I’ve read your blog for a long time. God, probably going on 13 years now. I’ve posted replies to your stuff here and there a couple times. But now I have to tell you about three similar reading experiences I’ve had that will stay with me for the rest of my life. Not that there haven’t been others, but these three are so similar and exact that they stand in their own genre. Also, this will be a bit lengthy, so I’ll forgive you if you see it and go “what a nut job. no thanks.”
The first experience is the time I tried to read Dostoyevsky's crime and punishment (my first and last attempt at any Russian literature). I never got past the first page (or however long the scene was) that describes the kind of guilt, embarrassment, and terror that the character experiences when faced with the possibility of running into his landlady. The description was so exactly perfect that it impregnated my mind and soul with those emotions, completely against my will, and made me physically ill in the process. I immediately hated Dostoyevsky for doing this to me and wished that he were alive that day, in front of me, so that I could break his jaw with a left hook. F*&! you Dostoyevsky, go right to hell.
When I read Grant Morrison’s “The Invisibles” I experienced something similar. I started out loving the comic. Everything was great. Until I read the issue “Best Man Fall”. I’m pretty sure you’ve read the series so I won’t go into detail about the issue, but all I could think was “F*&! You Grant Morrison; F*&! you for doing this to me you bastard. You psychotic genius bastard. You can go right to hell and sit beside Dostoyevsky.” If I were to ever meet Grant Morrison, I don’t know if I would hit him or not; probably not, but man would I ever tell him what a sh!thead he is for that issue of “The Invisibles”.
And now that I’ve read this story of yours in its entirety, in one shot, as the bile pilled up in my throat and the sickness spread through my body, as you did the exact same thing to me as Dostoyevsky and Morrison, this is the third experience that I will never shake. You almost pushed me over the edge with the social media horror story you wrote a little while ago (“The Feud”), but this one; my God, this one. There were just so many sentences that taken individually are killers all by themselves, and here you’ve fired them in machinegun succession with utmost lethality.
Just one example: the paragraph, that begins with “I was there the whole time, watching my contributions to the chat dart up out of sight the instant I hit send. It was incredible.” So perfectly sums up the terminally online culture of the western world in such an exact illustration of emotional and spiritual void that it’s terrifying. Like the antithesis of the self-actualized man.
This is why I know I could never read your novel. I can guarantee that it’s too perfect in what it aims to do. I doubt I’d survive reading it. I grew up in the same era as you and you’ve so precisely tapped into the anxious empty of our generation that it scares me too much to absorb in the quantity of an actual novel. The feelings and spirit you capture in your writing are thoughts and emotions I’ve worked very hard to move past in my life and push away to just function in the world and try to become some modicum of a success. The only time I revisit that state of being is when I read your writing. (I’m not sure exactly why I do this to myself. Maybe because I know that this reality exists despite my constantly denying it while looking forward? Probably something like that.) It honestly terrifies me in a way. I’m not a writer by any stretch, so I’m struggling to find the words to describe the kind of fear that your work produces in me.
It’s like… when I read that paragraph I mentioned. It was like the first-person narrator was the embodiment of a very specific kind or failure, like a deity of the worst that someone from our generation could have become, and that this failure of a person exists within me because I am from that generation. That this is the very soul of our generation, and it exists within all of us clawing at our being, attempting to devour our lives at every moment and it in order to not succumb to it we have to fight every second of every day; I must fight every day. And it’s always there, right over my shoulder. I can feel this demon’s breath on my neck and I give in and look at it, it will possess me in one sudden rush and I will become one and the same as this failure. This is the kind of terror you are able to instill.
Thanks for typing out all of this. It was gratifying to read—and honestly one of the reasons I posted this on Substack instead of flinging it at lit magazines is because I'm growing more and more convinced that being able to add "published in the Blabbity-Blah Quarterly" to my CV is worth less than sometimes seeing my stuff resonating with people & names I recognize.
