There Are Other Authors Than Dan Brown and Fucking James Patterson
Introduction by Jack Moody
In a landscape of media saturation and the public’s dwindling ability to remain focused on a given task for longer than the span of time it takes to watch a Tik Tok video, the attention towards literature as a creative medium has largely been hoarded by an elite few authors who are either so firmly established that they could pen an unhinged manifesto written exclusively in Wingdings and it would rocket to the top of the New York Times Bestsellers List, or by those who check the appropriate boxes deemed to be profitable by the monopolized publishing giants. Graduates with an MFA are a plus, sticking to the formula taught uniformly by every creative writing college class is even better.
As a result, the far majority of avid readers are unlikely to have ever heard of the massive pool of talent budding from the independent literature movement, fed by grassroots, indie publishers and working-class writers, much of the time without any formal writing education. But it’s for those exact reasons that the indie community is experiencing a renaissance of boundary-pushing creativity. The writing is experimental, outside of the box, but most of all, untainted by predetermined requirements for commercial success. The writers birthed from this movement make their art for the sake of the creative act above all else. For this reason, some of the greatest living writers are people you have probably never heard of.
With this column, I intend to change that.
By Jack Moody
Installment #1: Quantum Diaper Punks, novella by Stuart Buck
In a landscape of media saturation and the public’s dwindling ability to remain focused on a given task for longer than the span of time it takes to watch a Tik Tok video, the attention towards literature as a creative medium has largely been hoarded by an elite few authors who are either so firmly established that they could pen an unhinged manifesto written exclusively in Wingdings and it would rocket to the top of the New York Times Bestsellers List, or by those who check the appropriate boxes deemed to be profitable by the monopolized publishing giants. Graduates with an MFA are a plus, sticking to the formula taught uniformly by every creative writing college class is even better.
As a result, the far majority of avid readers are unlikely to have ever heard of the massive pool of talent budding from the independent literature movement, fed by grassroots, indie publishers and working-class writers, much of the time without any formal writing education. But it’s for those exact reasons that the indie community is experiencing a renaissance of boundary-pushing creativity. The writing is experimental, outside of the box, but most of all, untainted by predetermined requirements for commercial success. The writers birthed from this movement make their art for the sake of the creative act above all else. For this reason, some of the greatest living writers are people you have probably never heard of.
With this column, I intend to change that.
The first book I’ll be sharing is titled Quantum Diaper Punks, a novella by Stuart Buck. As odd as the title sounds, the book itself is only odder, in every fantastic way afforded to the human imagination. Buck is a master of the disturbing, outlandish, and hilarious, and Quantum Diaper Punks is the perfect encapsulation of those three qualities.
It’s the story of an unnamed protagonist, and his meeting with the Messiah. At a punk rock concert. Her name is Eve. She wears nothing but a diaper. It’s freeing, she tells the protagonist. It is the outward, physical representation of her total disregard for societal expectations. She has Schrödinger’s equation cut into her thigh. Eve is searching for the meaning of life. Our main character is a wayward soul, an aimless man sifting through the ennui of modern existence. Eve is everything he needs. Eve is fulfillment, purpose, excitement. He loves Eve the second he sees her dancing in that diaper.
What follows is the most chaotic, mind-bending, violent, philosophical trip towards rock bottom I’ve ever read. Others soon find Eve, and see her as the same magnetic presence that our main character does. They form a cult. As you do. In search of the answer—just not any answer, but THE answer. Through a devolving series of events involving murder, arson, and copious drugs as a way of mind-expansion and connectivity, Eve and her cult, The Quantum Diaper Punks, go on a journey inward and downward to unlock the secrets of life itself, and to find God.
Stuart Buck’s novella is Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club if the characters hit bottom even harder and even deeper. It’s an exploration of metaphysics, spirituality, manipulation, a generation of lost and apathetic twenty-somethings, messiahs and messiah complexes, and sex and love as a form of worship, all framed by the backdrop of Gen X angst, music, and rebellion against the system. But beyond all the heavy themes and questions posed, at the very base of this work is simply that it’s entertaining as all hell. If you take anything away from this review, at the least, let it be that.
