Gods Fare No Better feat. J David Osborne

Episode Transcript
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SPEAKER_00 (00:00):
You know, he's really shameless, an
intellectual argument.
He's absolutely withoutcharacter, a moral foundation,
or even intellectual substance.

SPEAKER_04 (00:55):
back to the Getting Lit Podcast.
The last episode we talked aboutMedea, the first girl bus from
ancient Greek history.
And this week we're continuingJDO month here at the Getting
Lit Podcast.
You've listened to like probablyover 12 hours of JDO in the past

(01:18):
month because I did my I puttogether all of the Gene Wolfe
episodes that we did in coupleof years ago, and he was on for
the Legacy of Cain episode.
And now he is on to promote hisnew book and just generally, you
know, shoot the shit with us.
Yes, it's called God's Fair NoBetter.
And both Fressa and I have readit and loved it.

(01:40):
And yeah, we're going to talkabout it.
We're going to talk aboutinfluences.
And yeah, welcome back, JDO.
It's been one episode sinceyou've been on.
Happy to

SPEAKER_03 (01:54):
be back.
Too long, if you ask me.
JDO, third mic on the GettingLit podcast.
Yeah, no shit, right?
Between this and Rare Candy, I'mgoing on Rare Candy like three
times, too.
But it's fun.
That's what podcasts aresupposed to be.
They're supposed to be chillhangs.
I mean, what else am I going todo?
Hang out with my son?
I

SPEAKER_04 (02:17):
saw your picture with your son and how he wrecked
the remote control car.
That is so sad.
Did you get it fixed?

SPEAKER_03 (02:25):
No.
It's a lesson.
It was a lesson.
So I told him.
That's kind of how parentingworks.
You tell him.
He's like, Dad, can I put theMario Kart car in the water?
I said, no, buddy.
It's going to break.
And he's like, I want to do it.
And I was like, all right.
but you understand that it'sgoing to break.
Right.
And he's like, I don't thinkit's going to.
And I'm like, all right.

(02:47):
And it goes, and this dieshalfway through the puddle.
And he's like, it broke.
Yeah.
Yeah, it did.

SPEAKER_04 (02:56):
Well, sorry.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 (02:59):
I was like, can we get another one?
I was like, no, that was

SPEAKER_04 (03:04):
it.
Well, I, I, I tend to think thatprobably the apple doesn't fall
far from the tree because like,um, I don't know.
Well, like reading this, itfeels like that same attitude
that your son had, like goesinto the book.
It's like, I'm going to do this.
Like, yeah.
And the story might break, butI'm going to do it anyway.
You know?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.

(03:24):
Listen, it doesn't break though.
So

SPEAKER_03 (03:26):
yeah.
Nobody likes this kind of thing,but it's what I want to do.
We'll try.
Yeah.
There's a lot of Mario carts andpuddles in this one.

SPEAKER_04 (03:35):
Yeah.
And I did want to talk about thelike, the process and the road
to this book, because obviouslyI've actually, I actually
reviewed the first book that youdid many, many moons ago, which
was, it was, what was it called?
Dying World?
Dying World, yeah.
Yes, yes, yes.
Oh, he's got it.
There it is.
Frest has got it.
I think I have a hard copysomewhere of it.

(03:58):
Yeah.
But and so what you've done islike you wrote a series of short
ones set in this world, which islike Cyclone City, a kind of
cyberpunk.
How would you describe it?
Like cyberpunk kind of blendedwith spiritual elements and
basically everything you'reinterested in.

(04:19):
Yeah,

SPEAKER_03 (04:20):
it's just the place where I can write about whatever
I want to.

SPEAKER_04 (04:23):
yeah

SPEAKER_03 (04:24):
so it's a cyclone city supposed to be it's
basically supposed to beoklahoma city yeah right it's in
the middle of the country it's acity that for whatever reason
didn't get bombed in theapocalypse and so it becomes a
sort of hub uh by defaultbecause it's kind of the only
one there and what grows up isuh kind of native oklahoman

(04:44):
culture right and uh mixed withlike this kind of weird Akira
thing because I had the Yakuzamove in.
Don't really know how thelogistics of that worked out,
how Japanese people were like,we're going to go take over
Oklahoma City.
But, you know, who gives a shit?
And then, yeah, magic is alsoreal.

SPEAKER_04 (05:02):
Yeah, amazing.
And so what was interestingabout this, like reading the
first one, like I don't actuallyremember if– The magical
elements of it were in theoriginal.
Was that sort of added in laterand you folded in as the tale
grew and the telling, so tospeak?
100%,

SPEAKER_03 (05:21):
right.
So my first plan was to do 10 ofthese little slim novellas,
which looking back on it, notthe best idea.
Why?
Just before we

SPEAKER_04 (05:31):
get into that, why is that not the best idea?

SPEAKER_03 (05:32):
Sure.
Because you can't come out witha slim novella in a series,
especially 10 of them, andmaintain an interested
readership.
So what I saw was a massive falloff from Dying World to War in
Heaven, right?
And it makes total sense.
There's this gap of time betweenthe two.

(05:53):
They're an interconnected story.
And people's reception to War inHeaven was positive, but...
At the same time, it was kind oflike, I think I need to go back
and reread the first one.
So I started thinking, like Iwas thinking about The Green
Mile, how The Green Mile cameout in those like seven slim
novellas first.

(06:13):
But those don't exist anymore.
Like if you've ever seen TheGreen Mile on the shelf, it's a
full novel.
And what happened...
Thank you for having me.

(06:44):
I just did what other people doin private, where I slowly wrote
a book over three years, but Ireleased the first two drafts of
those books online.
So what happened was, becausethings got so fantastical in the
third one, I went back andrewrote pretty much the whole

(07:05):
first book is...
a rewrite.
And then the second booksurvived for the most part.
I just moved things around to,to make it a little bit better.
Uh, and then you have thisbigger, like 50 or 60,000 word
neon hell weirdo.
Uh, I don't even know how todescribe that part of the book,

(07:25):
but I had psychedelicpsychedelic, right.
But I just had to make sure thatit all made sense going all the
way through.
Cause I couldn't just copy andpaste the first two books and
then, do Neon Hell.
I realized it wasn't going towork.

SPEAKER_04 (07:39):
Yeah, well, that's the thing that's great about it,
too, is like in that process,you know, I feel like sometimes
one of your strengths isobviously at the sentence level,
amazing writer, and you do thinkabout structure a lot, I think,
in this one at least.
And what I liked about it washow, you know, how free and sort

(08:01):
of easy it was with like all ofthese disparate elements, but
it's, and it makes sense, but italso doesn't like adhere to this
sort of nerdish, like everypiece must fit.
Like, um, although I couldforesee people like doing
subreddits on this book and likebeing, what does this mean?
I can see them doing that, butlike, it's not that like the
book invites that necessarilybecause it's not, it's not, it's

(08:25):
telling you, it's not tellingyou to, um, It's not good.
I'm sure you've got lots of lorein your head, but it's not a
lore-focused sort of story isbasically what I'm getting at
there.
Sure.

SPEAKER_03 (08:38):
And I've always liked writing books like that.
I went back because every yearor so, I'll check in on the
Goodreads for my earlier book.
There's one that I want to readto you really quickly.
I can find it really fast.
Listeners, just stick with me.
Is it your first book?
Yeah, it's from By the Time,right?

(08:58):
So By the Time was this bookabout a Siberian gulag.
And the essential plot of it isthat they want to escape, but
they need to bring someone withthem to eat when they run out of
food on the Siberian tundra.
But that's relegated to the veryback portion of the book.
Most of it's just these kind ofvignettes that...

(09:21):
are strange and, you know, butthere was this one and it's from
a baby.
We just got done talking abouthow non non-binary is not real.
This person, Rachel only hasthree reviews, but her review is
I've been camped reading everyreview for this book, trying to

(09:41):
find an examination of theending and have found very
little that illuminates whatthat was all about.
Yeah.
Yeah.

(10:13):
which makes them appearunimportant, requiring the
reader to move on quickly to themore weighty, realistic parts,
which make up a significantlyhigher percentage of the book.
And the ending felt as if theauthor suddenly remembered the
genre he was going for, whichwas jarring in an otherwise
interesting novella grounded inthat weighty, depressing real.
So like this person is likecombing the internet to try to

(10:36):
figure out what this thingmeans.
And it's, When I was younger, soI wrote that book when I was 23
and was doing a lot of drugs.
But I developed this kind ofstyle where I thought it was
kind of cool to never explainanything and to talk to the
reader as though they alreadyknew what I was talking about.

(10:59):
And what's cool about gettingolder is that I became obsessed
with things like it was a lot ofit was going on rare candy and
talking about like Crichtonbooks and shit and being like
this fucking rules.
Like how do I get closer tothat?
And so with every book, I'mgoing to try to get a little bit
more propulsive with like theplot and, and kind of go in that

(11:23):
direction.
But there's always that elementof my writing where I know what
it means.
And it's fun to me that youdon't, and that I'm just going
to talk about it.
Like we both know.
And that's, that's why this wasbefore I'd read Gene Wolfe.
Right.
So when I found Gene Wolfe, Iwas like, Oh, it's my favorite
author.
Yeah.
Like he gets it.

(11:43):
He does the same thing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He knew when he was writing thatshit that people were going to
be like, what the fuck does thatmean?
He never, he mentions a word andthen never mentions it again.
And so it's just, it's a game.
It's, it's, it's fun.
And I think this book has lessof that than my earlier.
It's, it's, I don't thinkthere's anything overly, overly,

(12:04):
obtuse or obscure about it.
Maybe the tornado stuff doesn'tmake sense, but I really wanted
to make sure that this one hadthat fun propulsive plot, but
also I can't help myself.
Like,

SPEAKER_04 (12:21):
yeah,

SPEAKER_03 (12:22):
I love it out there.

SPEAKER_04 (12:23):
I love that tornado stuff.
Like the legends, which I'massuming is like Oklahoma and
like, folklore myths sort ofstuff, um, that really kind of
localizes it, even though it'ssort of like a, um, you know,
megalopolis sort of, uh,hyper-capitalist, the world has
come to this place.
I just love, uh, that element ofit.

(12:44):
And I love when people do thattoo, when they kind of localize
their worlds, whether it's asort of science fictional world,
or even just, uh, you know, ifit's a village or something like
that, like, um, in theparticular is the universal sort
of thing.
Like I just love that.
And I just love that image.
And I know you love it too.
Cause it seems like you'reobsessed with it of the

(13:05):
Tomahawk, like kind of divertingthe, the, the, the hurricanes or
not the hurricanes.
What are they called?
Tornadoes.

SPEAKER_03 (13:12):
Tornadoes.
Yeah.
When I was a high schoolteacher, I, you know, we'd have
a bad weather day and I'd go inand the Kyle work, Angie kids
would be like, uh, I'd be like,oh, yeah, that was scary last
night.
There was a tornado coming, andthey're like, we took care of
it.
Because they do that.
Like, Kiowas go out, and theythrow a tomahawk in the ground.
It splits the tornado, and itmisses them, right?

(13:35):
It's a magical practice that I100% believe is real for reasons
that I could talk about formaybe an hour.
But I think that's an importantthing about this, about– This
book as well, and my writingstyle in general, is that I am a
firm believer in magic and theoccult as being an actual real

(13:58):
thing.
And I think that weather is apart of that.
Living where I live and talkingto as many people as I do, I've
talked to a few meteorologists,and did you know that they still
don't really know why a tornadoforms?
Really?

(14:18):
Like the top meteor, like ifyou, you can look this up, they
can explain it through, throughlike, like what's actually
happening physically.
But when I say, okay, but whatforms it, right?
Like what, what kicks it off?
What kicks, they're like, oh, we

SPEAKER_01 (14:35):
don't fucking know.

SPEAKER_03 (14:35):
So

SPEAKER_01 (14:35):
it's like the big bang kind of thing where it's
like, they can explaineverything that happened after
it, but like why it happened,there's still no idea.

SPEAKER_03 (14:43):
They don't know.
They can see predictors, right?
They can see cloud formationskind of starting to turn into a
hook.
And I'll say, okay, great.
So what causes that hook?
They're like, I don't know.
How can they not know that?
Right?
Yeah.
Well, you just said that aboutthe big banks.
You guys haven't figured thisshit out yet, that it's all just
a constant loop, right?

SPEAKER_01 (15:05):
I can understand why they don't know it, but it's
annoying that they present it asthe experts that you can't
question when they don't knowthe answers to these questions.

UNKNOWN (15:13):
Hmm.

SPEAKER_01 (15:14):
A lot of people are like that though.
Yeah.
Honestly,

SPEAKER_03 (15:16):
like a lot of the vaccine people too, they can
tell you every mechanism forhow.
Shout out Claire.
Yeah.
Say the, say the MRNA vaccineworks.
And it's like, but what aboutlike, just what about like the
underlying like principle of thewhole thing?
And they're like, we don't know.
There was one guy who knew andhe's dead now.
And, uh, we've just kind oftaken the technology and run

(15:37):
with it.
But, uh, no, I, um, I activelypractice sigil magic and
different kind of prayers andcurses and things like that.
Because it's just...
Nobody recently...
But you can do a really cool...
You can do this thing called warwater, which is pretty cool,

(15:59):
where people are talking shitabout you.
You can write their name on apiece of paper, run a rusty
spike through it, put it in aZiploc bag full of water, put a
bunch of pepper and nasty shitinto it, lock it up and put it
in your freezer and they'llnever talk shit about you again.
Wow.
Okay.

SPEAKER_02 (16:16):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 (16:16):
Yeah.
So I'm very into animism and,uh, uh, different religions and
things like that.
And so there's a lot of, uh,when I'm writing, I think that's
when it all comes outspecifically because writing
itself is a magical act.
So like I become like a, Istopped being J.D.O.
the retard and become J.D.O.

(16:38):
the wizard when I'm writing.
Like, oh, all of a sudden, it'slike being on an acid trip where
everything makes sense whileyou're tripping.
Like, that's what writing is forme.
I'm like, oh, no, I get it.
I understand.
And then when I'm done, I'mlike, I don't know what I was, I
don't know what that meant.

SPEAKER_04 (16:52):
I love that metaphor.
It's such a great, like, becauseit's sort of hard to, unless
you're a writer, it's sort ofhard to kind of you need to
experience that to understandhow good that analogy is because
it is like wizardry.
I often use like alchemy as a,as a metaphor, like, and I just

(17:14):
love how you can just takesomething as like basically
marks on a page or digital sortof thing and like transmit
thoughts that are kind of like,and like feelings and
experiences that aren'tnecessarily always your own.
Like, it's this weird thingwhere, like, you own it, but you

(17:35):
kind of don't at the same time.
And then you transmit this outinto the world and people are
experiencing it.
It's like this form of, like,psychic kind of messaging or
whatever.
And people don't, like,privilege that enough when
they're talking about, like,books and writing and literature
and stuff like that.
How it's like this spiritual,psychic kind of, like, act,

(17:57):
basically.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 (17:59):
Oh, it's magic.
A hundred percent, because I cantell you what I did yesterday
and I can tell you what I, I cantell you what I did a year ago.
If you said, Hey, do youremember that time that we were,
you know, on a hike in theWichita's and we saw this, I can
call that memory up.
But when I opened the book andread a page, I can't remember

(18:20):
it.
Like I can't remember sittingdown to write that thing, you
know, like I, it's, I guess Isuppose if I give it some
thought, I can tell you where itcame from, right?
I was watching this movie or Iwas watching that movie and it
came out that way.
But the actual writing of it,you're in a different space.
The same way it's kind of–besides a handful, right?

(18:42):
Like I'm sure you guys bothdabbled with psychedelics.
But like besides a handful ofextremely profound moments, you
can't like pinpoint like, oh,yeah, on my third trip– I
thought this, and then I thoughtthis, and then I thought this
like, no, no.
You just remember like when yousee the weapon of the apocalypse
and when you meet the elves,right?

