For a certain subset of us – the literary degenerates, the philosophical deviants, the connoisseurs of exquisite moral wreckage – this date marks the anniversary of an exit.

There’s something perversely satisfying about the fact that Donatien Alphonse François – the Marquis de Sade, aristocrat, pornographer, philosopher, lunatic, prophet of the flesh, the ayatollah of rock’n’rolla – died on this day in 1814, tucked away in the asylum at Charenton like a dangerous animal finally caged, though still scribbling until the last.  The man whose name became a synonym for deriving pleasure from another’s pain.  A name whispered in polite society with the same horrified glee as a newly discovered plague.  The Marquis.  The original.  He went out not with guillotines or mobs with pitchforks and torches, but with the slow rot of institutional confinement.

This wasn’t a gentle passing.  This was the extinguishing of a human firestorm, a man who spent a significant portion of his 74 years (something like three decades, if you’re keeping score) locked away.  Kings, revolutionaries, and emperors all took one look at this dude and his…proclivities…and decided he was better off behind very thick walls.  And what did our boy de Sade do with all that quiet time?  He wrote.  His novels – Justine, Juliette, 120 Days of Sodom – are endurance tests, labyrinths of cruelty and desire where the reader is both voyeur and victim.  They are quite obscene, of course, but also philosophical in the most unnerving sense: they ask whether freedom means anything of it doesn’t include the freedom to be monstrous.

Picture him, dear reader: powdered wig askew, ink-stained fingers, eyes glittering with the manic glee of someone who knows he’s already been damned and is determined to make damnation art.  And when he finally died – December 2, 1814 – the world didn’t breathe easier so much as pretended not to notice.  Because to notice is to admit that the abyss he described is still there, yawning under our feet.  He argued that the ultimate liberty was the freedom to pursue one’s own pleasure, no matter the consequence, no matter the cost to others.  He posited a universe that was not merely indifferent but actively hostile, and the only sane response was to become an engine of pure, unadulterated will.

And so, on this day in 1814, the engine finally sputtered out.  The great blasphemer fell silent.  He left behind a last will and testament that requested his body be left to rot in a forest, his grave unmarked, so that all trace of him would vanish from the memory of men.

Nice try, Marquis.

Because here we are, centuries down the line, and the shadow he cast is longer than ever.  His name is a household word and a psychological term.  His ideas, scrubbed clean and repackaged for academic consumption, bubble up in philosophy seminars and late-night dorm room debates about the nature of freedom.  The man who wanted to be forgotten is utterly unforgettable.  He’s the abyss that, when you stare into it, not only stares back but asks if you’ve got any good ideas for a Tuesday afternoon.

So pour one out for the old pervert.  If you need an entry-level ticket to the madhouse, I highly recommend you check out Quills (starring Geoffrey Rush in all his unhinged glory) – it’s as riotously entertaining as it is sharp.

He was a literary terrorist, dear reader.  And in the sanitized, terrified, and terminally boring landscape of our current moment, you have to admit: there was a certain horrifying magnificence to his ride.  He went all the way.

N.P.: “An American Murder Song” – American Murder Song

There are dates, dear reader, that the hoople-heads circle on their calendars because they have to – tax day, their cousin’s third wedding, that annual check-up where their doctor tries to convince them that kale is a food group.  On my calendar, days like November 29th are circled because back in 1898, Belfast coughed up a baby named Clive Staples Lewis, and reality’s been a little weirder ever since.

You probably know C.S. Lewis as the dude who invented Aslan and traumatized generations of kids with the idea that a wardrobe wasn’t just for mothballs and shameful outfits.  But it was never just about wardrobe doors and talking creatures.  Lewis took on the big questions – faith, loyalty, sacrifice – even cosmic terror.  He banged out science-fiction trilogies about demonic planets and the fate of humanity, then casually dropped Mere Christianity, which proceeds to smash through 20th-century theology like a methamphetaminic rhinoceros on a Sunday stroll.  To call him “the kindly uncle of children’s lit” is like calling Attila the Hun a “fun guest at brunch.”  He was an intellectual brawler who stashed fables like napalm in the minds of children everywhere, stories that get dragged out every time there’s a debate about books corrupting the youth or saving their souls.

So raise a ridiculously oversized mug of tea to C.S. Lewis – the apocalypse-dreamer and literary disruptor.  Celebrate a life that refused to shut the wardrobe door, even after seeing all the dark and dangerous thing crawling around inside.

N.P.: “Kayra” – Ummet Ozcan

On this day back in the gray flannel of 1990, Roald Dahl – twisted genius, not-so-subtle sadist, benevolent trickster – finally bought the proverbial farm.  The man who gave us Matilda, The Witches, and James and the Giant Peach left behind a trail of Wonka Bars, oversized fruit, and gloriously terrified children.

Dahl was the kind of writer who understood that children are not fragile porcelain dolls that will crack under the slightest stress, but feral little anarchists who crave stories where adults are exposed as buffoons, tyrants, or monsters.  He weaponized fairy-tale logic against the smug machinery of grown-up authority.  His villains were fat-assed headmistresses, sadistic witches, greedy aunts, and bureaucratic swine.  His heroes were children armed with wit, rage, and the occasional giant insect.  He infiltrated the sterile, pastel-colored world of children’s books with the subtlety of a rhino in a dollhouse.  He took the saccharine bullshit that passed for kid-lit and injected it with a bit of arsenic, then served it with a wink.  He took the treacly pieties of conventional children’s stories, fed them to his private Oompa-Loompas, and had the little orange bastards sing mocking songs while the corpses were pulped into strawberry jam.  Every Dahl book is a miniature morality play in which adults, those lumbering, flatulent, child-crushing tyrants, are ritually humiliated, mutilated, or explosively murdered for the entertainment of small readers.  Miss Trunchbull swing-setted into oblivion.  Augustus Gloop sucked up a chocolate river like a human Hoover.  The Twits glued to their own ceiling.  Bruce Bogtrotter forced to eat an entire cake until he turns the color of a bruised eggplant.  This was revenge literature for eight-year-olds who already sensed that the deck was stacked against them by monsters in cardigans.  Dahl’s particular brand of alchemy was to stare into the abyss of adult cruelty and then, with a manic grin, hand the kid a stick of dynamite.    He taught me (along with all his other child readers who were paying attention) that grown-ups are more often than not idiots, that authority is usually questionable, and a little bit of magic and a whole lot of balls can change the whole goddamn world, all of which has been confirmed again and again in adulthood.

So tonight I’ll be raising a glass of something dark and viscous (probably the dregs of Willy Wonka’s chocolate river, with a dash of witch’s blood) to the nastiest, funniest, most unrepentantly vicious children’s writer who ever lived.  The giants have stopped dreaming.  The foxes are out of ideas.  The BFG’s snozzcumbers will rot on the vine.  Roald Dahl is dead.  Long live Roald Dahl.

N.P.: “The Cult of Chaos – The Chaos of Cults Remix” – PIG, Rabbit Junk