But—think of it this way: at least you know there's somebody out there who's as scared and disgusted about this stuff as you are. The piece definitely came from a place of fear—and, hell, maybe desperate wish fulfillment. I'm honestly not sure the last totally unhinged part *works,* but I'm pretty sure it's my version of the flourish toward the end of Tool's Aenema: 'Cause I'm prayin' for raa~aain! I'm prayin' for tidal waves...!
And I guess unlike Dostoevsky or Morrison, I can also tell you not to lose heart. Don't let this shit beat you down. The demons *want* you beaten down and demoralized. To the extent that you can, be a weed in the garden of evil. As much as you're able, don't let yourself be a carrier and a vector for the pattern. It's fueled by loneliness and a sense of pointlessness—so nurture & maintain friendships offline and do things that are meaningful to you (ideally with other people). Ach, these are all clichés, I know, but what the demons are most afraid of is people finding happiness & companionship & meaning without looping them in. It's getting harder and harder *not* to loop them in, but seize a mile for every inch they permit you.
Afterwards Effie's fans bought all the kombucha from every supermarket and little organic store in the country and flushed their contents down the toilet, and then put their heads together to figure out how to wipe out the fungi and bacteria species involved in the drink's fermentation. Justice will be done. Zhang Hao will be avenged.
Yeah, my wife explained them to me. As I understand it, they became A Thing so women on the internet could make other women on the internet feel bad about themselves.
To your earlier questions about Millennium episodes—I'm not sure I can say much about them, since I've only watched each of them once and wasn't taking notes. "Midnight of the Century" and "The Curse of Frank Black" are two of the best Holiday Episodes of a show I've seen, and "The Curse" is pretty close to being a masterpiece. If there were any doubts that Millennium isn't the same show that it was in season 1, "The Curse" finally buries them. I remember being struck by how *little* Frank says in the episode—but then again, it's not like he's got anyone to talk to anymore.
I need to watch "Doomsday Defense" again. It's a Darin Morgan episode, so there's a *lot* going on, and the first time you see it your brain notices stuff that you can't describe afterwards unless you're watching it like a critic with a notepad in their lap. But there was that one length bit of dialogue that stuck with me...
(copy/pasted from This Is Who We Are's transcript)
FRANK: If you don't mind my asking: you're writing a book about the millennium, and yet you don't believe in any of the prophecies?
JOSE: At the start of the nineties, they predicted major breakthroughs for the neurosciences: the "Decade of the Brain" it was supposed to be. Instead, it was the decade of body–piercing. Now why should the millennium predictions be any more accurate?
FRANK: But there's the religious component. Do you not believe in God either?
JOSE: Oh, there are times when I've been, yes, a devout believer. And other times I have been a staunch atheist, and sometimes I've been both, during the same course of the same sexual act.
FRANK: (smiling) Don't be dark. Personally, I think this is a very significant time in mankind's history.
JOSE: But that's what every man throughout history has said about his time. Look (gesturing around him) at all these books – so much significance – but will they still exist a thousand years from now? One, maybe two writers will still be read. Can you name the two?
FRANK: Well, Shakespeare and...
JOSE: That's one.
FRANK: Shakespeare and Chung.
JOSE: (chuckling appreciatively) No. Thank you. No. Shakespeare and Goopta.
FRANK: Goopta?
JOSE: Selfosophists have gone to great lengths to safeguard the eternal circulation of his writing. They may not be read by the end of the next millennium, but they still certainly, certainly will literally exist.
FRANK: How the hell will they preserve these for that long?
JOSE: If I told you, I would have to kill you. (shaking his head) Oh, I wish that was a joke.
[Jose throws an arm over Frank's shoulder as they walk out of the store.]
Yeah it was either women in the internet or the fashion faceless corporations preying on women insecure enough and giving them a reason to believe they are better than other women. In any case it's besides the point (thanks god.)
Also thank You for your insight on the episodes, it's not everyday i get to read other people opinions and perspectives on an old tv series i liked so much. It truly brings a bit of shine to a normal day.