(19:03):
Like, I guess that's my DMT.
Like I, I remember the wholething for that.
Cause that was, that was

SPEAKER_01 (19:10):
fucking crazy.
I met Shiva on an acid trip.
And like, I'm convinced it wasShiva because I didn't know
anything about Hinduism or whothat was.
I thought it was Ganesh becausethat was the only one I'd heard
of.
But then like through readingdifferent things and I'm like,
yep, that exactly tracks withthe experience I had.
And it was like in like a fullego death, like acid trip kind

(19:30):
of moment.
So I feel like I squandered itreally.
I should have asked her or himmore like questions or
something.
I was just like, no, no, no,

SPEAKER_03 (19:38):
no.
You didn't squander it at all.
Like that was the whole point.
was that you saw that, right?
And there are so many instancesof this happening that it can't
not be real.
Like you can't see Shiva withoutknowing what Shiva is.
And then later on finding out,it's kind of like what pilled me
on telepathy was not, I'm sorry,not telepathy, but like

(20:01):
reincarnation, right?
So there are these kids who wereborn and they know all these
facts about the person they werebefore.
Right.
And they get it right, right,right, right, right.
That's not convincing to mebecause there can be coaching.
Right.
But there was one story that Iheard about and it was a kid.
And in his past life, he hadbeen a world war two fighter

(20:22):
pilot or whatever.
And he's naming all this stuff.
He's getting all this shit.
Right.
But then there's one detail thathe's wrong about.
Right.
I can't remember what the detailis, but he's, they're like, Oh,
well he got them all.
Right.
But he got this one thing wrong.

UNKNOWN (20:37):
Right.

SPEAKER_03 (20:38):
20 years later, like a letter surfaces, right?
And that letter that surfacethat's been lost to time for 20
years confirms that that kidwasn't wrong.
He was right.
Wow.
That's what got me, right?
Because there was no way for himto be coached.
It was something that nobodyknew that everybody thought that
he was wrong about that.
He was actually right about.

(21:00):
So for us to your, your Shivaexperience to me is, is where
the proof is when somebody whohas no idea what they're looking
at is like looking through abook and they're like oh fuck
that's what i saw that's whyit's true right because you who
would have coached you on that

SPEAKER_04 (21:18):
yeah

SPEAKER_03 (21:18):
like whether it's

SPEAKER_04 (21:19):
that yeah and whether it's actually shiva or
something that some like guy inancient india or something saw
and then Cold Shiva.
You know what I mean?
Sure.
The

SPEAKER_01 (21:30):
human understanding of whatever these things
actually is is going to becompletely inaccurate, but
there's some level of accuracyto it.
People have these experiencesover time.
People have experiences ofChrist or the Madonna or
whomever.
I do think those are realentities of some form and maybe

(21:51):
they are human consciousnessprojected into a whatever, some
kind of ethereal realm orsomething like, you know what I
mean?
There's heaps and heaps oftheories of it.
And I think they're probablylike 2% correct.
And then the most educatedperson can probably only explain
like 2% of that 2%.
Um, So, it's like, yeah, youcan't really, like, figure out

(22:11):
what to do with these or whatthey, like, literally mean or
anything.
But, like, to say that, like,because it's not all completely
mapped out, it's false isretarded.
Like, there's something going onthere for sure.
Yeah,

SPEAKER_03 (22:22):
it is.
Because what you said is reallysmart.
Because, like, if it's 2% of 2%,it doesn't matter because it
happened.
And it only has to happen oncefor it to be real.
Like, you only have to see aghost one time to be like, oh,
okay, well, yeah, ghosts arereal then.
I guess.
That's why trying to replicateshit like this in a lab, because

(22:45):
intention matters too, right?
Like I was reading one ofRussell Targ's books on ESP and
there was this fascinating pointwhere they took somebody who
believed in ESP, a scientist anda scientist who did not believe
in ESP and had them run the sameexperiments.
And the guy who believed it wasgetting results.
And the guy who did not believeit was not getting results,

(23:05):
right?
It's that, You know, is it aparticle or a wave type of
thing?
Depends on the on the viewer.
But yeah, the shit only has tobe real once for it to be real
forever.

SPEAKER_04 (23:15):
I think there was some experiment as well around
ESP that was around people beinglooked at.
You know when you know you'rebeing looked at and you can't
actually see even in yourperipheral vision?
Like, you know, if I'm justfucking around with my partner
or whatever and I'm looking athim and he'll be aware that I

(23:36):
am, even though his back'sturned to me and there's no
reflections, there's nothinglike that.
Yep.
I think there is a kind of lowlevel.
Everyone has sort of a low levelkind of telepathic ability.
Um, and they try to like handwave that away by like saying,
you know, shit like, um, micromovements and like just stuff

(23:56):
that's like even more likeridiculous yeah esoteric yeah
like yeah just like oh yeah youryour eye blinking like moves
this like current in the airadjusting pressure that you're
like pro what's that wordprecipitate deception like yeah

SPEAKER_03 (24:15):
like it's like some dragon ball z shit it's like oh
blade of grass yeah they

SPEAKER_04 (24:20):
use they love using occam's razor except for things
like this you know like yeahwhereas it's clearly true

SPEAKER_01 (24:27):
they'll if they like will immediately discount like
any kind of like black betterturn supernatural explanation
but then the most flimsiestmaterialist explanation, they're
like, well, if it's plausible,so therefore it disproves the
supernatural explanation.
It's like, yeah, it's plausible,but you didn't prove it, so why
do I have to be made to feellike the idiot into crazy

(24:52):
woo-woo shit when yourexplanation is just as retarded
just because you watch like thefucking Neil deGrasse Tyson TV
series.
You know, all this stuff aboutphysics.
Yeah.
Right.
Right.
Like alien

SPEAKER_03 (25:04):
shit too.
Just real quick with alien shit.
It's like, to me, this is alljust common sense, but like, do
you really think that regular,uh, wakes up every day, eats the
same breakfast, goes to work,eats the same dinner, fucks his
wife, uh, plays with his kids,goes to sleep.
That guy would decide to destroyhis life to tell people that he

(25:29):
was abducted by aliens.
Maybe, I guess, maybe.
But nobody has ever talked aboutbeing abducted by aliens, and it
just went great for them.
They make no money.
Sometimes they get released fromtheir jobs, or they become a
pariah.
But they stick with it.
They're like, but no, it's areal, it really happened to me.

(25:51):
And to me, it's all aboutincentives with people.
This is how I view politics.
It's how I view thesupernatural, whatever.
Like it's why I don't believe inBigfoot because there's always
an incentive to say that youfound Bigfoot, right?
There's no incentive likeWhitley Strieber, right?
To say that like an alien fuckedyour butt and to have everybody

(26:11):
think you're, you're weird,right?
Whitley Strieber is a badexample because he has a career,
right?
but a lot of these people don't.
So

SPEAKER_04 (26:19):
yeah, the, the, that's, that's, that's a really
interesting point.
And one that I thought about alot, um, because it's like,
that's a sort of evidence aswell.
Like the, the incentives andlike, why would this person do
this?
Like, is this person completelydeluded?
No, they're otherwise a normalperson.
They're not like crazy orwhatever.

(26:40):
Why would they kind of, go outon a limb to do this to be to
appear crazy or whatever andit's the same thing like like
with uh the argument from likethe gospels and stuff like that
that i've heard a lot about likea lot of apologists christian
apologists say and i think thisis true that like um the
disciples basically were willingto go to their deaths um because

(27:06):
all of them All of them weremartyred.
So like willing to go to theirdeaths and saying that they saw
Jesus Christ rise from the dead.
So like, Why would someone dothat?
Like if it was all just likethis fake conspiracy or
whatever, and it didn't happen,like you would at least get, I
mean, you would at least gethalf people like, just be like,

(27:27):
all right, nah, that didn'thappen.
And it was all made up.
And so the fact that everysingle one of them was like
martyred and like thishistorical evidence for the
majority of them, that that'swhat actually happened to them.
Um, like, You know, that is...
They didn't have a concept offame.
Yeah.
And that is evidence in itself.
And, like, the atheistic kind ofmaterialist person doesn't take

(27:50):
that as evidence.
But that is evidence ofconviction.
That is evidence that theybelieve what they say.
And, obviously, that's notevidence that, like, Jesus rose
from the dead.
But it's evidence that thosepeople saw that and believed
that that's what happened.

SPEAKER_03 (28:04):
Saw and believed something.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, absolutely.
I'm with you 100%.
Like, that's why I believe thatthat...
actually happened.
So that's what I wanted to ask.
Yeah.
That's sorry.
Continue.
No, no, no, no.
I was just gonna say people,people, people don't, people
don't, die for a goof right yeahlike if i'm like trying to scare
my kid and i'm like oh so analien and then somebody's like

(28:26):
you sure you did click clacklike i'm gonna shoot you in the
head i'll be like i was justfucking playing around dude like
as a matter of fact i'm such apussy like i might have actually
seen it and if they were gonnakill me i'd be like i'm just
playing like no it's not real solike these motherfuckers saw
some real shit

SPEAKER_04 (28:44):
yeah so that's what i wanted to ask you about in
this book as well like soObviously, you said before that
you believe in reincarnation.
Reincarnation is sort of a kindof plot point in this book as
well.
So, clearly it exists in thisworld.
And you would probably alsoconsider yourself a kind of
Christian.
How do you square those things,do you think?

UNKNOWN (29:07):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 (29:08):
Well, esoteric Christian, esoteric

SPEAKER_03 (29:12):
Christian, I want to say, and you guys can, or
whoever's listening can factcheck me on this, but I feel
like the anti reincarnationcrowd is relatively recent.
in Christianity.
I wish I had facts and data toback that up, but I want to say
I read that somewhere that like,this was like a reason, like a

(29:35):
medieval church kind of thingwhere they, they got to a point
where they're like, no, that'snot fucking real.
Like you have, but like the ideaof an eternal soul, I don't see
how that like, if, okay.
If you're thinking about likeeternal punishment or eternal
salvation, like, I could see howthat could be a problem.
Like you die and your soul goesone place or the other.

(29:56):
But I, I don't really see likean issue.
Like we obviously like whatJesus did that was unique was he
went back into the same body,the dead body, which we don't
tend to do.
Although some people have beendead for a very long time and
come back rare cases, but itdoes happen.
Um, I, I, I would have to workmore– because this is kind of

(30:21):
like a– I've been listening to–I'm going on this podcast soon,
The Threshold Saints, right?
Which is very like Buddhist andHindu and talks about like the–
what do they call it?
The Samsara, right?
The Samsara wheel.
And I'm kind of like a hippie1960s Alan Watts type dude who

(30:44):
doesn't believe that these–apparently disparate beliefs
can't be reconciled.
Like I do think there's a wayto, because I just, it, if
you're being born to workthrough your karma, right.
And you're always trying to getbetter.
I don't necessarily think that akind of final salvation or

(31:10):
damnation has to play into thatat all.
Because Christian beliefs,Buddhism, occult, whatever, my
number one belief, which was inthe book, right, is in Vedanta,
right?
And so I definitely do believethat this idea of Vedanta, that
you have a God who's allpowerful, can do anything at

(31:32):
once, would get very bored withthat.
Like, okay, I can make whatever,but who gives a shit?
So what better way to have funthan and play than to create a
bunch of beings that you get toinhabit each one of them.
Because on an eternal timeline,people would say, well, what
about people who get murdered byserial killers?

(31:54):
On a long enough timeline, you'dget bored enough to be like,
I'll try it out.
See what happens, right?
So Vedanta, to me, is thisreally interesting idea that
they're actually like right nowwe're different people because
that's how we're experiencingthings, but we're really not
like I, at one point, whoeverthis guy is, me will be both

(32:20):
mats at some point.
Uh, or, I mean, that's toolinear in terms of like how time
works, right?
Cause it's, it's God canexperience everything all at
once, but we're all God lookingat his creation, right?
Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (32:35):
It's like that recent, the white Lotus season
where they, he explains it like,you know, you're like, life is
like a drop of water, likesplashing out of the, like one
big pool of water.
And then like each individuallife is just like a drop.
And then that, the, like thatarc of it dropping, going
through the air is its life.
And then it returns back to theone percent, which, yeah, that's

(32:56):
basically Mike.
Like I'm a Christian, like, butyou know, like I'm interested in
esoteric stuff too.
And I, basically think that allof these religions are just
different interpretations of thesame kind of set of data.
And they're probably none ofthem correct to the, you know,
like what I said before, 2%, butthey're all like stuck around
for so long because they'regetting at something.

(33:17):
And then people have mysticalexperiences that does confirm
aspects of it, you know,influenced by their cultures or
whatever.
So, yeah, I think that totallymakes sense that, you know, life
is just like god stepping intothe realm of time and
individuating small parts of himand then experiencing the world

(33:38):
and then returning back to thesource to like and then those

SPEAKER_03 (33:41):
parts being redone right because wouldn't like like
if you threw the dice out you'dbe like this is really
interesting so i've given thisguy let's say i was like a step
warrior fucking warrior 1500years ago or whatever.
They're like, okay, cool.
I really wish you were.
I do hanging off a horse,fucking shooting a long bow.

(34:02):
That should be so tight.
Um, but like, let's see wherethis guy goes through his,
however many 20 lives, 30 lives,whatever.
Like it all makes sense to mefrom a perspective of play,
which is really the only thingthat makes sense at the end of
it.
Random doesn't make sense.
Like, We're all here and we havethese feelings.

(34:25):
Like I'm a very simple personand I don't understand, like I
understand like getting hungryor horny or whatever, but why
would we even be having theconversation that we're having
right now?
If there wasn't something to it,it makes no sense from an
evolutionary biology standpoint,right?

(34:45):
The functions that religionsserve are, Uh, can be explained
that way in the Sam Harris way,but why people would be
interested in them at all.
Like when there's nothing ridingon it for me to care one way or
the other, I could live the restof my life.
Never think about this shitagain.
And I'd be good.
I'd watch action movies andchill, but I do think about it.

(35:07):
Why?

SPEAKER_04 (35:09):
Yeah, that's a good question.
By the way, how's your SamHarris?
Can you do Sam Harris as well?
Sam Harris?
No.

SPEAKER_03 (35:16):
Actually, I don't know if I know what Sam Harris
sounds like.

SPEAKER_04 (35:18):
He just does, like, really, like, calm.
Yeah.
Does he sound like this?
No, kind of like...
uh, I'm Sam Harris and I'm like,just let that sort

SPEAKER_01 (35:29):
of like, like trying to be like measured looking at
when you see your experiences,you're just consciousness.
Uh, yeah, no, I think we're justtoo Australian to get around.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 (35:39):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I don't think my motherdidn't invent the golden girls.

SPEAKER_04 (35:42):
So like, that's the,

SPEAKER_03 (35:44):
I went through a phase where I went through my
like atheist phase, like rightinto college.
I had this really cool, likeIrish, uh, philosophy professor
at UTEP.
And he was like, uh, he'd workedwith Daniel Dennett on whatever
being gay or whatever.
And he, he turned me on toDennett.

(36:04):
So I got the, and the Dennettthing is really interesting,
right?
Because he wrote this whole bookabout the difference between, or
about this idea of qualia, whichis something that had like
freaked me out.
Like since high school, Iremember walking home from
school one day and I was thatsame buddy that I mentioned, I
was talking to, I was like, allright, bro.
So like, You see that as blue,right?

(36:26):
And he's like, yeah.
And I'm like, I see it as bluetoo.
But how do I know if I were toget transferred into your head
that it would be the same bluethat we're both seeing?
And he was like, what?
I don't know.
Not tracking.
So then it's-

SPEAKER_04 (36:44):
Is that a sort of like breakfast?
How would you feel if you didn'thave breakfast kind of question?
Have you heard about

SPEAKER_03 (36:52):
that?
Yeah.
Anyway.
Yeah.
Sorry.
Continue.
But like, so that, because itwas something that I had thought
of before, and I was also like,I grew up in speaking in tongues
type churches and shit.
And so, you know, you're a kidand you're like, that shit was
fucking corny as fuck.
Now that I think back on it, I'mlike, they were definitely-
locked in to something like youdon't do that kind of retarded

(37:15):
shit unless like that kind ofshit.
Anyway.
when I found this book that Igot into Richard Dawkins, uh,
Christopher Hitchens, who is thegoat of those guys?
He's the only one who's a goodwriter.
He is.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He, he was, he was the best.

SPEAKER_01 (37:34):
And I was the only one that was funny.

