Connectivity.
The internet’s an asshole.
Cloud cover too thick?

Hot damn, dear reader…there is light at the end of this long, circuitous, Byzantine, labyrinthine, and ludicrous writing process for the goddamn book.  I’ll officially begin shopping it around for a deal in early ’26.  Because 20 years between books is totally normal, right?  My hopes are high, but I’m trying to manage my expectations.  As always, I’ll be looking for Fuck You money for this thing, but what I’m really looking forward to, believe it or not, is finally being able just to talk about it.  Having to maintain this Masonic air of secrecy around the whole project for all these years hasn’t necessarily been difficult, but it has been a pain in the ass.

Speaking of pains in the ass, today’s date – November 16th – appears to be a sort of nodal point in the chaotic, often self-immolating timeline of literary insurrection.  Five seismic events, five big fuck-yous to the status quo, five reasons to believe that writing – real writing – is still the most dangerous thing you can do with your clothes on.

Exhibit A: We jump back to 1860, where a certain Fyodor Dostoevsky, fresh off a four-year sabbatical in the Czar’s least hospitable Siberian resorts and a mock execution…does my dear young reader even know what that is?  Imagine this: you’re blindfolded, standing in front of a firing squad, heart jackhammering like a meth-addicted woodpecker, and just as the rifles rise – a reprieve.  Not mercy, but bureaucratic sadism.  That’s the crucible Dostoevsky crawled out of before he wrote The House of the Dead, serialized today in 1860 in Vremya magazine.  Did you ever see HBO’s Oz?  Well, this makes that look like Sesame Street.  Russia banned it for “undermining authority,” which is apparatchik-speak for “telling a truth with a scalpel.”

Fast forward to Copenhagen, 1885.  This guy August Strindberg stages Miss Julie.  Class warfare, sexual humiliation, psychological evisceration – all in a goddamn kitchen.  Strindberg directed it himself, then tore ass out of Sweden when he knew the pitchforks were coming.  Critics called it “obscene,” which is rich coming from a country that invented IKEA.  The Swedes banned it until 1906.  But the damage was done: realism was dead, and theater would never be safe again.

Then 1938.  The world is going dark, goose-stepping toward oblivion.  Bertolt Brecht was holed up in exile in Denmark, fleeing the Gestapo with the ink still wet on his passport.  Fear and Misery of the Third Reich dropped today in 1938 – 24 scenes of quotidian Nazi terror disguised as cabaret.  It was agitprop performed in basements.  The Nazis, in a stunning lack of self-awareness, burned the book in Berlin, providing the most ringing endorsement a writer could ever hope for.

Jump to 1952.  Ernest Hemingway, holed up in Cuba and dodging the FBI between mojitos, publishes The Old Man and the Sea in a single issue of Life magazine.  It was 72 pages of ruthlessly stripped-down, sunburned prose.  He took a simple goddamn fishing trip and hammered it into a crucifixion myth.  Five million copies sold in 48 hours.  It was a cultural event, a literary knockout that won Papa the Pulitzer and, eventually, the Nobel.  The man mailed the manuscript from a bar, probably bleeding from a marlin gaff and muttering about grace under pressure.  Literature’s heavyweight champ, still swinging.

And finally, the cherry on this chaotic sundae: 1967.  Our favorite Kentucky-born degenerate, Hunter S. Thompson publishes Hell’s Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga.  HST embedded with the Angels for a year, rode with them, drank with them,  until the inevitable, teeth-shattering climax where they stomped him into the dirt.    He lived the story, then wrote it while still bleeding, blurring the line between observer and participant until it ceased to exist.  The book got banned for “glorifying violence,” which, like all the others on this list, meant it was simply too honest for the delicate sensibilities of the people in charge.

So here’s to November 16 – a date that reads like a rap sheet for the literary criminally insane.  These were saboteurs, prophets, and beautifully deranged motherfuckers who made art dangerous again.  If you’re not pissing someone off, you’re probably just typing.

Stay tuned.  The book’s coming.  And when it drops, I want it to be quite a fucking thing.
Light your cigarettes.  Stockpile ammo.  The storm’s coming.

N.P.: “Listen To My Voice” – Gary Numan