Installment #2: Soul Collector by Duvay Knox
At this point where literary culture now stands, as an author I’d much rather be regarded as a cult figure with a loyal, die-hard fan base than a commercial success. Besides, people scare me, fame is an ephemeral fever dream, and most great authors worth their salt in words have died poor. Stephen King, you’re good though. Enjoy that sweet, sweet Netflix money, you fucking champion.
The reason I say all this is because of the focus of this month’s column: Soul Collector by Duvay Knox. The book includes a subtitle, but being a pasty white Irishman, I’m going to forgo that minefield and refer to the work simply by its main title.
Soul Collector has cult classic written all over it; it’s etched into each sentence, the words dripping with charisma and style. There is no other living writer that could attempt to replicate Knox’s voice. It is Knox’s and Knox’s alone. He is the epitome of originality in literature. And this is not just because of the unique style that Knox injects into his prose—the entire book is written in the author’s true voice. He writes like he talks. And he talks with swagger, wit, and effortless cool. Knox throws out everything considered “proper” about the written English language—all elitist, upper class collegiate bullshit anyway. The prose is phonetic, doing away with punctuation when it doesn’t serve the purpose of the sentence. In this way, Soul Collector elicits a comparison to Hubert Selby Jr.’s controversial and genius 1964 novel Last Exit To Brooklyn.
The novel follows Sippian, a twenty-something black man killed by gun violence who finds himself in Hell, and with a new job title. He becomes one of many Collectors, who are, essentially, a creative interpretation of the familiar Grim Reaper figure. Soul Collector follows Sippian’s rise through the ranks of Hell, his jobs becoming increasingly more difficult, and further into morality’s gray area.
This concept is a perfect foundation for the philosophical questions Knox poses throughout the novel: How do we as human want to spend our lives? How do those choices affect the people around us? How much can one decision change the entire trajectory of everyone’s life? Knox also deftly tackles difficult subject matter like socioeconomic disparity, the dangers of trying to make positive change in a marginalized community, gun violence and police brutality in America, and the lasting and wide-reaching negative effects of self-destruction as a coping mechanism.
Similar to other minimalist greats like Ernest Hemingway and Raymond Carver, Knox is able to say so much with such sparse prose, inviting you to read between the lines, ponder the words, and form your own conclusion from Knox’s hard-earned philosophies on life. This is a man who has seen a lot, survived even more, and uses literature as a way to communicate his learned insights in a direct and blunt manner for the reader. Reading Soul Collector is like sitting down with a veteran of this game of life, and receiving the greatest education one could ask for: How to survive in a world that tries its hardest to make it impossible.
In my opinion, Knox succeeds in doing just that. As he says himself in the About the Author section at the end of the book: “I got my PH.D frum the School of Hard Knox.”
So just know when you pick up a copy of Soul Collector, class is in session.
Installment #3: Vivid Greene by Jacob Ian DeCoursey
Listen. I know you’re reading this in December. I know it’s almost Christmas. But it’s still Halloween IN MY HEART. So this month I’ll be talking about the horror/sci-fi short story collection Vivid Greene by Jacob Ian DeCoursey.
When I think of underrated and under-read talent, Vivid Greene is the first book I think of. It’s a crime more people don’t know about DeCoursey’s work. This book holds that spark of a young Stephen King or Clive Barker, diving as deep as necessary—and it is necessary—into the surreal and uncomfortable depths of our humanity, putting a mirror up to our own darkness and neuroses. And what we then see in the mirror is a horrible and disfigured monster. What DeCoursey does so well with that reflection, though, is that in looking into the eyes of the familiar grotesquerie…you see a soul. You see justified pain and the inevitable, fallible result.
This is what truly great horror and science fiction can do. It takes the reader into the extremes of what people are capable of under the most disturbing circumstances, but then brings you back above the surface of our comfort zone, having seen why we are capable of such things. You come away with more understanding for the outcast, for the freak, for the decrepit state of everything around you. This is exactly what Vivid Greene achieves.