SPEAKER_03 (37:35):
Yeah.
Like early YouTube, likelistening to him, like rip into
Islam.
I was like, yeah, fuckingsavages.
Uh, cause nine 11 had just had,you know, like, um, um, And
then, and then then it, and Igot kind of into it, but what's
really interesting is thatnobody, nobody convinced me

(37:55):
otherwise.
Right.
Like nobody argued me out ofthat.
Life just happened and somethingwould happen and I would feel
something like I would see aghost or I would have this, you
know, not even psychedelic, justan experience.
And I'd be like, I don't thinkthis shit is right.
Like there's some, and I thinklife is the best argument.

(38:18):
Yeah.
I think, I think a lot ofatheists like your Bill Mars and
your people like that, I thinkthey're being stubborn.
Yeah.
I think they, I think theyshoebox a lot of stuff away and
they're like, we're just notgoing to talk about that time
when that happened, when thetruth of reality was revealed to
me in a dream or whatever.
Like, no, no, no, no, no.

(38:40):
I'm going to smoke weed, drinkwhiskey.
I'm cool.
I hate that guy.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (38:46):
Yeah.
I've never seen the appeal inhim.
Even when I went through anatheist phase, he just didn't
seem interesting at all.
I

SPEAKER_04 (38:56):
think the, um, the whole atheist thing with, yeah,
like you said, ChristopherHitchens was the best because he
was the only one who had kind oflike a wit about him.
And he was the only one who kindof like, had a kind of, um, was
well read outside of likescience crap.
Like, you know, like he had readthe great, the classics and was

(39:21):
sort of like, uh, um, moreeducated in, in those sort of
softer disciplines, whichactually are the hardest, I
would say like, um, becausethese people who were like, you
know, 150 IQ, like doingneuroscience or, um, you know,
uh, building social media, uh,empires and stuff like that.

(39:44):
I feel like they just don'tunderstand stories.
And so this is not what they'rethere for.
This is why you get, uh, thesereviews of like people, whenever
someone like that or someonesort of trained in those
disciplines or whatever engageswith something, it's usually
science fiction or like that,those sorts of disciplines,

(40:06):
because obviously it's, itinvolves science.
They don't appreciate it.
Maybe you're finding this JDOwith your stuff.
They don't appreciate it as art.
They appreciate it asinformation and, You know, was
the information conveyed to mein a, um, efficient manner?

(40:27):
You know, it's just like, right.
That's not art.
Right.
Art isn't about efficiency.
Like it's not about information.
It's about like these, you know,higher and they are higher.
I don't care.
Like I'm, I'm using hierarchicallanguage, um, like these higher
kind of, uh, themes and ideasthan just the, the merely

(40:49):
numerical or material, you know?

SPEAKER_03 (40:53):
Yeah.
And you find that a lot with,um, so science fiction to me
seems to be broken down.
Like in the sixties, militarysci-fi was really big, which is
just another type of autism.
Right.
But then, so you have like theRobert Hein lines and then you
had the Philip K.
Dix and what's interesting, butoversimplifying of course.
Right.
But like the Hein lines kind oftook over sci-fi and it was

(41:17):
like, what, we'll talk aboutsome cool tech, which to me is
like total snooze.
I do like Hein line.
I'm not giving him creditbecause like, you know, the cat
who walks through walls orstranger in a strange land do
have that sixties psychedelic.
You couldn't escape it.
It was more

SPEAKER_04 (41:31):
hippie than he's given credit for.
Like he's actually

SPEAKER_03 (41:34):
more like sort of psychedelic.
Yeah.
But

SPEAKER_04 (41:36):
yes,

SPEAKER_03 (41:36):
continue.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But then, uh, you know, whatreally amazed me when I got back
into sci-fi was finding peoplelike Jack Vance or Gene Wolfe.
And I was like, Oh shit.
Or Michael Moorcock.
Right.
I got into some Moorcock.
Hmm.

UNKNOWN (41:53):
Uh,

SPEAKER_03 (41:53):
And I went back to Portland.
Yeah.
I was like, Hey, is that, isthat voucher still good?
Like, are we still good forthat?
But no, there is like, I think,I think when you look at like,
who's that mathematician whodiscovered like a formula that

(42:15):
proved God existed as a Frenchguy.
And then he like became arecluse and nobody heard.
Yeah.
No, no, this is a recent guy.
This was like, this was like aguy who died in like the
eighties or the nineties, butlike they, they have all of his
like writings and they get moreand more esoteric.
And when you're watching thisdocumentary, you know, you go
through this process where he'sa very, obviously very

(42:38):
analytical person, verybrilliant, like off the charts,
brilliant.
And his calculations lead him tothe conclusion that God is real.
And, and so I think that like,when it comes to fictions, like
science fiction, um, there'speople who are at like step one

(43:00):
where they're really good atmath.
And then there are people whowere born with the autism that
gets you to step 57 or whateverthat like all the mystical shit
is real.
And sometimes like when it comesto a guy like me who sucks dick
at math, like I just skipped allthe way up there, which is, um,

(43:20):
Also, I think what Gene Wolfedid, he was obviously a very
intelligent person.
He understood languages and heinvented the Pringles can and
all this kind of stuff.
But you can just jump over allthat other shit and realize that
science fiction is meant to belike a psychedelic incubator for

(43:40):
sea changes in culture,basically.
Right.
And you can skip all the.
like the Shixin Liu.
I haven't read any of that.
Cause it seems like it's thatkind of thing.
I might be wrong.
Have you guys read like thethree body problem?
No, but I've heard,

SPEAKER_04 (43:53):
I've heard, um, Zach's, uh, podcast episode on
it, which is amazing.
Like he did, like, I think hedid a few of them, but he, did
he like it?
He did, but he went over it andlike, it does sound pretty
insane, but like, it does soundvery autistically mathematical
Chinese,

SPEAKER_03 (44:09):
which you would expect.
Yeah, of course.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Different, different strokes fordifferent folks, I guess.
But, um, And I haven't read it,so I can't really comment that
much.
But no, I like– I guess I kindof lost the plot there.

SPEAKER_04 (44:25):
You like the more psychedelic stuff.
I like the weird shit.
Yeah, that's definitely in thisbook.
Like, you know, you havesentient– uh, mold and, you
know, yarn.
We have to talk about yarnbecause that was one of the
things that I, I reallyresponded to.
And I had lots of questionsabout it when I read it, um,
because I just loved the idea ofit.

(44:48):
Um, and yeah, so it's like sortof like a, um, technology, but
also sort of different to theother technology, um, in the
book.
Uh, how would you describe it?

SPEAKER_03 (45:01):
So a big theme of the book is that, um, There is
not one god, there are multiplegods.
And similarly, there's not onetechnology, there's competing
technologies.
Love this.
This is like Neil Gaiman'sAmerican Gods, but, like, good.

SPEAKER_04 (45:19):
That should have been my blurb.

SPEAKER_03 (45:21):
There we go, there we go.
In the book, there's a big worldserpent that's swallowing its
tail, and all that reallyrepresents is that one day it's
going to kind of swallow...
the world and rebuild reality.
And so what's going on in thetimeframe of this book is a kind
of musical chairs for thesecompeting gods and technologies

(45:43):
to have dominance wheneverything gets restarted.
It's like whoever, whoever's inthe seat when it stops, like
that's, what's real.
And so with technology there,this world has the kind of
standard cybernetic implants,right?
Like the kind of first gen typething, which I show characters

(46:03):
that are kind of gross androtting and shit because they
just put a bunch of stuff intheir body.

SPEAKER_01 (46:08):
But at some

SPEAKER_03 (46:09):
point, the early adopters, right?
And then there's this, so therhizome, because I believe that
the mushroom is sacred and hasits own, like I think that it's
an alien intelligence that hasits own ideas about how Humanity
should work through somemechanism deep in the lore,
right?

(46:29):
Like the rhizome became acompetitive technology to the
internet, right?
Through kind of mycelialconnections.
But it also became a competitorin technology.
And how it does that is that youessentially inject different
types of rhizomatic materialinto your body and it grows the

(46:50):
kind of thing that you want itto grow.
But what's important is thatit's a technology that has a
mind of its own.
So it's not a device that has afunction that you can, it's not
a gun that can, it can turn intoa gun.
But importantly, it's calledyarn because I read Tyson
Yonkaporta's Sand Talk, whichtalks about Aboriginal

(47:13):
Australian wisdom and stuff likethat.
And he calls all of his booksyarns.
Where, which I love, like he'snot giving you an essay.
It's a yarn.
It's a conversation.
And sometimes that yarn comes toa point and sometimes it doesn't
while at the same time stilldoing so.
Right.
Like you kind of got the, it'sthe idea of getting the point

(47:35):
from the conversation, not fromthe thesis statement.
Yeah.
Right.
Like it's in the listening inthe interacting that you, you
kind of get it.
So yarn in this case is aconversational technology.
that is working on a lot ofdifferent levels.
Sometimes it heals people.
Sometimes people get shot andthey die, and then other times

(47:57):
they get shot and the yarn healsthem, right?
And what's important is thatit's not a technology that's
godlike in determining who livesand dies, but the idea is that
there's been a conversationthat's been happening between
the technology and the host fora while that leads to certain
outcomes, right?
Right.
Yeah.
Like you could have a gun, yourhand turned into a gun or you

(48:21):
could have your head set on firefor no reason.
Right.
Like, I love

SPEAKER_04 (48:26):
it.
Yeah.
It's like a chaos agent in someways.
Yeah.
It's like you never know when.
you know, conversations will gooff the rails kind of thing.
Like, and I love that.
Yeah.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 (48:39):
Yeah.
That's how I structured thewhole book too.
The whole book is supposed tofeel like a yarn that like goes
off the rails at certain points.
It very definitively goes offthe rails for like 40 or 50
pages.
That's all intentional.
It's supposed to be this, thisthing that feels alive because
there are blind alleys and redherrings and, uh, random, uh,

(49:01):
instances that don't matter tothe plot.
So I'm kind of simultaneouslyobsessed with, with plot, but
also this organic living feelingof how I think a novel actually
should be.
And if I find the balance oneday, it's going to be the best
fucking book ever.

SPEAKER_04 (49:19):
Yeah.
I love, I love that.
Um, you know, even though in thebook you literally say Australia
is gay, you like, uh, fold insome like Australian, um,
concepts there you might i don'tknow if you know this or not but
like in australian journalismevery story is called a yarn as
well so like oh i didn't knowthat um you know if you know

(49:40):
when i used to be a tabloidjournalist um they'd be like oh
that was a good yarn it likemade the top of the of the list
or whatever in terms ofreadability or whatever um so
people say that as and it'sfairly common well is it common
now i don't think so matt likepeople don't say it as much as
they used to but like maybe

SPEAKER_01 (50:00):
not as much it sort of depends where you are but
it's not like a having a usingweird slang to say yeah i was
having a yarn with this blokeyou know whatever like it's it
doesn't yeah it doesn't strikeme it's like oh that's like an
archaic kind of term yeah no

SPEAKER_04 (50:15):
it's great and i love that i've always loved yarn
as a analogy too, is this likeunspooling thread of, of, of
stuff as well.
And that's definitely in thebook where you feel like,
especially when, um, you know,the main kind of, I guess we
would call him a villain, likehis unspooling kind of evil and
just keeps getting bigger andmore disgusting and grotesque.

(50:38):
And, um, that's great.
I love that.

SPEAKER_03 (50:41):
Yeah.
That's, I mean, that's basicallythe whole, the whole book and
like whether or not that, that,string or yarn or whatever ever
gets rolled back up isinconsequential because it
should look like a plate ofspaghetti noodles by the end of
it you know and then in the endscene where well i don't i mean
i do want people to buy it butit it cut it i was really

(51:03):
focused on making sure that ithad a real ending that that took
me maybe the longest of one anyone part of the book and But

SPEAKER_04 (51:12):
why was it?
Sorry to interject, but why wasthat?
Were you sort of in, I know youwere envisioning it as like a 10
book series originally, but wereyou kind of in the mode of like,
I want this to be like a ongoingkind of guts, like berserk kind
of thing.
Like what was the.

SPEAKER_03 (51:30):
I think that the heart, to be honest with you,
it's because I have a real hardtime with endings.
Do you?
Because, because I don't careabout them.
Right.
Like when I read a book, theending is off.
in the least important part.
Like, I don't think of theendings when I think of books.
I just think of like, okay,that's where it stopped.
And I realized at a certainpoint, hey, motherfucker, a lot

(51:53):
of people will get very mad atyou if the book does not end.
I mean, what we talked aboutearlier with the first book,
right?
You know, like, what is theending?
What does that mean?
I was like, I don't know.
I mean, I do know, but I wasn'tconcerned with making that like
actually work.
No, the, the continuation aspectof God's fair, no better is that

(52:14):
now they're all a team.
Right.
And so my goal, if this booksells, okay, is to have each
book be that they go ondifferent missions together.
Right.
It's, it's a mission impossibletype thing.
Cause you have all thecharacters there.
They all have their own kind ofskills and can send them off on.
I have the second book all in,my head like ready to go.

(52:37):
I just have to pass like acertain threshold where I'm
like, okay, this is worth it.
Um, but no, like endings havejust never been my strong suit.
So I went through, um, I thinkeight revisions on the ending
just to make sure.
Cause like the early, youmight've been one of the earlier
ones.

(52:57):
Cause you did mention this.
It was like, or maybe youdidn't, maybe somebody else did,
but it was like, the ending wasvery, um, like unsatisfying.
Like somebody, somebody hit meback.
No, I like the

SPEAKER_04 (53:09):
ending.
I like the end.
Okay.
So yeah.

SPEAKER_03 (53:11):
Yeah.
They were like, I was, I wasready for this big kaiju battle
and it just kind of didn'thappen.
And I was like, fucking bet.
So I went and wrote like fourpages of a kaiju battle.
Like I remember the kaijubattle.
So I must've read that version.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Maybe it was earlier, but yeah,no, I had, I'd had it much more.
The ending was much moretruncated because I, I was kind

(53:34):
of done.
I was like, well, the story'sover now.
Right.
And people are like, no, there'sa, there's a last battle that's
supposed to happen.
And I was like, is it?

SPEAKER_02 (53:43):
All right.
Well,

SPEAKER_03 (53:44):
okay.

SPEAKER_04 (53:44):
Oh, and you do something towards the end that
like most people, I think mostwriters would just be like, uh,
I don't know about this, but Ilike, I just love how ballsy it
is.
And I just love, um, I don'tdigression.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The huge digression.
And it's so funny, too.

(54:04):
But it all makes sense.
Like, it's all rewarding in theend.
So, like...
And also, people would say notto do that at the very end of
the book.
But I actually think that is thetime to do that sort of thing.
Because at that point,everyone's invested.
So, they're not going to throwaway the book, all right?
So, they've only got, like, Idon't know how many pages before

(54:27):
the end it is.
70 or something like that, yeah.
So, they're like...
they will slog through it.
Like, so it's, you've, you'vetrapped them.
And I just love how, like, um,how can't see that.

SPEAKER_03 (54:38):
Yeah, no early on.
That was like my biggest, like,that was my biggest thing.
I was like, I wanted to do thisand I was really scared and
nervous about it.
Um, and at first it actuallydidn't work.
And this is where readerfeedback is huge.
Right.
Because they were like, I gotthis piece of feedback that
said, um, They love thedigression.

(55:00):
It's, it's great.
The issue that they had with itwas that in an earlier draft, I
ended on like a cliffhanger,like before the boss battle
starts, I had like the good guysand the bad guys line up, get
ready to fight.
And then there was thisdigression.
Right.
And the solve for it, which isreally fun is that I had them

(55:24):
fight and And I had the goodguys get their asses kicked,
right?
Like everybody gets beat up.
Everybody's either like maybedead or knocked out or whatever.
And the bad guy has won.
And then I do the digression.
And it was just bringing that toa stopping point, allowed the
digression to happen, which Ithought was kind of cool.

