I’ve received several messages and emails, asking me to explain how my writing process works. To learn that people would be interested in my experience is not only flattering for me, but it communicates to me that others are thinking of writing something of their own. And that’s perhaps the best news.

And then I’m sure there are several of you who have already published your first book...or second book...or even your third book. If that’s the case, you may find some of this information a bit redundant or contradictory to your own experience. And that’s all right. We all have different ways of going about the same thing.

My debut novel Project: Sleepless Dream will be available all around the world at the end of July, via Amazon. You can pre-order the Kindle edition by clicking THIS LINK.

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Adventures in Immediate Irreality, from my perspective, takes up the idea of dissociation, and attempts to give the reader an idea of what that might be like. We have a narrator that could accurately be described as pessimistic, ruminating over the nature of reality in a way I have rarely seen in fiction.

This book is truly one of a kind!

You can purchase it right HERE.

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Battles in the Desert introduces and questions notions of nationalism, socio-economic status, and what it is like for one Mexican child living in a society gradually being taken over by American enterprise.

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I also want to give a huge thanks to New Directions Publishing for the generosity in sending me a copy of this special book for review!

Battles in the Desert is set to be released June 1, 2021. Give New Directions a visit HERE!

Philosopher John Gray does not have a lot of good things to say about humanism and progress, and some of his arguments are difficult to disagree with. I discuss precisely why he has a pessimistic view of the modern-day conception of progress.

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Notes From Underground manifests as an excerpt from the general ramblings of a bitter and isolated unnamed narrator, who previously worked as a civil servant living in St. Petersburg.

This is Dostoevsky's most concise argument against determinism, rational egoism, and so many of the other ideals/beliefs of the modern world. It is one of the most important pieces of philosophical fiction ever written!

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There has been an ongoing debate on whether there is a difference between commercial fiction and literary fiction. While many people believe the distinction is quickly vanishing, I hold that there is a clear distinction, though there is often overlap. 

In this episode, I discuss my position on art vs. entertainment, and why it is important for entertainment not to completely consume art in literature—which it seems to be doing more and more each day.

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Gabrielle Wittkop's The Necrophiliac is undoubtedly a disturbing novel about a man who has a particular sexual taste for, well, dead bodies. The book is a crash course in the idea of nature forming what and who we are, and how it can be nearly impossible to right the ship once we are down a specific road. 

The Necrophiliac is very similar to Marquis de Sade's 120 Days of Sodom and Georges Bataille's Story of the Eye. I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys reading about taboos and transgressive material that is not typically found in books written/published today.

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You can find the books mentioned (or alluded to) in this episode right here with The Last Sisyphus Podcast affiliate links:

The Necrophiliac by Gabrielle Wittkop: https://amzn.to/3cOg4QV
120 Days of Sodom Marquis de Sade: https://amzn.to/3lAntag
Story of the Eye by Georges Bataille: https://amzn.to/3eXbkv1

Though everyone tends to believe they are the arbiters of truth and what is right, the 18th century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer disagrees. His stance was that too many rely on other people's opinions. His proposal is that we spend more time thinking for ourselves, coming to our own conclusions, and investigating the world through our own eyes instead of relying on some other authority.

We should all be reading and learning and bettering ourselves—there's no question in that—but we should also be spending time with our own thoughts, and finding ways of navigating the world independent of what others say.

You can purchase Arthur Schopenhauer's "Essays and Aphorisms" here: https://amzn.to/3ePhtt1

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Knut Hamsun's Hunger  is a book, fundamentally, about hunger—in every sense of the word. Hamsun's nameless protagonist is starving for food, for love, and for relevance while simultaneously refusing the help of his fellow city-dwellers in Oslo, Norway.

Hunger is filled to the brim with stream of consciousness, digression, and an almost unhealthy dose of self-reflection. Hamsun's work is very much in line with Dostoevsky's Notes from the Underground and the writings of Virginia Woolf (Mrs. Dalloway, specifically).

One fundamental question the book asks is: How far will an individual go in order to retain their pride?

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The Complete Stories by Franz Kafka: https://amzn.to/3viFFd3
Manifestoes of Surrealism by Andre Breton: https://amzn.to/3cwsJYs
The Virtue of Selfishness by Ayn Rand: https://amzn.to/3bIXwlP
The Ego and His Own by Max Stirner: https://amzn.to/3eBB9An

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Emil Cioran—a Romanian philosopher— is sometimes considered to be the best aphorist since Friedrich Nietzsche. This episode addresses Cioran's position on consciousness, and that to reflect too much on the world is oftentimes a tragedy. Instead, what we ought to do is focus on completing tasks, keeping our minds busy so as to avoid slipping into an existential crisis.

Though much of his writing consists in bleak rhetoric about life, consciousness, and death, he expresses what many of us have thought at one point or another in our lives. Life is difficult—and sometimes it just doesn't get better. Cioran would suggest that we might as well continue, in spite of life itself.

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