For the last couple of weeks I've been busy with writing and editing The Medium Picture (forthcoming from Zer0 Books) as is usual these days, but also made a public appearance, released a new excerpt, celebrated an anniversary, and kicked off a new project (more on the latter later). All the details follow.
Read on!
Hope for Boats: A Prologue
Last week I read the prologue to my novel-in-progress, Hope for Boats, to the Rotary Club of Elba, Alabama, on which Elbo, the fictional town in the story, is loosely based. Here's the clip. You can read along on the Malarkey Books site.
Thanks to the members of the Elba Rotary Club, Courtney Pelham for inviting me, and my sister, Cindy, for filming.
[Boat drawing by me.]
Escape Philosophy excerpt on Apocalypse Confidential
Apocalypse Confidential is currently running an excerpt from Escape Philosophy: Journeys Beyond the Human Body (punctum books). Self-described as "Notes From The Underworld, Excavating The Carcosan Aspect; ‘Psyop Sleaze Rag’," Apocalypse Confidential is now running Chapter 2, "Body: The Root of all People." Here's a bit:
It’s not like it looks on TV. You never see the open torso of a body heaving and sucking after a bullet, a piece of shrapnel, or a chunk of flying concrete has ripped right through it. The worst part is the smell: somewhere between bad breath and warm shit. And it’s inescapable. If the blood and guts get to be too much, you can look away. You can’t get way from the smell.
Bodies are gross. Getting out of them remains one of the most pervasive and persistent human fantasies. Fragile and frail, they fail us. They suffer injuries. They decay. From feeling the limits of this sluggish shell to seeing it as a prison cell, everyone is looking for a way out.
All the World's a Grave
The physical body has often been seen as a prison, as something to be escaped by any means necessary: technology, mechanization, drugs, sensory deprivation, alien abduction, Rapture, or even death and extinction. Taking in horror movies from David Cronenberg and UFO encounters, metal bands such as Godflesh, Deafheaven, and Wolves in the Throne Room, as well as ketamine experiments, AI, and cybernetics, Escape Philosophy is an exploration of the ways that human beings have sought to make this escape, to transcend the limits of the human body, to find a way out.
As the physical world continues to crumble at an ever-accelerating rate, and we are faced with a particularly 21st-century kind of dread and dehumanization in the face of climate collapse and a global pandemic, Escape Philosophy asks what this escape from our bodies might look like, and if it is even possible.
“A peculiar hybrid of Thomas Ligotti and Marshall McLuhan.”
— Robert Guffey, author, Operation Mindfuck
With a cover by Matthew Revert as dark as the ideas inside, it will make you look cool reading it on the bus or displaying it on your bookshelf. Escape Philosophy is the perfect read for our current uncertain moment. Now you can get yourself a beautifully menacing paperback or an open-access .pdf from punctum books.
One-Year Anniversary of Follow for Now, Vol. 2
We almost forgot the one-year anniversary of Follow for Now, Vol. 2! This collection picks up and pushes beyond the first volume with a more diverse set of interviewees and interviews. The intent of the first collection was to bring together voices from across disciplines, to cross-pollinate ideas. At the time, social media wasn’t crisscrossing all of the lines and categories held a bit more sway. Volume 2 aims not only to pick up where Follow for Now left off but also to tighten its approach with deeper subjects and more timely interviews. This one is a bit more focused and goes a bit deeper than the last. It includes several firsts, a few lasts, and is fully illustrated with portraits of every interviewee.
“Relentlessly stimulating and insight-packed, Follow for Now is the kind of book I’d like to see published every decade, and devoured every subsequent decade, from now until the end of humanity.”
— Maria Popova, Brain Pickings
Thirty-seven interviews with creative minds of all kinds, including thinkers like Carla Nappi, Rita Raley, Dominic Pettman, Ian Bogost, Jodi Dean, Mark Dery, Douglas Rushkoff, Tricia Rose, and Dave Allen, and musicians like Ish Butler of Shabazz Palaces and Digable Planets, M. Sayyid of Antipop Consortium, Matthew Shipp, Sean Price, Labtekwon, and Sadat X, as well as writers like Ytasha L. Womack, Chris Kraus, Pat Cadigan, Clay Tarver, Bob Stephenson, Simon Critchley, Simon Reynolds, Malcolm Gladwell, and William Gibson. Follow for Now, Vol. 2 is a hefty collection of ideas and inspiration from some of the most important writers, artists, and thinkers of our time! It's available from punctum books. Get yourself a pretty paperback or an open-access .pdf!
And don't forget about Vol. 1, which is available on Bandcamp for $10!
Taken together, these two books embody two decades of discussions, 80 interviews with creative minds of all kinds — what Erik Davis calls "a crisp and substantial remix of the major memes" of the 21st century. Check them out!
Thanks for reading,
-royc.
http://roychristopher.com