(55:45):
Like that was interesting.
I was like, okay, cool.
So you can take that advice intoany chapter.
It's like, bring it to a, likepeople don't, don't like
cliffhangers where thecliffhanger is that something's
about to happen.
But first a word from oursponsors type shit.
It's like some, you have tobring something to a kind of end

(56:06):
with a hint that more is comingand then you can digress.
But I mentioned the fresh.
So what did you think of the,the digression?
Are

SPEAKER_01 (56:14):
you talking about when it's like, um, the Hannah
chick?
Is that what you mean by thedigression?
Yeah.
Those, those are probably someof my, favorite parts of the
book because yeah I didn'treally understand what the
context was what you but I likedand that's like it's also really
dark like that she's I won'tgive away anything but like that
she's like sociopathic and stuffand I guess it sort of does get

(56:38):
to what you were talking aboutearlier with the sort of concept
of Vedanta or whatever yeah Ilike those parts a lot that was
really fun see and so

SPEAKER_03 (56:47):
far everybody has said that which makes me so
happy yeah Because of anythingelse in the book, that was the
one where I was like, I mightcut this shit.
Like, this might not be it.
That makes

SPEAKER_04 (56:59):
it like, I know that your sort of intentions with
this is to, like, just have funand, like, make it a fun reading
experience.
You have fun as well.
And I know that you've said, andI believe this as well, that...
If you're having fun when you'rewriting, the reader's going to
have fun too.
Like, and that's very evident inthis book.
But at the same time, this makesit like...

(57:22):
really novelistic.
I feel like, and I feel likewe've talked about this maybe in
the Gene Wolfe episodes, likethat, like really leaning into,
I guess what you would call theaffordances of the novel, like
that the novel doesn't actuallyneed to be a slim volume of like
propulsive action.

(57:42):
And that's it like that.
And they have a place.
I love those sorts of novels,you know, Crichton's the master
at that.
But yeah, Like, I just love howyou've got that element and you
can also do these things likethis idea of, um, kind of
Bactinian idea, I guess, of likemulti-vocality where you like,

(58:04):
we've got these differentcharacters, but also different
registers and different voicesand like putting that all in
like a big kind of magnum opus.
Um, is great, but it's also funat the same time.
Like, I feel like a lot ofpeople forget that they forget
about fun when they're leaninginto the novelistic form, you

(58:24):
know?
Um, I do.
Yeah.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 (58:27):
Yeah.
No, I know that a hundredpercent.
I think that the really coolthing about the technology of
the novel, which is like one ofthe earliest technologies that
we have, um, I, I, I tweetedabout this, and Twitter probably
wasn't the space for it, but Iread this great book by a guy
called Danny Nemu.

(58:48):
Sounds like a character fromyour book, actually.
Right?
He's like a swan

SPEAKER_04 (58:53):
man or something.

SPEAKER_03 (58:54):
Yeah, Nemu does sound like a swan.
But he's a Daime priest.
So Daime, I think, is ayahuasca.
It's like a South American, likethey all drink ayahuasca
together.
But he has a lot of greatappearances on RuneSoup.
And he wrote this book calledNeuroApocalypse.

(59:15):
It's a great big book, lots offootnotes.
And in NeuroApocalypse, hewrites very exclusively about
Genesis and Exodus, right?
And he's very interested in theway that since ancient Hebrew
did not have vowels– you couldsubstitute vowels to get

(59:35):
different meanings.
And his question is, why do wego with one instead of the
other?
For example, like in thebeginning guy created the word,
uh, could the vowels could berearranged to mean, uh, uh, in
the head, God was created weird.

SPEAKER_01 (59:54):
It's kind of like quantum even that it allows,
like maybe it is both, uh, Oreven multiple, more than.
Is that his point?
So, therefore, Jews, like, theydeserve to rule the world.

SPEAKER_03 (01:00:05):
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
If you move the letters around.
I submit, yeah.
No, that's 100% his pointbecause he makes this
fascinating argument at acertain point in the book where
the reason why the Bible is sosuccessful is because it is the

(01:00:26):
book that most directly mimicsthe human brain.
It's full of contradictions, allthese things that like the
Dawkins and the Hitchens typeswould be like, well, there's
contradictions in it, so it'snot real.
That's actually what makes itfeel more real to people who
read it, because sometimes youare wrathful and sometimes you
are benevolent and sometimesyou're this way.

(01:00:48):
And sometimes like you havethese Rashomon things.
type, uh, four books of theBible where it's all from a
different perspective.
And if you look at the details,they can be a little bit
different, but the overarchingpicture is the same.
But I became, uh, obsessedbecause one of my favorite books
is infinite jest, which becameat the class.
Yeah.

(01:01:08):
It became D class.
I did like, like that book, butI love that book.
It's one of my favorite books.
Um, and it really does feel likeyou're inside of a brain, um,
When you read it, all the bestbooks really do.
Even if you're reading somethinga little bit trashier, like a
politic book or whatever, you'rein a brain.

SPEAKER_02 (01:01:26):
It's

SPEAKER_03 (01:01:27):
an autistic brain, but it's still a brain.
And so video games don't dothat.
You can't go off on tangents oryarns or what have you.
Like there's, there's no part ofyou that feels like when you're
playing like cyberpunk games,For example, like, oh, I'm
really in this kind of likeweird, organic, esoteric, shifty

(01:01:51):
space, right?
No, it has to be hard coded inthere or else the video game
wouldn't work.
But novels can do that.
Songs too, I think.
Longer songs.
Like longer, like Mars Voltatype songs or whatever.
I think they can do that.
Movies can kind of do it, butthe novel can do it.
And what's fun about the novelis that The emotion that you're

(01:02:14):
feeling is based upon whateverregister it's written in.
So if it's written in a Beavisand Butthead fun style, you can
go on a psychedelic journey of,you know, kaleidoscopic
multifaceted voice and characterand all this, and you can do it
while laughing about penises atthe same time.
It's truly still, I think, ourbest technology.

(01:02:35):
I think the novel is our besttechnology.
It hasn't

SPEAKER_04 (01:02:38):
been topped.
It's definitely for, yeah, besttechnology for dick jokes,
definitely.

SPEAKER_01 (01:02:45):
Yeah.
And your novel actually made melaugh, which rarely happens at
all, even in funny novels.
Like, like I read likeMcDonald's book and I thought
that was funny, but I don'tactually remember like laughing
out loud during it.
I think the funniest part inyour novel was just that bit
where he's battling like samuraiguy.
And then the guy's like, Oh, youmurdered my brother.
He's like, yeah, I don'tremember.
He's like, you know what hesays?

(01:03:06):
Like, uh, your shield is gay.
And she's like, my shield isgay?
That's all you have to

SPEAKER_03 (01:03:17):
say?
That came from a real lifestory.
You want to hear the real lifestory of that?
I went to a house party once andI got really drunk, surprising
no one.
But it was kind of like, it waslike my buddy's house.
So I was kind of like, I can dowhatever the fuck I want.
Nobody's going to kick me out.
And I was talking to this girland she was trying to holler at

(01:03:37):
your boy.
And she was cute.
Like, I mean, nothing wrong withher, but I was in goblin mode.
Like I was on demon time.
So I was like, nah.
So I was just being a dick.
Like I'd make no excuses for mybehavior.
It was awful.
But there was like a kind of awhite knight guy there who you
knew, like he kind of wanted tofuck her.
Like he, like this was, this waslike, he wanted to marry this

(01:03:59):
girl someday.
And who was this like skinny,like just fucking wasted waste
of space who she was for somereason interested in me instead
of him.
It's because I'm handsome.
But anyway, like I was sittingon the porch and I had just like
rejected her in some very crueland unnecessary way.

(01:04:20):
And he came out and he like gaveme, he like read me the riot
act.
He was like, listen, buddy, youdon't talk to people.
Bucko.
Listen here, buckle.
I'm trying to fuck her.
But he gave me this whole spieland like, I'm sitting like I'm
on this porch, Oklahoma hotnight.

(01:04:42):
Like a big thing that we do iswe have like full sofas and like
lazy boys on porches.
Right.
So I'm like in a lazy boy and hetalks to me for like five
minutes, but, and he's wearing,I guess it wasn't a hot night
cause he had a peacoat on.
Maybe it was the winter.
Anyhow, He had a peacoat on.
Yeah.
He was wearing, he was wearing apeacoat through this whole

(01:05:03):
thing.
Right.
And so he's, he's reading methat he's actually got his
finger in my face too.
He's like, you do this and youdon't do that.
And like, he finishes this wholething.
And I'm like, I got my beer andI'm like, your peacoat is gay.
He's like, my peacoat is gay.
That's all you got to say to me.
Like, So I just took that andjust transported it into the

(01:05:26):
book.

SPEAKER_01 (01:05:26):
And it was my buddy's house.
I guarantee his peat coat wasgay.

SPEAKER_03 (01:05:30):
Yeah, yeah.
It was.
It was.
And he was, like, he startedripping it off like the Hulk.
Like, he was ready to fight me.
But it was my buddy's house.
So, like, three guys interceptedhim and, like, ejected him.
And I walked around like thecock of the walk for the rest of
the night.
Like, I do whatever the fuck Iwant.
No, no, no.

SPEAKER_04 (01:05:47):
So, yeah.
How cold was it, though?
Why was he wearing a peat coat?
Just because it was outside.
Man,

SPEAKER_03 (01:05:54):
it was probably like, I mean, people here, if it
gets down into the, I'm going touse Fahrenheit, into the 60s or
the 50s.
No, it sounds super

SPEAKER_04 (01:06:02):
hot.

SPEAKER_01 (01:06:08):
I know what you mean.
It's like here, there's like inQueensland, people joke, it's
like once it gets to 24 degreesCelsius, like we start putting
beanies and jumpers on andstuff.
And like my fiance is from likethe state, bit more southern so
she's a little bit more coldresistant she's like what it's
not even cold at all and i'mlike we'll jump it up oh yeah
when

SPEAKER_04 (01:06:28):
when people from his state which is basically like
florida and it's where i grew upum down to my state which is
much further south like for thefirst time they're always
wearing like scarves and glovesand i'm like motherfucker it's
not that cold you don't need

SPEAKER_01 (01:06:42):
fucking gloves it is freezing it's not

SPEAKER_04 (01:06:44):
the antarctic

SPEAKER_01 (01:06:46):
you literally have the antarctic winds blowing
straight across the ocean i meanthat's true But,

SPEAKER_03 (01:06:50):
you know,

SPEAKER_01 (01:06:51):
they dissipate

SPEAKER_03 (01:06:52):
a little bit.
Well, it's kind of like there'sa lot of people who've moved
here from California, whichOklahoma can get very hot.
But when I mentioned that Italked to a bunch of
meteorologists, it's becausepeople come from all over the
globe to study meteorology inOklahoma.
Because if you can get asemi-accurate forecast in

(01:07:12):
Oklahoma, then you're good togo.
wherever else you want it.
Cause the weather is so fuckingchaotic.
Like we will literally.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Why is

SPEAKER_04 (01:07:22):
that?
Is it, is it, is it cause it'sflat?
Like, and so it's hard.
I think it's cause it's,

SPEAKER_03 (01:07:28):
I

SPEAKER_04 (01:07:28):
think

SPEAKER_03 (01:07:29):
it's cause it's

SPEAKER_04 (01:07:29):
a huge

SPEAKER_03 (01:07:30):
Indian burial ground.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's why I think that is.
Okay.
Yeah.
Sam Harris answer, but no, no,no, it's a, it's, it's basically
like, you'll have a, you'lllike, you'll wake up in the
morning and it'll be like,freezing cold, like you'll have
frost on your windshield.
And then a few hours later,it'll be hot as balls.

(01:07:53):
And then it'll storm, and atornado will come through, and
rain will come through.
And then it's kind of nice.
And then it gets freezing-asscold again.
It's actually very similar toMelbourne.
You should come visit.
You'd love it.
Yeah, I'd probably fit right in.
Like, yeah, this is great.
I do want to visit Melbourne oneday.
I want to go to Australia.
My wife has gotten really intoLord of the Rings.

(01:08:15):
So there's a New Zealand tourthere.
in the works.
It's not very far.
It's only,

SPEAKER_04 (01:08:20):
it's only like a four hour flight from my city.
So you might as well do both.
If you go on.
Yeah.
You can come stay with us forfree.
Come on.
Let's go.
We've got a spare room.
I do podcast in this roomthough.
So like, you know, you might be,that's your bed right there.

SPEAKER_03 (01:08:37):
I'm going to be in bed with my wife and Matt's
going to be like, just sayingsome wild shit.
Like, so, I mean, let's talkabout the Jews.
Let's, I want to be like, no,no, baby, he's cool.
He's cool.
No, I love

SPEAKER_04 (01:08:50):
Jews.
I love Jews.
They're the hot, they're thehottest, like Israeli Jew men.
So hot.

SPEAKER_03 (01:08:56):
Oh, women too, man.
I mean, oh yeah, they're very,they're very, like all the, all
the Persian, like that region ofthe globe has the most hotties
per capita than any other race.
Hands down.
There's, there's nobody else.
People are like Scandinavian.
They all look like fuckingghosts, man.
Like they're tall.

SPEAKER_04 (01:09:13):
They're tall.

SPEAKER_03 (01:09:14):
That's what the dude's acting for him.

SPEAKER_04 (01:09:16):
What are those aliens called?
The Scandinavian ones?
The Nordics?
Yeah.
Are they called Nordics?
They're called Nordics, yeah.
Okay, I thought they were calledsomething else, like named after
a star or something.
Oh, maybe, maybe.

SPEAKER_03 (01:09:29):
I do know that there's a whole class of aliens
called the Nordics.

SPEAKER_04 (01:09:34):
Yeah, and they're benevolent, aren't they?
I think they are.
I mean, they're wide, so...
Yeah,

SPEAKER_01 (01:09:41):
they have, like, space socialism or something.

SPEAKER_04 (01:09:44):
Yeah, they have space

SPEAKER_01 (01:09:45):
social democracy.
They leave

SPEAKER_04 (01:09:47):
all

SPEAKER_03 (01:09:47):
their flying

SPEAKER_04 (01:09:47):
saucers unlocked at night.
They've got a real big problemof, like, importing too many
greys, though.
So, like, a lot of far-rightparties are being elected
because, like, the centristswon't, like, deal with
immigration.

SPEAKER_01 (01:10:00):
And their taxes are just crazy.

SPEAKER_04 (01:10:01):
Yeah.
So stupid.
I never, like, Preston, do youhave any questions or anything
you want to talk about the bookitself or...?

SPEAKER_01 (01:10:12):
Uh, oh yeah, I did sort of, cause with the world
serpent thing, like I thoughtthat was really cool.
And like the way it was debated,whether it was like real or not,
but I guess it got me thinking,um, you know, like, isn't like
the, that kind of Ouroboros,like the snake eating its own
tail, that's kind of like analchemical symbol.
Right.
And isn't it kind of like, likethe closed system, like, you

(01:10:32):
know, like to hermetically sealsomething in.
So I don't really know where I'mgoing.
It's not really a question.
That's just kind of what it gotme thinking when I was like
reading the book that that worldwas this like hermetically
sealed in little system whereyeah like magic and stuff is
possible

SPEAKER_03 (01:10:47):
i like that a lot i like that a lot i wish i could
say that that was my intentionbut i'm going to say it is from
now on and steal it to the nexti'm stealing that uh but no i um
i if you want to know the realreason i picked it it's because
of the world serpent and god ofwar i thought that was really
cool uh yeah But no, I mean, ittotally makes sense, right?

(01:11:08):
Because like the whole idea isthat this thing is a
representation of a comingapocalypse, right?
Which is like, it's not the endof everything.
It's the rebirth of everything.
So like when I was thinkingabout it, I initially picked it
for that reason, right?
Because I saw it in God of War.
But as I thought more about it,I was like, this is actually

(01:11:29):
kind of cool.
Like if you just constantly hada harbinger, like a real
harbinger, though it is debatedlike a real harbinger of the
apocalypse, like right there inthe sky that you couldn't deny
was there.
Um, but it is this, man, that'sa fucking cool interpretation.
It's like, yeah, like it's, it'slike the borders of the book

(01:11:50):
itself, basically.
Right.
Like that's, that's whatcontains the whole world.

SPEAKER_04 (01:11:55):
But, um, Well, do you know with apocalypse, you
know, the word in Greek isactually, it's actually not
about destruction or anythinglike that.
It actually means like revealingsomething.
So like that's what a cleansingfire like does.
It reveals what reality actuallyis.