I’ve read your blog for a long time. God, probably going on 13 years now. I’ve posted replies to your stuff here and there a couple times. But now I have to tell you about three similar reading experiences I’ve had that will stay with me for the rest of my life. Not that there haven’t been others, but these three are so similar and exact that they stand in their own genre. Also, this will be a bit lengthy, so I’ll forgive you if you see it and go “what a nut job. no thanks.”
The first experience is the time I tried to read Dostoyevsky's crime and punishment (my first and last attempt at any Russian literature). I never got past the first page (or however long the scene was) that describes the kind of guilt, embarrassment, and terror that the character experiences when faced with the possibility of running into his landlady. The description was so exactly perfect that it impregnated my mind and soul with those emotions, completely against my will, and made me physically ill in the process. I immediately hated Dostoyevsky for doing this to me and wished that he were alive that day, in front of me, so that I could break his jaw with a left hook. F*&! you Dostoyevsky, go right to hell.
When I read Grant Morrison’s “The Invisibles” I experienced something similar. I started out loving the comic. Everything was great. Until I read the issue “Best Man Fall”. I’m pretty sure you’ve read the series so I won’t go into detail about the issue, but all I could think was “F*&! You Grant Morrison; F*&! you for doing this to me you bastard. You psychotic genius bastard. You can go right to hell and sit beside Dostoyevsky.” If I were to ever meet Grant Morrison, I don’t know if I would hit him or not; probably not, but man would I ever tell him what a sh!thead he is for that issue of “The Invisibles”.
And now that I’ve read this story of yours in its entirety, in one shot, as the bile pilled up in my throat and the sickness spread through my body, as you did the exact same thing to me as Dostoyevsky and Morrison, this is the third experience that I will never shake. You almost pushed me over the edge with the social media horror story you wrote a little while ago (“The Feud”), but this one; my God, this one. There were just so many sentences that taken individually are killers all by themselves, and here you’ve fired them in machinegun succession with utmost lethality.
Just one example: the paragraph, that begins with “I was there the whole time, watching my contributions to the chat dart up out of sight the instant I hit send. It was incredible.” So perfectly sums up the terminally online culture of the western world in such an exact illustration of emotional and spiritual void that it’s terrifying. Like the antithesis of the self-actualized man.
This is why I know I could never read your novel. I can guarantee that it’s too perfect in what it aims to do. I doubt I’d survive reading it. I grew up in the same era as you and you’ve so precisely tapped into the anxious empty of our generation that it scares me too much to absorb in the quantity of an actual novel. The feelings and spirit you capture in your writing are thoughts and emotions I’ve worked very hard to move past in my life and push away to just function in the world and try to become some modicum of a success. The only time I revisit that state of being is when I read your writing. (I’m not sure exactly why I do this to myself. Maybe because I know that this reality exists despite my constantly denying it while looking forward? Probably something like that.) It honestly terrifies me in a way. I’m not a writer by any stretch, so I’m struggling to find the words to describe the kind of fear that your work produces in me.
It’s like… when I read that paragraph I mentioned. It was like the first-person narrator was the embodiment of a very specific kind or failure, like a deity of the worst that someone from our generation could have become, and that this failure of a person exists within me because I am from that generation. That this is the very soul of our generation, and it exists within all of us clawing at our being, attempting to devour our lives at every moment and it in order to not succumb to it we have to fight every second of every day; I must fight every day. And it’s always there, right over my shoulder. I can feel this demon’s breath on my neck and I give in and look at it, it will possess me in one sudden rush and I will become one and the same as this failure. This is the kind of terror you are able to instill.
At least in me.
I have no succinct way to end this.
Thanks for typing out all of this. It was gratifying to read—and honestly one of the reasons I posted this on Substack instead of flinging it at lit magazines is because I'm growing more and more convinced that being able to add "published in the Blabbity-Blah Quarterly" to my CV is worth less than sometimes seeing my stuff resonating with people & names I recognize.
But—think of it this way: at least you know there's somebody out there who's as scared and disgusted about this stuff as you are. The piece definitely came from a place of fear—and, hell, maybe desperate wish fulfillment. I'm honestly not sure the last totally unhinged part *works,* but I'm pretty sure it's my version of the flourish toward the end of Tool's Aenema: 'Cause I'm prayin' for raa~aain! I'm prayin' for tidal waves...!
