even in my like most sort of romantic suicidal ideations, I was always like, and then someone's just going to find my like decaying corpse, shitty corpse, that sucks. So I was always kind of like, well, I'd go get the colonic first and then, you know, then when I go through with that, then they don't have to find, you know, then at least

there's no shit on the scene. Let's consider it. Sort of. Yeah. Or, uh, or vein vein. I think it's very vain. Yeah. To want to leave like an exquisite corpse.

So maybe vanity is way better than pride in that. Well, I guess some people don't kill themselves out of pride too, but I was going to say it's maybe saved your life. No. Cause you could have just got a colonic. Nevermind. I'm just kind of. Just spitball.

Let's think this thing through. No. Yeah. But yeah. I mean, vanity can sort of circuitously lead to certain, to certain virtues. You know, like, I think for the wrong reasons. Yeah. And I mean, I know people who have gotten sober and are like meaningfully sober and it's

because that they like, they sort of reached a point where they were like, um, I don't want to be a loser. Like, I don't, you know, I, and that is like, uh, vein glorious, you know, to, to stop doing drugs because you don't want, you see, you see the alternative, right? But it's also good not to be a loser because you're tons of spiritual using that. Yeah, yeah, or just in terms of like your ability to like, whatever, help other people and so on. Yeah.

Like you see that reflected in, you know, like, yeah, other people and how they treat you and stuff. Totally. But it depends on whose definition of loser you're going by. Everyone else's are your own, you know. Yeah. That's true. Yeah.

That's true. Yeah. Anyway. Anyway. Um, let me look at my notes at one point you say addiction is a memory disease. You're quoting, quoting Michael W. Clune, shots out Mike Clune. He, um, him and Tao have both been like kind of big homies to me and, uh, Mike Clune wrote the only good drug novel called white out, uh, coming soon reprinted from McNally editions.

Uh, he is a brilliant academic and, uh, salute to Mike Clune. And he says writing fiction is a memory disease. That was the narrator of the, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, right, right, right. Um, is sort of extrapolating on the point of like addiction being a memory is, but I guess do you want to elaborate at all on, on, on memory disease? Oh, um, yeah, I can't remember what he addiction is a memory disease. I thought suddenly remembering a line from a memoir by the academic I'd like to about having copied less than zero writing fiction is a memory disease.

I thought stupidly writing my novel had likely changed my memory though. I considered since I focused on certain details and didn't include others, then looked at and edited them a lot. Yeah, I probably accidentally invented details too. Yeah. I don't remember what I was thinking about with the fiction thing, but, um, uh, yeah, I mean, I think, I think addiction is, is like a memory, you know, I mean, it's sort of like, uh, try it to talk about or whatever, but it's like, you know, it's like you sort

of can, it affects your memory in that like, um, at least in white out this book that is referencing like his, the idea is sort of that like, um, you know, the addicts can't just remember the suffering, you know, that like the drugs rot or whatever, but that like each time, his idea is that like each hopefully I do justice to it, but it's that like each time the addict encounters and sees the drug, it seems new. Like he says that like it's not actually chasing the dragon. They're not actually trying to get back to the first time, but it's, but it's that each time you see it, like you see it as though it's, you know, you see it for the first

time and he says, like, when you get a new car, you know, um, at first you see all the new details, but like, you know, a month later you barely even see the car when you get into it. But like the addictive object is actually something that sort of resists this, um, this kind of traditional depreciation. Yeah, exactly. And so he says that like, um, you know, that's something that great artists have, um, have sought to do forever, you know, make a kind of like timeless painting that each time you

encounter it has this effect on you, but, um, you know, drugs do have that effect on them. So yeah. Only drugs have that effect. So we should all just become drug addicts. Cause if, if drug addiction becomes the norm, then well, I was going to actually say, well, you know, romantic love, which is also a kind of addiction, but it, you know, is also can be a kind of memory disease, like we, you know, we fall in syndrome.

Yeah. You fall in love because you forget, um, on some level, how bad it feels to, to fall out of love or to lose someone's love or, you know, how much love can be given and taken away. Um, I think many, many people would have much more apprehensions about pursuing romantic love and relationships if they really had like, like childbirth, if they had like the crystal clear memory of the pain, you know, I think a lot of things can, but with, but with romantic love and childbirth, doesn't the kind of like meaning of it sort of like

supersede the, you know, the pain or whatever, like it's worth it in spite of the pain or or whatever. Whereas like being addicted to drugs or whatever is probably not. Maybe childbirth. I don't know. It's, I don't know. Yeah. Yeah.

Wait, what are you saying? I, I mean, I guess being addicted to drugs is just like more acutely bad for your health and psyche and more futile. Yeah. And I think actually being in love, um, is probably like the mother or like father or whatever of all like kind of like creative impulse. Like, I think that that's really what drives, um, people to attain great heights, uh, creatively. Romantic love or the love of the game.

Like romantic. No. I meant the game of like, I meant like, uh, love for the craft or something. Oh. Yeah. Oh, okay. The romantic love. Yeah.

That makes sense. Well, there's so many like monks and ascetics who have like, you know, written the whole like, who have made, uh, who have written incredible like spiritual works through abstinence. Mm hmm. Through being virgins. Yeah. Through abstinence, through a lack of attachment, through precisely the opposite of like, but it's.

Yeah. No. Go ahead. But it's a love, but they, they still have that kind of love. It's just for something else, right? It's like for God. The man in the sky. Yeah.

Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. The sky daddy. I heard this girl the other day be like, I don't believe in a sky daddy, but I believe in sugar daddies. And I was like, oh, that offends me more than the 22 page shitty arc in your novel. Yeah.

That's a drag. Yeah. You know. Yeah. But an ugly sentiment. It's crazy. I know. Gross.

Um, do you have any, um, let me, let me peruse my notes. Uh, is there anything you'd like to adjust or I don't think so. Thanks for. Thanks for having me. I don't know. I have some like gay and pretentious formal questions, but I don't think I want to ask them. Are they not going to add anything to this discussion?

Um, anyway, cool. Oh, well, I have a, I have a good question from my sister who sort of skimmed your novel because there was not enough time to read it, um, for her, um, but she asked if you, if there's any book that you, um, were unexpectedly, uh, surprised by that you liked, you didn't expect to like. Damn, that's a good question, but I feel like it's hard. Yeah. It's hard.

It's, um, I can look. I have like, uh, let me, let me see the bell curve. Um, I don't, you know, I don't, that's okay, you don't have to, you know, you can think about it. Yeah. I gotta think about it. You can get back to us. Cool.

Um, another great day and job will done at Red Scare HQ. Thanks. Thank you. I appreciate it. Very excited for your book. Thank you. I appreciate it. See you.

See you. Bye.