(01:12:17):
Yeah.
I like that.
Once all of the kind of, uh, youknow, fake, all the idols are
smashed.
All of like society isdestroyed.
Like, um, what's left is what'srevealed as what the truth is.
And I love that, that, you know,the book kind of in that kind of
higher level kind of plays intothat.

(01:12:38):
So you could definitely use thatfor the next one.
Scooch there for the next book.

SPEAKER_03 (01:12:43):
Yeah.
My next, my next book isactually like my, my thought
process.
Well, actually two thoughts.
First one, isn't it fun to, thatsomebody like me, who's just
trying to do something cool,like, isn't it weird that
whenever guys like me do thiskind of thing, we do touch on
things completely accidentally?

(01:13:03):
Again, that goes back to our,like, how is telepathy and
reincarnation real?
It's not through this kind ofscholarly, like, Gurdjieff, you
know, studying the text typething.
It's just...
opening yourself up when you'rewriting.
And this is the thing thatcontinuously comes out over and
over and over again through noeffort or fault of our own.

(01:13:25):
So that's the first thing.
The second thing is that thesecond book that I really, man,
I might just write it becauseit's cool.
I want to like really focus onlike J-horror, right?
Like if this was like my TakashiMiiki one, I want to go into
like Pulse and Cure and The Ringand The Grudge.

(01:13:45):
And so I thought it'd be cool iflike the team splits up and goes
across, they go Indiana Jonesglobe hopping to different parts
of the world to trap and collectdifferent curses and grudges
with the idea that they're goingto put all those curses and
grudges on a rocket ship andsend it up to the world circuit
to kill it.
They figured out that's how youkill the thing.

(01:14:07):
So like the first third of thebook is this like Indiana Jones
temple run, like findingdifferent cultures, curses and
how those have developed in thisworld.
And then the second half, act ofthe book is like alien where
they're on a ship and the curseslike break out and people are
getting killed by different likejapanese ghosts and then the

(01:14:29):
third is they land on the worldserpent let all the curses out
and they fight like snake peopleon the on the world like that'd
be kind of cool right yeah likeso that's that's like my broad
idea of the second one but youpeople have to go buy it so yeah
because if they if they don'tbuy it i'm I will never return.

SPEAKER_01 (01:14:51):
Well, you got to update your store to have the
option for Australians to buyit.
Cause I tried to buy it throughyour store.
I ended up buying it on Amazon.
So there's always that too.

SPEAKER_03 (01:15:02):
And I complained about like how fucked up that
distribution has been.
Like I went with book vaultbecause they make a very
attractive product, right?
Like the book looks good.
Yeah.
But the issue is what they didwas they, They only print out of
the U S and the UK.

(01:15:22):
And so what I wanted to do wasto put book vault as my direct
shipper.
So you guys wouldn't necessarilybe able to get it that way, but
to have like a slightly lesserquality, create not create space
that I'm showing my age.
That's what KDP was back in theday, but to have like a KDP

(01:15:42):
version of, But what they didwas they populated an Amazon
page for me.
And so now I'm having a hell ofa time talking to an Indian guy
on like the Amazon help page,trying to explain to him what
happened.
It's like, this page waspopulated without my permission.

(01:16:05):
It's only shipping to the U Sand the UK, or like if it's
Australia, it's like 80 bucks orsome dumb bullshit.
Um, When every other book that Iput out, if you put it out
through KDP, they'll print itnatively wherever the book is
actually sold.
So that's what I'm going throughright now.
It's every day when I get homefrom work because of the time

(01:16:28):
difference because Book Vault isin the UK and Amazon is Amazon.
I get home from work and I openmy email and they're like, we do
not understand your request.
I just want Australian people tobe able to I

SPEAKER_04 (01:16:43):
can probably find a printer here for you if you want
to do that.
Yeah, let's do it.
We can see if we can organizethat somehow.
I got the files right here.
I do live in the publishingcity, so I could probably find
one.
Actually, there is a printerjust across from me, across the
laneway, that I could just seeif they do books, but I'm not

(01:17:04):
sure.
Yeah,

SPEAKER_03 (01:17:05):
it's just one of those kind of random problems
that you can't plan for.
You can't plan that Book Vaultis going to make an Amazon page
for you.
Wait,

SPEAKER_01 (01:17:17):
so what does that mean?
So they're going to send thecopies they print in the UK or
US to Amazon to then ship to me?
Is that how it's going to work?
Okay.
Right.

SPEAKER_04 (01:17:28):
Because Amazon will print...
I think they'll print here andthen send it to you.
I think that's the way it works.
Yeah,

SPEAKER_01 (01:17:35):
that's how Amazon print-on-demand is.
But I wasn't sure with this onebecause I knew you'd gone
through a different place to getthem printed up.

SPEAKER_03 (01:17:43):
Yeah, and the whole idea was that I wanted to do
direct sales, and I really wasimpressed.
I ordered a pre-copy orwhatever, and I was like, oh,
this is legitimately better thanAmazon.
But I still wanted that option.
Currently, hopefully one daybook vault sets up a printer in
Australia or Canada or wherever.

(01:18:05):
Cause like even Canadians haveto do like the same thing and
they're right there.
Like somebody could order thebook in Lansing, Michigan and
get it for a normal price.
But then if you're 40 miles upin, what is that?
Saskatchewan, whatever the fuckit is.
Like now you can't get it unlessyou pay 50 bucks, which is

(01:18:28):
stupid.
Like that, that doesn't makesense, but that's kind of,
that's just like in the weedstype stuff.

SPEAKER_04 (01:18:35):
No, I want to get into that stuff.
Cause I find it interesting andI'm, you know, I haven't
announced anything yet, but I'm,I'm going through a, I'm doing a
special kind of publishing thingsoon.
That and all of this stuff Iwill need to, get across because
I know nothing about any of thisstuff.

SPEAKER_02 (01:18:56):
Um,

SPEAKER_04 (01:18:57):
but yeah,

SPEAKER_03 (01:18:58):
well, that's interesting.
Yeah.
And it's going to be fuckinggood.
Like you're such a fucking goodwriter, dude.
Thank you.
Yeah.
And so you have good taste.
You, you like, you like, youlike this book.
So, um, but, uh, yeah, no.
And the marketing shit is crazytoo.

(01:19:19):
So, um, I'm having some successwith Facebook ads, which is
really interesting because nowmy Facebook homepage is my
Broken River page, which has nofriends.
So I'm being introduced

SPEAKER_01 (01:19:33):
to my friends.

SPEAKER_03 (01:19:35):
Yeah, it's like it's like Facebook is trying to
figure out who I am.
So I'm getting the most baselike normie slop of all time.
And it's really interesting andit makes you realize how curated
your feeds are in other places.
It's like, Oh, this is, Oh, it'slike how, how many red balls can
you fit into a tube?
Like this is, this is the brainrot that random people are

(01:19:58):
watching all the time.
Um, but I've found like people,my cost per click is really
good.
It's actually, um, it's prettylow.
I get about 7 cents per click.
Um, The click through rate ispretty good.
So that's at about about like10%, which is huge.

(01:20:23):
Like that's huge, right?
Like 10% is like off the charts.
And then the purchase from thoseclicks is another 10%.
So overall, like it's a lownumber, but I'm finding people.
which is interesting.
Like they're not Twitterfriends.
They're not Instagram friends.
They're just random people whoare finding the book, which is

(01:20:44):
my goal.
Um, I wanted with this book to,there's a, there's like a
marketing strategy.
That's like spray and pray whereyou just like try to find as
many people as possible and getthem to buy it through whatever
means necessary.
But I actively don't want thatto be the case.

(01:21:06):
So the paperback costs$30, whichis expensive for a paperback.
But these are chunky boys, soit's worth it.
It's chunky, but that's there onpurpose.
I don't want people to buy thebook unless it's worth$30 to
them.
Because I've been in this spacefor a long time now, 15 years,

(01:21:29):
and there is no benefit to...
random normies finding yourbook.
They'll hate it.
They'll give you a bad review.
They'll tell nobody about it.
You got their money.
Sure.
That's fine.
But that's not what we're like.
I get money elsewhere now.

(01:21:51):
Like writing books is no longerthis idea of a path to financial
solvency, which is funny that itever was.
But I, If you think about luxuryitems, like Nikes, like nobody,
like people who love Nikes willpay$300 for a pair of shoes and

(01:22:14):
they don't care.
And somehow that idea has neverentered our realm of the arts
where it's like, this is anactive barrier.
Like I want to find people whowill enjoy this shit.
Not because my feelings will gethurt if they don't like it, but
it just, from a businessperspective, how does that make
any sense?

(01:22:34):
Like, Like, why would you wantit to, like, if you price your
shit low and you're making likethree bucks a book off of it,
500 people buy it, 450 of themhate it, what have you really
made?
Like, you've made$1,000 fornobody to...

(01:22:55):
be in your corner.
It just doesn't make sense to

SPEAKER_04 (01:22:57):
me.
And you know what's funny aboutthat as well is that it is kind
of like an almost an opposite ofthe sunk cost fallacy where if
you pay$30 for something, you'rekind of like incentivized to be
a little bit more, like enjoy ita little bit more.
Does that make sense?
You know, like it does ratherthan like, if you paid like a

(01:23:18):
dollar for like some shittyebook, like you, like the, the
investment in it is so low thatlike, therefore your engagement
with it is so low.
And therefore you're not as kindof thoughtful in like, you know,
trashing or, or praising it, youknow, whereas if you spend more
money on it, you like, it givesyou pause to think more about

(01:23:40):
like what I've bought and how doI feel about it?
You know?
A

SPEAKER_03 (01:23:45):
hundred percent.
I'm trying to see if I have, ifI can see this book, I paid 80
bucks for a book the other day.
Cause I wanted to read, like Ireally wanted it, you know, I
was like, oh fuck, it's a bunchof money, but I want it.
It was a catafalque is the nameof the book.
And, uh, I read it.

(01:24:06):
I read the whole fucking thingbecause I paid that much money
for it.
I'm like, there's no goddamn waythat I just spent 80 bucks on a
book and I'm not going to readit.
And I didn't like it, but that'sneither here nor there.
Right.
Uh, The point is, is just thatlike, there has to be some, I
want people who are on my levelwho are reading this book.

(01:24:29):
They have to be kind of like,this is not casual reading and
it would be foolish to market itas casual reading.
Like, why would you wantsomebody who likes a Crichton
who I love or Patterson who Ihave no beef with to pick this
book up for a dollar and Andthen give their thoughts about

(01:24:51):
it.
It makes no sense.
Like I want to cultivate peoplewho are down.
So the idea is to get themarketing as good as possible,
like cool cover, adequatedescription of what's going on,
nice blurbs.
And then it costs 30 bucks.
And there are some people whoit, it could take them a month

(01:25:13):
or a year, but they're justlike, I don't want to, I don't
want to spend that.
I don't want to spend it.
$10 is too much for an e-book.
But then they do, and it's like,yeah, you broke.
You broke.

SPEAKER_01 (01:25:27):
Yeah, I remember even with my zine, I had this
philosophy of like, you knowwhat?
I've got my own photocopierprinter.
This stuff's super cheap.
I'll buy the cheapest paper, andthen I can– put it out for like
a super low price.
And then theoretically I'll sellmore copies because, and I may,
and I even like made my ownwebsite where I made the postage
calculator actually likeaccurately put, figure out the

(01:25:50):
cheapest way to send everything.
And it did all this work for it.
And then it was like, I realizedeventually that it was retarded.
And like when I'd see otherpeople just like using big
cartel and like just$20 postageand said, and then when, and so,
and then I went up my prices, Iactually just like sold more and
like, not like crazy amountmore, but I'm like, I was making
like a dollar off a sale there.
And now like I'm making likefive or whatever.

(01:26:12):
And like, yeah, you sell a fewmore and it's just like, yeah,
it's like this, you can't dothis like mathematical thing of
like that.
It's unless you are actuallylike, yeah, selling a Michael
Crichton book or something wherethere is a market of a million
people who buy it.
If it's just like a niche thing,you're better off selling,
charging more because peoplewill pay those prices.

(01:26:33):
And there's also that thing oflike, if something is too cheap,
it seems like, Oh, they mustn'thave like faith in their own
product.
You don't

SPEAKER_04 (01:26:39):
believe in

SPEAKER_01 (01:26:39):
it.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 (01:26:40):
Right.
Right.
There's that, there's that.
And there's this whole thingwhere it's just like, I, I'm
self-aware enough to know thatthis is not Jurassic park.
Right.
Like I know what it's probablygoing to sell.
So my thing going into it wasthat I'm going to make$10 off of
every book sold becausefinancially that's the only way

(01:27:03):
this makes sense.
Like I literally, I can't spendthree years writing a book that
is not made for a wide audienceand then sell it so that I get
three bucks a book.
That makes no sense.
Even if I sell a thousandcopies, I make$3,000 kind of

(01:27:23):
bullshit is that.
So I basically priced it where Iwas like, I'm getting 10 per
book.
Like it's 30 bucks after all thefees and stripe processing and
whatever.
I make about 10 bucks.
I make about 10 bucks on Amazontoo.
It's, it's,

SPEAKER_01 (01:27:40):
yeah, I read it for like 52 Australian on Amazon.
When I did the calculation, likeit was 45 Australian was 30 us
dollars.
So I was like, Oh, it's,wouldn't have been like,
probably would have cost moreactually to get it through your
site or whatever.
So, so like, yeah, it's, it'swhatever that is a pricey book,
but you know, I think it's worthit.
And like, it's not that crazy.

(01:28:01):
Like, you know what I mean?
Like,

SPEAKER_03 (01:28:03):
and it's, it's just, it's, it's its own thing, right?
Like all the other books cancost 15 bucks, 20 bucks,
whatever, you know, this onecosts 30.
Yeah.
If you don't want it, don't buyit.

SPEAKER_04 (01:28:16):
Yeah.
It's fine.
It's almost like, you know, um,the other day I went to this
sort of, uh, they, they hide,they do, they hire out the big
exhibition building from likethe 19th century or whatever.
And they put heaps of stalls oflike design, local designers and
shit like that.
It's all Australian made stuff.
So because it's all Australianmade, it's all really fucking

(01:28:38):
expensive because, you know, youcan't make it in China and then,
um, you know, sell it here forbasically nothing.
Um, so, but like, you know, Ibought a tea towel, like a, an
Italian tea towel for my Italianmother, um, you know, with
tomatoes, you know, Pomodorolike sort of thing for her

(01:28:59):
birthday.
And it costs so much money.
I want to know that number.
No, I'll tell you not, not, noton the recording, but like, but
yeah, I bought it because one,because I wanted to support that
stall because I really likedwhat she was doing and, you
know, um, and two, I wanted togive my mother a unique kind of

(01:29:24):
gift.
Like, so I was happy.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I was happy to spend that moneyon lit.
Yeah.
Like on a bespoke product.
Um, and that's the way I think alot of people, if, especially if
you don't write like a, orromanticy or something like
that.
I think that's the angle thatyou have to take.
And I think that's, if you, ifyou don't like you ain't going

(01:29:45):
to make it because like, um, ifyou're not writing that stuff,
pretty much you have to be inthe mainstream publishing
industry to be writing thatstuff anyway.
Um, yeah, you should treat itlike a bespoke, uh, artisanal
kind of item.

SPEAKER_03 (01:30:01):
Yeah, I agree a hundred percent.
And I have so many friends who,um, they're just fucking stuck
in this, in this rut.
Right.
Like where a lot of my friends,unsurprisingly, right.
Similarly, I wouldn't call God'slike a difficult book, but
weird, like I'm categorizablesort of, yeah.

(01:30:21):
Yeah.
Uncategorizable weird shit.
And it's like, I got to a pointwhere I became obsessed with
plot and character and, youknow, and I was reading all
these books and I was like,okay, I'm going to take the
principles from these books thatI can use and use them.
But I have to also come to termswith, this is not what I write.

(01:30:45):
And it's a tough thing.
I think for writers to come toterms with, because writers want
their cake and to eat it too,where I write whatever weird
shit I want.
And I have the marketability andmass appeal of a Crichton or a
Patterson or somebody like that.
I came to the point where I'mlike, okay, I'm not them.