Take the first story—and my favorite of the collection—“A Place to Lay My Bones”. Martha, a young woman living in a desolate town on a desolate property with her abusive father, tends to her child that stays locked away in the basement. The child is a malformed creature, born from mysterious circumstances; whether by her own father’s violent act or from a boy whom she believes left her cursed after taking her virginity at her own mother’s funeral. She can’t seem to recall which event is the reality, but what led to the birth of her child hardly matters to Martha any longer.
There is a heartbreaking theme of forgiveness and innocence seen through Martha’s eyes. When talking to her son, who can only speak through grunts and gurgles “both primitive and infantile” (pg. 21), she still tries to tell the creature that her father wasn’t always such a nasty person, reminiscing on days long gone when he and her mother were both happy. Though her father has locked the child in a cage after it got out and killed the family dog, she only sees it as her baby that’s incapable of understanding the harm it does. She sees the beauty and humanity beneath its horrifying exterior, and wishes desperately that together they could escape to live out their lives as mother and son, free from secrecy and judgment.
Religion too plays a part in these themes: Martha’s community is a pious one, and the child is hidden away not just because of what it is, but why it is—a child born out of wedlock. The nature of the act that created her son is as taboo as the nature of the creature itself. Martha’s father even refers to the child as “the little sin.”
When Martha briefly escapes the property, the reality of her world comes more into focus through the people she meets. Martha’s child isn’t the only one of its kind, and people of the community see the others like it as nothing more than abominations born from sin, a sign of the wretchedness of the godless, sluttish youth. They are all “little sins” to be hidden away and swept under the rug. All the while, the actions of those very same people are shown to be the most monstrous of all. It is a town plagued by apathy masquerading as righteousness.
Once she does return home, having been overcome with guilt for thinking of abandoning her child, the story comes to a violent head that causes your heart to break all over again for Martha and the child, despite what it does next. Your heart breaks because DeCoursey writes his characters with empathy and sadness and a reason for acting how they do.
The child is not the monster. The community and its judgment, its blind hatred, its false piety—that is the real monster, the true villains who created an environment ripe for abuse, disdain, and inevitably, rebellion. So when the story reaches its climactic end, you not only see justification for Martha and her child’s actions, but also mourn the reasons why it had to reach that end from the very start.
This story alone merits Jacob Ian DeCoursey’s Vivid Greene to be a highly regarded work of contemporary sci-fi and horror, but the book explores so much more, dragging the reader through transgressions, terror, and the ugliness of life to reveal the monster that dwells inside us all. But ultimately, what you may come away with is this: That very monster is what makes us so beautifully, complexly human.
Installment #4: History of Present Complaint, by HLR (poetry)
I planned on starting this review with a witty, sardonic quip about how I normally hate poetry, how it bores me, etc. But the focus this month is a book that deeply, deeply affected me, and I want to show respect for the work and the author. Because the subject matter is heavy, very real, and told with such utter rawness and honesty that it struck me in the fucking chest like a weapon.
HLR’s 2022 poetry book History of Present Complaint is the greatest collection of poems I’ve ever read. It broke me. I saw myself in each page, each sentence; every word formed meticulously to create one of the most vivid first-hand depictions of mental illness ever put to paper. A comparison to Sylvia Plath would be well earned, but even that, I think, would be too reductive. This is H’s story, painted with visceral, painstaking language both bleakly gorgeous and horrifying. The words, at times morphing into a hybrid creature of poetry and prose, are entirely original and unique to the author.
HLR writes from three perspectives, as explained in a note by the editor: Present Complaint—poems written about a specific psychotic episode suffered by the author in 2019; Post Complaint—poems written during and about the immediate aftermath of this episode; and History of Present Complaint—poems illustrating the author’s recollections of similar episodes that came as a result of her mental illness.