And I guess unlike Dostoevsky or Morrison, I can also tell you not to lose heart. Don't let this shit beat you down. The demons *want* you beaten down and demoralized. To the extent that you can, be a weed in the garden of evil. As much as you're able, don't let yourself be a carrier and a vector for the pattern. It's fueled by loneliness and a sense of pointlessness—so nurture & maintain friendships offline and do things that are meaningful to you (ideally with other people). Ach, these are all clichés, I know, but what the demons are most afraid of is people finding happiness & companionship & meaning without looping them in. It's getting harder and harder *not* to loop them in, but seize a mile for every inch they permit you.
Look, you can have a little existential terror, as a treat. Just don't drown in it.
The people I want to share this with most are not online enough to just send them a link.
A sugar glider drowning in Kombucha; that's one hell of a plot device!
Afterwards Effie's fans bought all the kombucha from every supermarket and little organic store in the country and flushed their contents down the toilet, and then put their heads together to figure out how to wipe out the fungi and bacteria species involved in the drink's fermentation. Justice will be done. Zhang Hao will be avenged.
Tigh gaps are so besides the point.
Yeah, my wife explained them to me. As I understand it, they became A Thing so women on the internet could make other women on the internet feel bad about themselves.
To your earlier questions about Millennium episodes—I'm not sure I can say much about them, since I've only watched each of them once and wasn't taking notes. "Midnight of the Century" and "The Curse of Frank Black" are two of the best Holiday Episodes of a show I've seen, and "The Curse" is pretty close to being a masterpiece. If there were any doubts that Millennium isn't the same show that it was in season 1, "The Curse" finally buries them. I remember being struck by how *little* Frank says in the episode—but then again, it's not like he's got anyone to talk to anymore.
I need to watch "Doomsday Defense" again. It's a Darin Morgan episode, so there's a *lot* going on, and the first time you see it your brain notices stuff that you can't describe afterwards unless you're watching it like a critic with a notepad in their lap. But there was that one length bit of dialogue that stuck with me...
(copy/pasted from This Is Who We Are's transcript)
FRANK: If you don't mind my asking: you're writing a book about the millennium, and yet you don't believe in any of the prophecies?
JOSE: At the start of the nineties, they predicted major breakthroughs for the neurosciences: the "Decade of the Brain" it was supposed to be. Instead, it was the decade of body–piercing. Now why should the millennium predictions be any more accurate?
FRANK: But there's the religious component. Do you not believe in God either?
JOSE: Oh, there are times when I've been, yes, a devout believer. And other times I have been a staunch atheist, and sometimes I've been both, during the same course of the same sexual act.
FRANK: (smiling) Don't be dark. Personally, I think this is a very significant time in mankind's history.
JOSE: But that's what every man throughout history has said about his time. Look (gesturing around him) at all these books – so much significance – but will they still exist a thousand years from now? One, maybe two writers will still be read. Can you name the two?
FRANK: Well, Shakespeare and...
JOSE: That's one.
FRANK: Shakespeare and Chung.
JOSE: (chuckling appreciatively) No. Thank you. No. Shakespeare and Goopta.
FRANK: Goopta?
JOSE: Selfosophists have gone to great lengths to safeguard the eternal circulation of his writing. They may not be read by the end of the next millennium, but they still certainly, certainly will literally exist.
FRANK: How the hell will they preserve these for that long?
JOSE: If I told you, I would have to kill you. (shaking his head) Oh, I wish that was a joke.
[Jose throws an arm over Frank's shoulder as they walk out of the store.]
...I'll just let that sit.
Yeah it was either women in the internet or the fashion faceless corporations preying on women insecure enough and giving them a reason to believe they are better than other women. In any case it's besides the point (thanks god.)
Also thank You for your insight on the episodes, it's not everyday i get to read other people opinions and perspectives on an old tv series i liked so much. It truly brings a bit of shine to a normal day.