(01:31:05):
I'm not them.
And some writers get to thatpoint and they get bitter.
They say, I'm not right.
Then it's because people arefucking stupid and they just
spend their whole time being madand not making any money.
The smarter way to look at thatis to be like, Oh, I'm not like
them.
So I can charge more because myaudience is smaller.

(01:31:29):
Right?
Like why not?
Why not?
I know that the audience forthis book, like the ceiling for
this to me is about 10,000,right?
Which when you compare it to themillions of copies that other
books sell is like very small.
But 10,000 at 10 bucks a book is$100,000.

(01:31:52):
And I think that that's doable,right?
I think it's work.
I think it's a business.
It's not a spray and pray whereI can just put the book out.
I work on this every day.
My goal is to find three readersa day who I've never met.
So I go on to the Facebook adand I look at the analytics and

(01:32:13):
I see who's buying it.
And every time I see a new datapoint, I'm adjusting the
marketing just a little bit tobe like, okay, so people who
like this are more likely to...
But over enough time, whenyou've really dialed down and
found your fans, when we'retalking a year from now, the

(01:32:34):
book is going to be verysuccessful.
It's like, how did you do that?
It's like, well, I found thepeople who love it and who talk
about it.
Like, how many people have Itold to go watch John Wick?
A hundred?
Because I fucking love JohnWick, right?
Yeah.
Like, how many people have Itold to go watch?

(01:32:55):
I don't know.
Not very many, because I didn'tlike that movie.
But the age of mass media andmass marketing is over.
That's done.
That's done.
So there's riches and niches.

SPEAKER_04 (01:33:10):
Narrow casting, sort of.
Yeah.
A long, thin tale.

SPEAKER_03 (01:33:16):
I don't want to find people who are just kind of
casually interested because itkind of looks like a cartoon.
I don't care.
Do you like Takashi Miike?
Do you like Grant Morrison'sInvisibles?
Do you like weird esoteric shit?
Are you a semi-adventurousreader?

(01:33:36):
If that checks your boxes, thenbuy the book.
If not, please don't.
I don't need

SPEAKER_04 (01:33:42):
it.
I love that.
That's an amazing marketingstrategy.
Please don't buy this book ifyou're not that.

SPEAKER_03 (01:33:49):
If you're not down, then what are we doing?

SPEAKER_02 (01:33:52):
What are we doing?
You're

SPEAKER_03 (01:33:53):
wasting your time.
I'm wasting my time.
I wrote this book for selfishreasons, of course, but also to
entertain.
And I don't want to try toentertain you if I'm not your
thing.
If you like Anthony Jezelnik andI'm more of like a Tom Green,
then don't come to the show.
It's different

SPEAKER_04 (01:34:14):
shit.
Who is your Jeselnik to your TomGreen, do you think?
What

SPEAKER_03 (01:34:17):
do you

SPEAKER_04 (01:34:18):
mean?
In terms of writers.
If you were Tom Green, who isyour Jeselnik?

SPEAKER_03 (01:34:24):
I like that you immediately zeroed in that I was
the Tom Green.
You know it's true.
Oh, man.
Who is the Jeselnik?
I don't know,

SPEAKER_04 (01:34:36):
man.
Yeah.
Who does?
Or it's kind of hard now becauseyou kind of write different
things now, but like maybeprevious who writes similar
things.
Bradley.
Like

SPEAKER_03 (01:34:49):
my...
No, no, he's a fucking loser.
Jezelnik's at least good.
Yeah, that's true.
I think what's difficult aboutthat is that I think they're
both funny.
Yeah, in different ways, yeah.
But yeah, no, if you wanted toknow who...

(01:35:10):
I mean, all of my beefs, myliterary beefs are personal,
right?
So it's like people who I knoware one way, but present as
another way.
And

SPEAKER_04 (01:35:22):
it's just because I know them.
You know what's funny about thatas well is that pretty much from
what I can gather, everyone thatyou've beefed with has been not
very good either, right?
Yeah,

SPEAKER_03 (01:35:37):
it's always been a part of it for me.
And it's there.
There's a small circle.
Very

SPEAKER_04 (01:35:41):
good.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 (01:35:42):
Right.
So there's like a small circleof I'm actually really glad that
you pointed that out becausethere's a lot of people who I
also came up with who I thinkare very good, who I've done
nothing but support.
And so on a certain level, likemy.
Barring one person who Kelbywent after a couple episodes

(01:36:05):
ago, he is a good writer.
He does have a speechimpediment, but he's also a very
good writer.
Barring that guy, most of whatdrove me insane about the
writing world was the elevationof talentless people to these...
Man...

(01:36:26):
I'm getting wound up.
I can feel it.
But like, but you just, whenyou're in it that long, you,
you, you get this, um, kind ofcrushing realization that the
quality of the books do notmatter.
Like Sean Cosby is a goodexample.
Um, I've done multiple rantsagainst this guy, but you know,

(01:36:50):
his book was, um, is he relatedto Bill Cosby?
He's not, he's black though,isn't he?
He is black.
And that's why

SPEAKER_02 (01:36:59):
he's famous.
I would like to talk to you.

SPEAKER_03 (01:37:03):
So like that was kind of like, like that was kind
of my big break.
So the Sean Cosby story isreally funny because he started
kind of making himself presentin the crime fiction community
on Facebook.
He was an inserter.
Yeah, he was.
Yeah.
he was this like a, he was a dogshit writer.

(01:37:25):
Like, and there were a bunch ofthem.
He wasn't alone.
He was one of many.
Um, and you know, me and myfriends would kind of like share
his posts and be like, LOL, likelook at this, like absolute dog
shit.
Um, and there was a point intime because he was friendly
enough where I actually hit himup and I was like, Hey Sean,

(01:37:46):
dude, like if you want to likemake this good, I can help you.
I was like doing my little sidehustle as a, you know, book
editor or whatever.
And then what happened was Seanwas in the right place at the
right time.
And he met the right editor, aguy named Josh Wetzler, who was
like a big agent in the bookworld.

(01:38:09):
Right.
Like very powerful agent.
And this guy took Sean's books,gave them to editors, said, do
whatever you have to do.
Like, just fix this thingbecause this is our guy.
And the books came out.
They sold very well.
And, you know, like Obama putone of his books on like the

(01:38:29):
best.
This is the best book I read allyear.
Like type shit.
And which is all fine.
That's all fine.
Get your bag.
I don't give a fuck.
what bothered me was that Seanunfortunately took that as a
sign that his writing wasactually good.
Like he got the wrong messagefrom that.
A more self-aware person wouldbe like, okay, I'm being pushed

(01:38:55):
by this machine into being inthis kind of position.
I'll take the money.
I'll take the fame.
I'll be good.
Like whatever.
But Sean like started lecturingpeople about how to write and,
That's that very wrong with mebecause I was like,
motherfucker, you write yourfirst drafts in crayon.

(01:39:18):
Like you are not, you're not agreat writer.
And then I kept it to myself.
I kept it to myself.
And then COVID hit and Iexpressed some opinion that was
wrong about whatever he hoppedin.
black lion king is his uhtwitter name to show you what

(01:39:39):
kind of retard we're dealingwith and i just went like
nuclear because what was sofunny to me and what was so
upsetting was that like so manypeople who i really had respect
for who had made fun of him withme all hopped on his dick as
soon as like the fame came and ididn't i was like no this guy's

(01:40:00):
really bad Like he's not good.
Like even the highly editedversions of these books are
still not great.
They literally found a blackguy.
It's like that Dave Chappelleskit where, you know, he's
talking about how MonicaLewinsky was ugly.
And he talked about how likeBill Clinton would open the Oval
Office door and be like, oh, youget in that kind of thing.

(01:40:24):
Like there were so few malleableblack authors that they could
make their kind of flagship guythat they just picked this dude
and just completely AstroTurfdid.
It's all, it's all fake.
Um, And yeah,

SPEAKER_04 (01:40:41):
people, people didn't like that.
And then that sort of, I'm surethat happens.
That doesn't just happen withblack guys.
That happens with like so manywriters that they're just, I've
seen

SPEAKER_03 (01:40:52):
it.
They're rich or they have

SPEAKER_04 (01:40:53):
connections.
And they're like, they'repushed.
And like, it's basically theirwriting is pretty bad and it's
sort of saved by really goodeditors.
And when I say saved, like yousaid, it's sort of like a, it's
like a triage.
Like it's not, you know, they'vebeen, they've there, the wounds
of the writing has been, havebeen stitched up, but like, it's

(01:41:14):
not like they're going to runlike a quarter mile or anything
like that.
It's just sort of like, um, andthere's so much of this and this
is why a lot of mainstreampublishing is really, really bad
because it's not, they're notselecting, they're not selecting
for like already really goodwriting.
They're selecting for other, um,kind of elements and then

(01:41:36):
basically massaging it intosomething that's like vaguely
publishable but even thensometimes it's not like you're
just like dumbfounded thatyou're like this was published
by penguin like you know likeyeah The problem is, though,
like, I'm picking up what you'reputting down.
The problem is, though, that alot of people, and obviously I

(01:41:58):
do not include you in this groupbecause you're, like, one of the
best writers of the 21stcentury, I believe.
Oh, wow.
Thank you.
But, like...
a lot of people who do go downthis line are really mediocre as
well.
So it's sort of like, it's sortof like, it's sort of like a
cope for like, why haven't I gotmy like, so I think like, you

(01:42:23):
know, the more woke people arekind of right to point that out.
Cause a lot of times thesecomplaints do come from people
who really aren't that good.
Like,

SPEAKER_01 (01:42:31):
yeah.
Like the anonymous Twitter.
Yeah.
like anime Abby guy iscomplaining about that.
And as you know, it's just somelike loser troglodyte or
whatever.

SPEAKER_04 (01:42:41):
Yeah.
And I did want to talk aboutthat as well with, with you,
David, because what you're doingis not that right.
So you got your face, you gotyour name out there.
Like you're not an anonymous,anonymous right wing guy.
I don't think you're actuallythat right wing either, but like
some would

SPEAKER_03 (01:42:58):
argue.
I'm really not.
I'm

SPEAKER_04 (01:43:00):
really not.
Like you're just not that.
like mainstream kind of view,not a cucked kind of white guy,
but also your fiction isn't justlike all about being an, uh, an
incel and being like trotted onby the, you know, black HR lady
sort of thing.
It's not, it's sort of like,

SPEAKER_03 (01:43:19):
like Mike Ma or whatever, like a Mike Ma.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's kind of like, I did likeMike Ma's first book, by the
way, I thought his first bookwas really good.
His second one was trash,

SPEAKER_04 (01:43:29):
but like, yeah.
Yeah.
But like, And that is thedirection that it needs to go.
Like, if you want to be acountervailing force to all of
this, like, you know, wokenonsense that's sort of being
pushed in publishing andliterature and stuff like that.
Like, I see a lot of, and I'mnot naming names here, but,

(01:43:50):
like, I see a lot of, you know,more right-wing kind of literary
output.
And it's just not good.
No, no.

(01:44:27):
our guys in, in, in scarequotes, as they might say.
But the problem is that like,even just conceptualizing it
like that is, um, committing youto a certain position rather
than the art.
It's like accepting theirframework.
Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 (01:44:45):
Yeah.
So, yeah.
Give me two seconds.
I'm going to piss.
Oh, I really need to as well.
I'm glad I have an answer forthis.

UNKNOWN (01:44:53):
Okay.

SPEAKER_03 (01:44:54):
Here's the thing.
What you were talking about is,again, it's the conception of
the novel as a whole, right?
So the novel in its most idealform is it does reflect the
human brain, but not onespecific human brain.
That's the problem.
So when you believe that thenovel is supposed to accurately

(01:45:18):
reflect your own internalexperience, you get alt-lit.
Right.
Like when Welbeck writes, one ofmy favorite books is the map and
the territory.
Right.
And he's bouncing in that bookbetween different modes better
than, I don't think he's toppedthat novel yet personally, but

(01:45:39):
like in that one, he's, he'sinhabiting different modes to
the point where like, he's inthe book, but he's, he's dead.
He's like the subject of amurder investigation.
Like he's been chopped up andall this kind of shit.
Like, that to me is the perfectmetaphorical idea of what a
novel is supposed to be.

(01:45:59):
Like you're supposed to seeyourself as separate from the
book, right?
To the point that you can bedissected.
And what a lot of these people,the step that they don't make is
that they just think that thenovel was supposed to be a
projection of them.
And it's not that.
Like an ejaculation orsomething.
Right.

(01:46:20):
Like an ejaculation or like, um,um, When you're writing,
literally every hour that I sitdown to write, we talked about
this earlier, but like I turnlike I'm not me anymore.
Right.
Like what I am is kind of like aconduit for the things that I've
been thinking about andobsessing over into this kind of

(01:46:42):
pure stream that is thentranslated into writing.
But I don't sit down and thinklike, what point do I want to
get across to people?
How do I want them to think?
And so, um, all lit, even thoughsome of them fall more on the
right spectrum than the left,whatever, it's all of, we're

(01:47:02):
talking about a differentspectrum where it's like
self-absorbed, narcissistic,navel gazing, self-reflection
versus exterior oriented,creative projection.
Okay.
And so like, that can take theform of any political ideology
that you want to.

(01:47:23):
There's no difference betweenlike the cat people, girl,
whoever that was, I forget hername now.
And somebody like Mike Ma, whoare just their whole goal with
what they're doing is to, uh,though I do think that Ma is
actually technically a very goodwriter.
Um, their whole goal is to, isto project their navel gazing

(01:47:46):
onto you.
Uh, put it this way.
It's, it's, it's forcingsomething on somebody versus
playing with them.
Right.
And so how would you, how wouldyou engage in an interaction?
If I wanted to sell yousomething, it's a very one way
type of thing.
I want to sell you on this book.

(01:48:06):
I'm going to come that much atthat much different than if I'm
like, I wrote a book and I wantto play with you.
This again, this is the JoeRogan thing.
Jordan Peters.
Like I thought that shit wasbrilliant, but he brings up this
concept of play.
And I do think that the, theidea of play can't be ignored in

(01:48:27):
art in general.
And I realized that everythingthat I vibe with has an element
of play to it.
I feel like they're poking meand being like, come with me.
Like it could be a painting.

SPEAKER_02 (01:48:40):
And

SPEAKER_03 (01:48:41):
if I feel like it's, if it's Obama's face and it says
hope, that's not play.
Like, how do you play with that?
That's a directive.
But if you see something alittle bit weirder, right?
Like, I also feel that way aboutmost, like, modern art, like the
style type stuff where it'sjust, you know, different colors

(01:49:02):
or whatever.
Like, that's also imperative.
It's so removed from anyreference point that it's
supposed to be prescriptive forhow you think about it.
But, like...
But then you can see thatpicture of the...
This is very common in America,maybe not in Australia, but
there's a painting of a pigthat's jumping off of a pier

(01:49:25):
into a lake.
That's fun to me.
So all of a sudden, now we'replaying.
I'm like, oh, what's that pig upto?
What's that pig thinking about?
What's his deal?

SPEAKER_01 (01:49:37):
Yeah, I saw Anna Krivalova tweet where she was
quote-tweeting something.
It was like a...
like made out of like China, butit was like a mace, you know,
like the weapon, a mace.
And she was like, art now isjust like juxtaposition.
It's like lost storytelling.
And like, I know I didn't studyart or anything, so I never
really thought about it in thoseterms, but I was like, wow, that

(01:49:58):
really like clicked for why Idon't fuck with a lot of like
modern art stuff.
There is no storytelling in it.
It is just this, like, what ifthis was made out of, what if a
tough thing was actually madeout of a fragile material?
Yeah.
Right.
It's directive,

SPEAKER_03 (01:50:12):
right?
It's Banksy.
It's Banksy stuff.
It's, it's stuff that's supposedto make you think a certain way
rather than playing with you.
And I think that, you know, Sinimentioned earlier, like in the
book that there's, you know,there's, there's some stuff
where you don't necessarily knowwhat to think about it.
It's because I don't know.