For anyone familiar with the repercussions of severe mental illness, the vivid descriptions—both of the outer settings and the inner workings of HLR’s mind—will at times be a painful and terrifying experience. Because this is true (TRUE) honesty. The kind of honesty that’s hard to come by. And it will shake you. You will want nothing more in the world while reading this book than to know that the author will be okay. She is a profoundly empathetic protagonist (a word I hesitate to use, for fear of separating HLR from her own experiences), and her art is an incredibly important window into the mind of someone suffering who outwardly may be difficult to understand. That is one of the greatest achievements of HoPC: it brings awareness and connectivity to those who most need it and, unfortunately, often times don’t receive it. I genuinely believe this is a book that could save a life. I say that because I know the places I’ve been, and I know if I had read the words within its pages during those times, it would have lessened the burden.
Grief, trauma, terror, and the inability to trust one’s own mind can coalesce into the most harmful human poison. And HLR understands that fully, drinks the poison, and passionately details its effects with the mastery and eloquence of some of the greatest writers to ever create.
There are just too many excerpts to choose from, but one passage that struck me the hardest, that forced me to put the book down, breathe, and draw in that rarely attainable feeling when you see that someone else fucking gets it, can be found on page 64. It’s a poem titled Dirty Dishes. And when you read HoPC, if you’re like me, you’ll then know exactly what I’m talking about.
There’s a word I’ve been dancing around for the entirety of this article, a word that is often thrown out with little regard for what it really means. But there’s just not another word I can find that will as aptly describe this book: History of Present Complaint by HLR is a work of genius. Its importance can’t be overstated.
Installment #5: The Recalcitrant Stuff of Life, by Sean McCallum
DRUGS. Am I right? They’re the debatable source of fantastic music and horrible screenplay ideas alike. The last time I ate mushrooms Invader Zim was playing on the television and it was genuinely one of the most disturbing experiences of my life. I can’t do drugs anymore because my brain decided to inherit all the bad genes. But for many cultures spanning thousands of years, some drugs, particularly psychedelics, have been instrumental aspects of medicinal, spiritual, and communal practices.
This month’s focus is a novel that provides intimate knowledge of a culture and its way of life very few outsiders have experienced, and even fewer have written about.
The Recalcitrant Stuff of Life by Sean McCallum is an exquisitely woven tapestry of three storylines that merge together to create a final, shared experience in the very heart of the Amazonian jungle.
Roosevelt “Rosy” Robinson is a man shattered by an ugly and tumultuous relationship, who disappears from his home in Toronto to drink himself into oblivion as far away as he can humanly go, while grappling with deep-seated guilt and regret and self-imposed isolation in the remote town of Iquitos, Peru.
Meanwhile his two Canadian buddies, “Ishy” Lords and Stanley “The Deuce”, set off in search of their friend in order to deliver news important enough that they’ll brave miles of inhospitable terrain and a three-day cargo boat ride down the Amazon River to do it.
Ishy is a rather naïve city slicker with his own issues that are revealed in pieces over the course of the narrative, while The Deuce is intrepid, charismatic, maybe a little stupid, but has a heart of gold—despite his own faults and regrets. Their histories together, along with Rosy’s, are parsed out throughout the book in flashbacks, adding more depth to each character as they delve deeper and deeper into the jungle.
The two play off each other throughout the trip like a classic Abbot and Costello routine. They’re two young men entirely out of their element, but find humor and excitement in the journey as only ignorant, twenty-something tourists can.
The last thread of the tapestry is Vanessa—an intelligent, introspective woman who’s arrived in Peru for the sole purpose of participating in a traditional ayahuasca ceremony. Her story plays out largely through diary entries at first, until each character’s journey slowly intertwines with one another, and the building result of these combined narratives reaches its long-anticipated conclusion.
What is by far the most riveting aspect of McCallum’s novel is the author’s own expertise on the town and the area itself. The descriptions of the Amazon, of its culture and of its people, are three-dimensional and gorgeous, to the point where the geography itself becomes one of the book’s most important characters. This is thanks in no small part to the author’s own experience in the Amazon, in Iquitos, and participating in an ayahuasca ceremony firsthand. The amount of care and attention to detail spent on painting a picture for the reader puts you directly into the story and into the adventure.
At its heart, The Recalcitrant Stuff of Life is part road novel, part philosophical treatise on the heavy weight of regret and the freeing necessity of human connection and exploration. It’s moving and it’s hilarious; it’s romantic and it’s transgressive; but more than anything, it reaches for hope within that all too familiar darkness found in the aftermath of our worst choices.