(01:50:33):
I don't want you to think any,like, maybe that's it.
Like when I go through it, I'mplaying.
Like when I was writing thebook, I was playing and I don't
want anybody to think any onething.
I'm just thinking about how funthis particular

SPEAKER_01 (01:50:48):
idea is.

SPEAKER_03 (01:50:49):
It's

SPEAKER_01 (01:50:50):
even like Dostoevsky.
You feel like it's super heady,dense stuff, but you feel like
he's playing with you and he'sfiguring out the ideas as he
goes.
And there's possibly manydifferent interpretations of
what he's getting at.
And it's this long kind of thingthat feels like it's playful.

SPEAKER_03 (01:51:10):
It has to be.
It has to be.
And so when you get to this,like, let's call it like the
right wing art or whatever, assoon as there's a, like when
Welbeck rants about women, it'sstill juxtaposed with like this
obsession with women.

(01:51:30):
Right.
Like none of his character was,some of his characters are
incels, but it's really complex.
Yeah.
And it's really unexpected.
Yeah,

SPEAKER_04 (01:51:42):
it's playful.
He still kind of likes women,even when he's being
misogynistic.

SPEAKER_03 (01:51:50):
Like in Serotonin, when he talks about his girl...
This to me was...
It's not my favorite book ofhis, or in general.
But there's a passage in therewhere he's talking about his
Asian girlfriend.
And he just randomly mentionsthat she fucks dogs.
And...
You're just like, what do I makeof that?

(01:52:11):
It's playful.
Like you could tell he lobbedthat shit into your arena and
now you just got to deal withit.
What do I, what do I make ofthat?
Like, does he, cause even thetone of the narrator isn't
virulent and pissed andmisogynistic.
It's just like, and then shestarted fucking dogs and she's

(01:52:33):
like, what do I even do withthis?
And that's a great place to bein literature.
Yeah.
What am I supposed to make ofthis?
Have you guys read TheUnbearable Lightness of Being?
Yeah.
Such a fantastic book.
It's so good.
And it's full of that kind ofshit.

(01:52:53):
Where you're like, that bookfeels like it's playing with you
from beginning to end.
And you're just kind of like,I'm having so much fun reading
every single page of this bookthat I don't actually care.
Like, you shouldn't care how itends.

SPEAKER_04 (01:53:09):
Yeah.
And importantly, it was writtenunder a context and, like, about
the context of, like, communismand its, shall we say,
antagonism to creative play.
So, like, it's part of the bookis about that, but it's also, it
was sort of written in that,around that context.

SPEAKER_01 (01:53:31):
Is that the one, it's Milan Kundera?
Is that the author?
Yeah, that's right.
Correct.
I have heard of it.

SPEAKER_04 (01:53:36):
It's a good book.
It's actually one of my favoritebooks.
But very good definition ofkitsch in there, like that he
kind of elaborates on.
But,

SPEAKER_03 (01:53:48):
yeah, you're totally right.
Another one of my favorites inthat same vein, one of my
favorite books of all time, topfive.
Have you guys read The End ofthe Affair by Graham Greene?
I have not, no.
I'll have to read it.
Oh, my God.
Have you read Graham Greene

SPEAKER_01 (01:54:03):
in general?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I have some of his books, but Ihaven't read them.

SPEAKER_03 (01:54:07):
The Power and the Glory is another really good
one.
But The End of the Affair is oneof my favorite fucking books.
And it does this...
No book captures heartache andloss and despair like The End of
the Affair.
And...
but it also still has that kindof, cause it's set during world

(01:54:28):
war two and there's all thisother kind of stuff going on
with it.
And it just, it, it keepsjumping and that, that the
playful element of that book orthe unbearable lightness of
being or mapping the territoryor whatever, that playfulness
puts you in a space where whenthose authors decide to hit you
with some shit, you're open,you're open.

(01:54:51):
Like, your guard is not up.
A polemic is necessarily goingto put you on guard.
Like, that's where we're atconstantly when we're on Twitter
or reading some biased newssource, whether it's right or
left wing.
Like, we know they're trying tosell us some shit.
When somebody comes to your doorand says, hello, sir, I'm here

(01:55:12):
with FAG Solar, right?
And I'm trying to sell you this.
You're immediately on guard.
It's

SPEAKER_01 (01:55:21):
like when someone gives you a book and you can
tell they're trying to likeconvince you of their worldview.
So they give you like, whatever,whatever.
I can't think of an example, butlike white,

SPEAKER_03 (01:55:31):
white fragility,

SPEAKER_01 (01:55:32):
any of those

SPEAKER_03 (01:55:33):
books,

SPEAKER_01 (01:55:34):
like, and you're like, well, I fucking said I'd
read it.
So I guess I'll read it.
But the whole time you just hatereading it and like looking for
the flaws in it.
Like, whereas if, right.
If you didn't, if you, if youdidn't suspect them of having
some like, political viewthey're trying to thing on.
It was just like whatever bookyou might be more open to it.
If it just was, yeah.

(01:55:54):
If it was just,

SPEAKER_03 (01:55:55):
if it was just in the context of like a fun time
that you were having.

SPEAKER_04 (01:55:59):
Yeah.
It's like, I think, I thinkwhen, when like art gets to like
a rhetorical level where it'slike trying to convince you of
something outside of the workitself, um, there are, there are
times when, um, they can go sohard on that that it becomes
kind of, like, sublime and,like, ridiculous.

(01:56:21):
I can't think

SPEAKER_01 (01:56:21):
of any examples off the top of my head.
I read Sean Penn's book, thatone.
It was, like, Bob Honey, JustDo...
something or whatever it'scalled it's had some stupid
title just it was like threedollars in the store and i'm
like this book looks dog shiti'm gonna read it it's like 105
pages or something and iactually kind of found it fun
yeah it even like breaks likethere's a bit where it keeps
referring to president trump aslike the landlord or something

(01:56:45):
but then it like forgets that itwas using this like metaphor and
then it just like literally haslike a letter like directed to
the president within the bookand it was just like this
retarded spy thing about thisguy and then have all these like
Then she pooed on the floor orsomething like just nonsense.
It was so bad.
I enjoyed

SPEAKER_03 (01:57:03):
it.
There, there are two books thatcome to mind, right?
One of them is actually thefountainhead, which I know is
like very popular in our sphere,but I don't love, like, I don't
love it, but I had a lot of fun.
I had a lot of fun reading thatbook.
Like I had a good time.
Like I would never in a millionyears call that a bad book.
And it has all the digressions.

(01:57:24):
And then when you get to the endof it, you have this whole
feeling of like, Oh, go fucksome shit up.
Like I can do whatever the fuckI want.
Um, the other one, which is in adifferent register is, uh, uh,
called, it was the book thatNorman Reedus wrote with Frank
bill, who Frank, uh, FrankBill's another guy who I know.

(01:57:46):
He's actually a cool dude.
He's like a Southern crimewriter.
And Norman Reedus is an actor.
He's the guy in Death Stranding,right?
And Walking Dead.
Walking Dead, all that kind ofstuff.
And Dark Saints.
And you start reading the book,and there are these insane
digressions.
You'll be a few pages into thebook, and there's a full-page

(01:58:10):
paragraph where a guy's fixinghis lawnmower.
And it goes into detail abouthow you fix a lawnmower.
And I'm like, I'm on board,

SPEAKER_04 (01:58:20):
bro.
Men love that shit.
Like, that's a real male-codedthing, actually.
Yeah.
Whereas the stuff towards womenis usually about everyone's
thoughts and feelings.

SPEAKER_02 (01:58:34):
I

SPEAKER_04 (01:58:35):
remember, I think it was you I was talking to, David,
when we were talking about...
some romanticy book it mighthave been matt actually as well
oh yeah it's straight away itwas like talking about feelings
like literally the firstsentence like and you're just
like

SPEAKER_03 (01:58:48):
that's all women books like if you look up like
these best-selling books booksthat have sold like seven
million copies like the the theseven husbands of evelyn woe or
whatever i i look at the at thereview page on Amazon.
Just like get an ideaimmediately.
Like the first page of thatbook, 7 million copies sold is

(01:59:10):
like, I'm sitting at the jobinterview and I feel inadequate
because the interviewer is sohot and I'm not that hot.
All

SPEAKER_04 (01:59:20):
right.
Yeah.
Cool.
Cool.
I love it.
Whereas a more male coded thingwould just be like straight in.
A guy is doing something.
Whereas like this bitch isliterally just sitting there
like, Like

SPEAKER_03 (01:59:36):
if you started off a book and a guy was building a
birdhouse and you weredescribing how it was and like
the smell of the sawdust comingup and all this kind of stuff,
I'd be like, all right.
Where were we going?
Let's go.

SPEAKER_01 (01:59:52):
Probably the perfect like crossing of those worlds is
like the American psycho, likebusiness card thing.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (01:59:58):
Isn't

SPEAKER_03 (02:00:01):
that why that book is so successful, right?
Like it's, it's both of thosethings in one.
Because it was written by a gay

SPEAKER_04 (02:00:08):
man.
So like, right.
That's the female.

SPEAKER_03 (02:00:11):
He's a day Walker.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He moves between worlds.
Yeah, no, no.
I mean, it's books.
Guys, I have like a reallybullish feeling about books and
nothing that's going on in thecurrent zeitgeist supports this,
but I really do feel like booksare coming back.

SPEAKER_04 (02:00:33):
Oh, no, I agree.
In a major way.
Yeah.
just anecdotally, like so manypeople have like, cause they
know I do a books podcast.
They may not listen to it, butso many people have like reached
out to me and be like, have,have been like, I need to get it
back into reading.
And like, not just like, I wantto get back into reading.
I need to get back into readingbecause like, I feel like a lot

(02:00:55):
of people are just sort of, um,Scrolling's not doing it for
them anymore.
So they're just like...

SPEAKER_03 (02:01:01):
Do you guys not feel that?
Like when you go on Twitter,you're just like, what is this?
I used to spend hours on thatapp.
And now I open it for like 10minutes a day.
And I look and I'm immediatelylike, you should be mad because
a black kid killed a white kid.
I'm like, nope.
Don't care.
Like I am moving on from thatshit.

(02:01:22):
Like it just, it just doesn't doit for me anymore.
But like getting into a long,even if it's a podcast again,
I've mentioned it 15 times now,but I listened to that whole
three hour Jordan Peterson, JoeRook.
Cause it was a conversation thatI was enjoying listening to.
Right.
And it's not easily chunkableinto like, And I'm

SPEAKER_04 (02:01:44):
just amazed that people still, there are some
people who still need thoselittle highlights and that's
what they respond to and talkabout all day.
And I'm just like...
I'm not, I feel like in mycircle and everything that like
my own sort of mentality at themoment is like, I want to like

(02:02:04):
dedicate to myself to like longform stuff.
I don't want like bite size,anything like,

SPEAKER_03 (02:02:10):
no, no, no, no.
Cause that's meaning.
That's what, that's, that's whatmeaning is in life is dedicating
yourself to a long form project.
Uh, what was that?
What was that thing that therewas that janitor in New York?
He was schizophrenic.
the temple of the third heavenwas his art project.

(02:02:32):
And so there was this janitorguy and he, he died.
And when they went to hisapartment, he had made this
beautiful made out of tinfoil,like city.
It kind of looked like a anchorwatt or something like that, but
made out of tinfoil.
And it's like that guy hadmeaning because he spent half of

(02:02:53):
his day doing a job that,created results.
Something was dirty and now it'sclean.
And then he went home and hetranslated his schizo thoughts
into a tinfoil city.
That's the extreme example ofwhat everybody should be doing.
Like I spend this much time atwork deriving meaning from it

(02:03:15):
because I'm changing realitythrough that job.
And then when I get home, I'm,I'm not writing something to,
uh, you know, appease anaudience or, um, to make money,
LOL.
Like let's, let's, let's allforget about that.
But instead you're doing a coolcreative thing.

(02:03:39):
Exactly.
Yeah.
It's a perfect life.

SPEAKER_04 (02:03:41):
Yeah.
It's great.
Like, and that's, and that'sprobably the way it used to be
for like thousands and thousandsof years before there was this
like kind of idea that youcould, um, make.
I, I'm kind of, sort of againstmaking it creative stuff, your
job.
I am 100% against it, yeah.

(02:04:03):
Because I'm kind of likeeveryone I've seen who does it.
Like there are exceptions, butmost of those exceptions are
people who started doing it likelast century.
But I think this century, it'sgoing to be all of the great
artists are definitely going tohave day jobs.
Of course,

SPEAKER_03 (02:04:22):
yeah.

SPEAKER_04 (02:04:22):
Because I don't, I just don't think, I think a day
job is good for an artist.
It's definitely good for awriter.
There's so much like, even ifyou don't, you know, I'm
assuming you're not going towrite novels about selling
fences, but I'm sure that likeday-to-day stuff and like people
you encounter and things likethat are going to be much more
fruitful for you going forward.

(02:04:44):
Oh yeah.
Just like sitting with yourselfas a writer and, Like, you know
what I mean?
Like you get

SPEAKER_03 (02:04:51):
so much, of course, so much life

SPEAKER_04 (02:04:53):
living and experience that you can bring

SPEAKER_03 (02:04:55):
to, to your work.
Let me tell you, sorry.
So like writing is about, it'sall translation.
It's not transcription.
A lot of people think that it'slike, Oh, this thing happened to
me.
I got to write about it.
I got to make sure all thedetails are right.
But what it really is, is thatyou experience things that give
you a feeling and then you inyour creative space, you try to

(02:05:20):
recreate that in a different waythrough people with deer heads
or hand cannons or whatever.
But I was, I was on a call.
I go out to this house and I canimmediately see that the fence
is fucked up.
Like the shit is falling down.
Pickets are missing, whatever.
I ring the doorbell.

(02:05:41):
The guy invites me inside and,And as soon as I step in, the
whole place is dark.
There's no lights on in thishouse.
Middle of the day, it smellsrank with cigarette smoke.
I'm like, oh, this is rough.
And the guy himself, very niceguy, but he's nearing the end of

(02:06:05):
his journey here.
Uh, he's got like lesions on hisskin and, and strange things
growing from his face.
And he, uh, he goes, let me getthem.
Let me take you out of here andshow you the fence.
And so he takes me out back andwe're discussing like the
technical details, like, Oh,we're going to cut that post

(02:06:27):
there.
We'll put steel posts in there.
We'll put new pickets in like,this is all going to look great.
Yada, yada, yada.
And, uh, he goes, this post,Backyard, which, by the way, has
a swimming pool with about threeinches of standing green water
and a bunch of overgrown plants.
Like it's it looks, you know,apocalyptic in its own way.

(02:06:52):
Right.
It's something that's beenneglected.
He goes, this backyard used tolook really nice.
But then, you know, my wifedied.
My mother died.
I got cancer.
I had to have surgery.
Uh, my son left to go join theNavy.
Yeah.
And I'm, I'm sitting like, I'mgoing on appointments to places

(02:07:14):
where it's like, Oh, cool.
Yeah.
We'll fix your gate like this.
We're good.
And then all of a sudden here'sthis guy who's like very
clearly, like completely alone.
And he wants somebody to talkto.
So he's extending thisappointment out and out and out.
And I tell him, well, I'll tellyou what, we're going to make
your fence look great.
Um, Just let me measureeverything.

(02:07:36):
I'll come in.
I'll talk to you.
Yada, yada, yada.
And so I measure the fence.
I go back in again, dark.
But there's like, now there'sone light over the kitchen
table.
And this guy who just got donewith cancer surgery is smoking a
cigarette in there.
And he goes, do you smoke?
And I say, no.

(02:07:57):
He's like, oh yeah, that makessense.
You want to see something cool?
I say, sure.
So he takes me into his garage.
He has this old Model T in thegarage.
And he, you know, wistfullysays, you know, this won a lot
of competitions.
This was a really good car.
And I'm just, as he's talking,I'm becoming overwhelmed with

(02:08:18):
this, like, feeling of like,this guy had a life, you know,
like, and his life is coming toan end.
And so we're back at the tableand I'm giving him all like the,
you know, the salesman,Bullshit.
Letting him know aboutwarranties and things like that.
And he's smoking anothercigarette.

(02:08:39):
And he goes...
He's like, I used to have energylike you.
I used to be up and about doingthings.
And one day I woke up and I waslike this.
And I said, oh, well, that's...
And he goes, life's what happenswhile you're busy making plans.

(02:09:00):
And so I'm just like...
I gotta get the fuck out ofhere.
Like, this is, this is like toofucking intense, you know?
Um, like this guy is like beingmy friend and you know, like he
just, he literally needssomebody to talk to.
Like he's got nobody left.
His house is dark.
And all of a sudden I startpicturing like, He told me that
he bought the house 30 yearsago.

(02:09:20):
And I'm like, well, 30 yearsago, like his kid would have
been like my son's age.
And my son's running around thehouse right now and being a dick
and annoying us and being loudand whatever.
But like one day, like my wifecould be dead.
My mother could be dead.
My son could be out doing a joband I could be like a lonely guy

(02:09:41):
with nothing else there.
So I left.
It affected me profoundly.
Like I was like, I drove insilence for like 30 minutes
after talking to this guy.
Cause I'd just been hit withthis reality that like, we're
all going to fucking die.
And everything that we're doingright now is one day is not

(02:10:05):
going to be there.
And that's not the real sad partabout it.
Because if you, if you get hitby a meteor and die, you don't
get to exist.
The idea that everything couldbe gone and you have to keep
living.
just for a few years more, justinching toward, like he told me
at one point, he's like, yeah,this, I want to leave this house

(02:10:25):
for my son.
And this fence might be the lastnice thing that I can do for
him.
Like, God damn, you're hittingme with all this.
I'm trying to sell fences, baby.
Like, what are you doing?
And so like, I left all that.
And I was like, so as a writer,you internalize that, but you're

(02:10:46):
not going to rewrite that scene.
When I left, I had a profoundfeeling.
And that feeling was that shitdoes end.
I was very, and I'm sure hospiceworkers experience this all the
time, but like people haveentire lives that not only end,

(02:11:08):
but sometimes end before theydo.
And then the idea is how do youtranslate that?
How do you turn that into aparable or a plot point or
whatever?
And on the surface, it couldseem like you're kind of a
vulture preying on people's painto put it into a book.

(02:11:28):
But I think that one of the bestthings about being a writer is
that you can sit down and youcan write a scene about people's
butt cheeks getting chopped offand try to find a that feeling
again.
Right.
And, and, and amalgamize and,and, and translate it into this

(02:11:50):
kind of cartoonish format towhere people read the butt cheek
chopping scene and they're like,damn, we're all going to die.
And

SPEAKER_01 (02:12:00):
it's like, if you tried to like write that scene,
like literally it actually wouldread kind of fake, like in made
up.
Yeah.
Like, so you have to liketranslate it to make it seem
more real.
And this is what I mean.

SPEAKER_04 (02:12:13):
Yeah.
This is what I mean about theanalogy of like alchemy, because
it's like, you know, it's one,it's one thing to, you know,
just transcribe that scene, likeyou said, but it's another thing
entirely to transmute, like someof the stuff you got, you
experienced there into like aridiculous stylized violence

(02:12:33):
thing that, that it's, it'salmost like, One of the things I
love about this type of writing,and I try to do myself, is,
like, on the surface, it's doingone thing, but it's also
smuggling in something else, youknow?
I love the idea of, like, thewriter is smuggler.
Like, that, like, you know,you're just smuggling, like,

(02:12:56):
sort of contraband in some ways.
That, like, you're...
you're doing something veryclear and that works like on the
surface, but there's also likesomething underneath that people
aren't going to directlyexperience, but it's going to
inform what they're getting outof it, you know?
And I find that, yeah, I findthat obviously in your writing,

(02:13:18):
which is like, it's, this is aridiculous kind of
phantasmagorical kind ofcyberpunk epic, but it has that,
that sort of elements to itsometimes directly.
Like I love the, um, the parableof the, is it a sparrow?
I can't remember the bird.
The parable of the sparrow.
Yeah.
That's such a great, I lovethat.
And I love when people do that,when they put, they put like

(02:13:40):
those, those sorts of elementsinto their, the work again,
leading

SPEAKER_03 (02:13:44):
into the

SPEAKER_04 (02:13:44):
holistic form.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 (02:13:46):
That's Cielo's whole character.
She's the only character in thebook.
Although a lot of people whoread it identify with Zuno,
which is really funny.
But with Cielo, that was like...
I mean, some of my best writing,I think, is just that opening
passage with Cielo where there'sthe rattlesnake in the den.

(02:14:09):
And the rattlesnake's givingbirth to babies.
And you see it from theperspective of the rattlesnake.
Um, because her whole thing isabout motherhood and it's, it's
really interesting becauseobviously I can't give birth.
Right.
But I've seen over the past fouryears, like I, I've watched my
wife give, I watched my sonbeing born, which is fucking

(02:14:30):
crazy.
Like that shit is wild.
Like when you first see like thehair on the kid's head, like
breaching the vagina, it's likewild.
what the fuck is going on?
Like that shit is great.
And I think it fucked me up alittle bit.

(02:14:51):
I was very sleep deprived.
Like he did not want to comeout.
It took 36 hours for him to beborn.
So I was like sleep deprived.
They're like, you want to holdthis mirror and watch your son
be born?
Like, yeah.
Okay, cool.
And then you see like, you seethe afterbirth come out, all
this kind of shit.
But I became like, veryfascinated by this concept of
motherhood you know watching herbe a mother and all this kind of

(02:15:13):
stuff and like uh all of cielo'sstuff obviously it's it's
extremely overt is all aboutmotherhood right um she fights a
giant baby at one point like i'mi'm not exactly the most subtle
writer when it comes to thingslike this but like The idea of

(02:15:33):
having a kid and then hating thekid and wanting to kill the kid,
but still loving it very deeply,it's all transmuted, which is a
great word that I'm glad yousaid, through a giant baby
fight.
You can put all that into there.
But she is my favoritecharacter, and it's where most

(02:15:57):
of the humanity of the bookcomes, because Kentaro is a
retard who's just...
kind of running around doingwhat like and he's he's like
this he seems like the most likeyou actually he is yeah he is

(02:16:18):
he's like this he's like thisretard who's like gets the life
beat out of him and he but hekeeps winning for some reason
yeah you know like he just he'sbecause he's just good.
Like he's dumb as fuck, but justgood at one thing, which is
killing in this case.
And he just keeps succeeding.
And then Zuno is like this.
I wanted to kind of like tacklebeing an incel from a empathetic

(02:16:43):
place.
So like one person read it andthey're like at the end of the
book, when, when Zuno finallyhas friends, like they're like,
I shed a tear because I waslike, Oh, he finally, and I was
like, that was not, I was just,writing that, you know, like
that didn't hit, but yeah, theone that hit me the most was,
uh, Cielo.

(02:17:03):
And then Sasuke is just kind oflike, he's like the, I liked
turning like a super artisticbrainy guy into like a jiggly
puff character.
Like I just thought that wasfunny.
So that's just, that's just along joke.
That's the longest joke in thewhole book.
I'm looking forward to that inthe next one.

(02:17:23):
Like where, where Sasuke isgoing to be.
What's going to happen?
Yeah, because now he's just apink, massive flesh that has
lived 200,000 lives.

SPEAKER_04 (02:17:36):
Yeah.
We haven't really, like, gonethrough all the plot points, so,
like, people are probably goingto hear all this stuff and be
like, that sounds crazy.
But that's good, because youshould go read it, because all
of it, it's all a love apiece,and it all kind of, it's very
entertaining.

SPEAKER_01 (02:17:53):
Yeah, it's, like, addictive to read.
Like, it's not it's like a lotgoing on, but it's like easy to
read.
And like, you keep wanting to gothrough it.
Like, like you'd say, I get500,000 pages.
I've been through it in like aweek or something.
I cannot

SPEAKER_04 (02:18:07):
wait for the audio book.
Glenn's hard at work on that.

SPEAKER_03 (02:18:13):
Glenn hit me up the other day.
It's so funny because he sendsme the recordings as he's doing
them and there are parts wherehe cracks up and it's all the
retarded parts that I thoughtwas funny when I was writing
them.
Just hearing him...

SPEAKER_04 (02:18:31):
I want to see what he's going to do with the shot
Yeah, I

SPEAKER_01 (02:18:36):
do want to see

SPEAKER_04 (02:18:38):
the

SPEAKER_01 (02:18:38):
shark.
I can imagine what Cielo's voiceis going to

SPEAKER_03 (02:18:48):
sound like.
She's just an essay.
Yeah.
Another funny thing that Glenndoes like a, like behind the
scenes stuff is that like whenhe fucks up, uh, he calls
himself a faggot, which isreally funny.
He'll be, he'll be like readingand be like, fuck a faggot.
And then they'll like start,start reading again.

SPEAKER_04 (02:19:12):
Keep all that in actually.
And then he'll be like, this isreally experimental and

SPEAKER_03 (02:19:17):
very stream of consciousness.
It's very meta.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (02:19:22):
Well, it's like those, brodenist books where
it's like one sentence for thewhole book they should like
extend that to do the audio bookwhere it's all in one reading

SPEAKER_03 (02:19:32):
yeah oh yeah wow that's a great idea this book
would be 25 hours

SPEAKER_04 (02:19:37):
at this point wow well that's that's the other
thing as well like we're talkingabout like that sort of writing
that is um you know trying totrying to get at something um
through the language andtransmute it like all of that
brodenist stuff i do think thatI've talked about it before in
previous episodes, so we don'tneed to rehash it.

(02:19:58):
But I just think that thevehicle for what you want to do
is actually...
in things like this, like justgenre fiction, just, just stop,
stop writing like, you know,crappy puzzle books and just
write genre fiction, non-realistfiction to get at that stuff
that you want to get at.
Like it's just,

SPEAKER_03 (02:20:18):
cause you will get at it.
It comes at you.
It comes at you whether you wantit to or not.
Like for me, if I set this upwhere I'm like, okay, I want to
do a scene where I need to haveZuno, you know, be at the end of
his rope.
So he goes to like a suicide podchamber or whatever you, as

(02:20:40):
you're writing it, like one ofthose nights, again, 500 words a
day, no excuses, whatever, likeone of those nights, like you're
going to be sitting there andwriting and through no intention
of your own, you're all of asudden going to be writing
something very profound.
It's, it's like the writingprocess.

(02:21:00):
And then the process of readingit are identical.
And that writing process is likeevery day you're like, okay,
here's what I'm going to do.
Here's what I'm, you know,trying to get at, but then
something's going to sneak inwhere you're like, Oh, all of a
sudden, like I'm writing aboutprofound feelings of loss and

(02:21:21):
loneliness and all this kind ofshit.
And I didn't mean to, you don'tset out to do that.
You set out to be like, Hey,he's got to get into the pod, be
grossed out by it.
almost die and then come back.
Right.
And then as you're writing it,you're like, Oh, this is, this

(02:21:41):
is interesting, which I, Ireally do think that like a lot
of the best novel, like whetherit's David Foster Wallace or
even like Elroy or whatever,like Elroy has some really
profound moments in Americantabloid and the cold 6,000 that
you get to because he's like,Because the books are so big,

(02:22:05):
right?
Where it's like that night whenhe was scribbling on his pad
that he has his assistantstranscribe, he was cooking.
And so you just got to show upand cook.
Yeah.
And then something's going tocome out.
It's quantity leading to qualityrather than like opposed.

(02:22:29):
You can't plan for quality.
Like you have to give up theidea that like what you're going
to sit down and write isquality.

SPEAKER_04 (02:22:34):
And also like, I feel like that's the, that's the
appeal I think of the genre sortof mode is that, you have to
keep it going.
Right.
Like, so, but while you'redoing, if you sit down to write
like a, I don't know,post-modernist puzzle fiction,
broadness sort of thing.
And you're like, I'm going tomuse about this today.

(02:22:56):
Anything that comes out is kindof going to be flat.
But if you've got somethingbehind you, like, I don't know,
Zuno needs to kill the mushroomdemon or whatever.
Like, and that's the scene thatyou need to get to.
Like, those same sort of likethemes that you might've
intended to sit down and write.

(02:23:18):
If it was just like, you know, asimilar kind of banal scene of
like a guy somewhere on astreet, like, that'll come out
in a much more like, like Isaid, alchemical way and a way
that's much more like strikingand, um, entertaining than it
would if you were just doing thething in itself.
Does that make sense?
Like, like I feel like that'sthe appeal of, of like using

(02:23:40):
these generic, um, formula, um,you know, style over substance
stuff to get at that, that otherstuff, you know, like not that
that's the point, but it, it'salmost like, uh, um, it'll
always come out if you sort oflike, uh, a good thinker and
writer.

SPEAKER_03 (02:23:57):
Yeah.
It's like those insights arealways what literature is
tilting towards, you know?
Yes.
Yeah.
And then the, the trap isthinking that because it's
tilting towards that, you haveto move towards it.
So again, writers should do acidor DMT or whatever, because you
always realize through all thesepsychedelic trips that the way

(02:24:22):
in is around and, Always.
If you try to go straight in,you go to hell and you spend
your time in hell.
But if you just chill, if youjust relax, like let it do what
it wants to do, you find yourway there.
And it's usually through somedumb shit.
Like you're looking at aSnickers bar and you're like,

(02:24:44):
what if this was a train?
And then you figure it all out.
You're like, fuck, it is atrain.
Snickers bars are trains.
And that's, I look at the topand

SPEAKER_04 (02:24:54):
feel like they kind of look like the veins on a
cock, but, you know, that's justme.

SPEAKER_03 (02:24:58):
They do.
They do.
They do.
Sini eats the Snickers bar

SPEAKER_01 (02:25:04):
in one bite.
The king size.
The king size.

SPEAKER_04 (02:25:14):
Gulp.
Yeah, well, did we have anythingelse that we wanted to say about
the book?
It's pretty late for you, isn'tit?
JDO, do you need to go soon?
No, I'm having fun.
No, I'm good, man.
Okay, cool, cool.
But yeah, was there anything onthe book portion?
Because what we're going to donext, I think, is we're going to
do for the Patreon a bit of adiscussion about one of JDO's

(02:25:36):
key influences for this one,which would be the Cyberpunk
2077 game.
But Matt, did you have anythingelse that you wanted to bring to
the table?

SPEAKER_01 (02:25:45):
No, just people should buy it.
It's great.
I endorse it.

SPEAKER_04 (02:25:50):
Yeah.
Yeah.
And God's Fair, No Better, aswell as a reference to Cormac
McCarthy, isn't it?
It is.
Yeah.
Which book was it?
The Road?
The Road.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Where Men Can't Live,

SPEAKER_03 (02:26:01):
God's Fair, No Better.

SPEAKER_04 (02:26:02):
Amazing.
Amazing.
Amazing.
Yeah.
Go out and buy it.
I think I was one of the firstreaders.
I'm not sure if I was.
You were the first.
I was the first.
Yeah.
I think.
Yeah.
I'm good at reading.
Yeah.
I

SPEAKER_03 (02:26:19):
was like...
this guy will get, he'll get itdone.
Cause you're thinking aboutthat.
When you talk to readers foryour book, you're like, who's
actually going to read this.
And I was like, Matt's a, he's akept man.
He's got time.
Yes,

SPEAKER_04 (02:26:36):
that's true.
Yeah.
So yeah, I would, I would, yeah,I would recommend it as well.
We'll have links to the book,whatever David's preferred link
is in the show notes.
But you should go buy it ifyou're into, like, you know,
cyberpunk, anime, fucking theshit about, like you said, the

(02:26:57):
rhizomatic mycelial kind ofmushroom stuff.
Like, it's very trippy andpsychedelic.
A lot of influence from TakeshiMiike.
If you like all of that stuff,there's even, like, body horror
kind of crap in there that'sreally great.
Yeah, so...
I would video drone video drone.
Yes.

(02:27:17):
That's a good influence that,um, I don't know if you've ever
explicitly stated that, butyeah, it is.
I haven't, but I get it.
Yeah.
Um, yeah, go and get it.
I think it's like one of yourbest books and, um, I, I really
sort of recommend it.
Um, so yeah, go and go and buyit.
Thank you.
Thank you for joining us forthis episode and we'll see you

(02:27:38):
on the other side to talk aboutcyberpunk 2077.

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