Like what Vanessa hopes to discover during the pivotal and incredibly detailed ayahuasca ceremony, McCallum too is searching for a message beneath the adventure he writes. It’s an age-old story, and he tells it with the wit and skill of a seasoned author: Redemption can be reached by anyone, however deep of a pit they’ve fallen into. All it requires is a little help and some hope.
Come for the journey, stay for the insights, and come back again for that rare feeling that only the purest kind of literature can provide.
Installment #6: Play the Devil, by Scott Laudati
After working enough terrible jobs in your adult life, eventually, as the good god of Capitalism intended it, you grow more and more weary, more jaded, spiteful of the rich and comfortable. You’re paid barely enough to survive, and treated as subhuman by most people fortunate enough to receive a small loan of $100,000 from their parents to never have to feel the weight of college debt after inevitably emerging from the higher education system with a job that has absolutely nothing to do with the degree they earned.
Really the only upside to blue-collar work in America is if you happen to be a talented writer. Because the stories will write themselves. Ernest Hemingway once said, “Don’t bother with churches, government buildings or city squares. If you want to know about a culture, spend a night in its bars.” I would say the same about construction sites, a restaurant’s back of house, and as I’ve now learned from the focus of this month’s review… suburban pools.
Play the Devil by Scott Laudati is the greatest novel about menial labor since Charles Bukowski’s Post Office. Largely taking place over the course of a single day, Play the Devil thrusts us into the bleak world of recent college-dropout Londi, a failed writer who returns back to his hometown in New Jersey with his tail between his legs, and back to his parents’ basement.
Londi’s childhood friend Frankie Gunnz—the epitome of an Italian Stallion: brash, confident, hard-working, quick to take his shirt off before a barroom brawl to proudly display the fading Italian flag tattoo between his shoulder blades—insists that Londi join him as a fellow pool boy at the aptly named local company American Pools. Begrudgingly, and due largely to previous circumstances involving his mother finding him in the basement with a naked woman (Queen Jac, the mirage-like beauty that serves as his last desperate hope for love and contentment), Londi is forced to accept, lest he find himself homeless and jobless in a cold and cruel America.
The rest of the novel follows Londi and Frankie’s exploits during a grueling 16-hour workday, driving from pool to pool, contesting with drowned, dead animals, weapons-grade cleaning chemicals, an eclectic assortment of clients, and a Boss who, perhaps in a time decades before, may have been the exemplification of the dead American Dream.
The novel is fast-paced and insanely funny. Its dialogue is razor-sharp, witty and believable. It’s impossible not to see Laudati’s own experience as a pool boy in the descriptions of necessary steps to cleaning each pool—which never feel stale or boring. Despite the monotonous job depicted, the story and prose is anything but. This is a page-turner and difficult to put down. The situations our two heroes get into are like something straight out of a classic Richard Linklater film. Though Londi spends much of the day lamenting his lost childhood, and the forced state of the lower class, these monologues are shared with necessary self-awareness and humor, and still there is a beautiful, pervading sense of nostalgia and warmth. Though this is a job I would never want, and told from a perspective I haven’t had, after finishing Play the Devil I was left with a fond and melancholic comfort. Days like these are the days you would never take back, no matter how difficult, harebrained, or wild.
Laudati captures a very specific moment in a young man’s life like a firefly in a jar. The novel is a time capsule from those precious days of your early twenties, where the brunt of the cold world and adulthood looms just overhead, but the remembrance of a simpler time still lingers in the back of one’s mind, urging you to keep at least that final ember burning as the powers that be try in vain to snuff it out. It’s a genuinely beautiful takeaway from a genuinely fantastic novel.
Play the Devil by Scott Laudati is my favorite book I’ve read in a very long time, and it’s one I know I’ll come back to. It’s an urge to remain childlike and hopeful, a treatise on the failings of our capitalist, adult world, and a love letter to New Jersey. It’s all of those thing and more. I can’t recommend it enough.