At the intersection between the Many-Worlds Interpretation and the Law of Assumption, you can bow out of the shitty life you’ve created for yourself and slip into an existence that’s basically your own personal heaven. People call this place your “desired reality.” Let me give you some reference points here.In my old reality, moving house was always an exercise in abject misery.But.Let me tell you how things unfolded after one night I used the “state akin to sleep” to visualize stepping through a doorway into a magical world of miracles and ease. On Monday morning I received notice that a distant relative had passed away and left me 90K.Ninety. Thousand. Dollars. I’d never had that much money. I was terrified, actually. All night I tossed and turned, grabbing my phone to research proper money management. Imagine—spending so much of my life plagued by a lack of money, then being blessed with a random windfall and suffering just as much anxiety if not more.But I needn’t have stressed myself. Because on Tuesday, I received a job offer. A very lucrative, very exiting job offer that was ridiculously up my alley: creative, remote, and part-time with, get this: full-time pay and benefits. FINALLY! A money-making opportunity I actually wanted! I accepted faster than I’d ever accepted anything. No hemming and hawing for days. Just a resounding YES from my very soul. And as soon as I accepted the job, I immediately felt better about the inheritance. I knew that no matter what happened, I’d still have plenty of money coming in. I was on cloud nine and didn’t think things could get better.But then they did. On Wednesday, I received a wire transfer from a previous employer that had failed to pay me. It was only $875, but it was a relief she finally did the right thing. And it was immediate money.On Thursday the trend continued. A talented artist reached out wondering if we could collaborate on a project. As he described it, I became more and more excited. I would have done it for free, but he offered me 15K up front. When he sent me the contract, I noticed I’d be receiving royalties as well. I was so happy I almost exploded, my entire existence projecting across the universe in billows of glitter, confetti, and flustered giggles. By Friday, my inheritance deposited into my account. I had no clue inheritance money could come so fast, but it did. And I was no longer afraid of it. This is when I embarked on the most joyful moving experience of my life: one in which I could just pick a rental and move there. Luckily, the city I had in mind was also the city where my project mate resided, so if we ever wanted to meet up, it would be easy.Easy.What a relaxing word.On Saturday. I found two quarters on the stairs. A paltry sum, I know, but I ended up needing exactly two quarters later that day. Easy.On Sunday, an ex showed up at my apartment out of the blue. He took me to brunch and gave me a care package filled with a soft plaid blanket, Illy ground coffee, a pack of hand-drawn tarot cards, a scented candle, and a dark academia novel. I was touched he knew me so thoroughly. Inside the book was five hundred dollars cash. Startled, I looked at him. He shrugged and kissed me. “I just want you to remember me.”“I will, always.”After brunch he drove me back to my apartment and opened my door for me so I wouldn’t have to juggle my care package and keys.Easy.It was still a new word to me, but I was growing quite fond of it.As I packed boxes, a task that usually felt like it took months and often culminated in a harried moving day, I was delighted to find that I did it all in a week. Never in my life had I packed that fast. The funny thing is, I didn’t rush. I didn’t beat myself up for having so many Christmas decorations. I didn’t fret about everything making it to the other side in one piece. In fact, several times I caught myself smiling and—gasp—humming some jaunty tune. I knew that no matter what, I’d be fine.Moving day was interesting. As I watched the moving truck ramble away, I imagined my boxes and furniture arranged in a snug Tetris formation, shifting only slightly as they traversed bumpy roads, wide turns, and all that distance. I got my cats set up with their beds, food, water, and litter box in the back of my friend Woody’s conversion van. Then I hopped into the passenger seat, where we listened to Billy Joel and Jhene Aiko and Chapelle Roan and Eric Church. We drank coffee from Starbucks and Dunkin and BP and Cracker Barrel. We stopped to pee often, though the ride was so consistently flat that our bladders probably wouldn’t have bothered us much if we didn’t. We coasted down perfectly paved highways. There were very few people on the road, and the ones that were seemed to just glide into the next lane, allowing Woods and I to continue our smooth trajectory the entire way.Finally, we pulled into the driveway. I savored the feeling of my legs carrying me up the porch stairs, the beautiful weight of my cat in my arms. Woody carried my other cat, and we smiled at each other before entering the house, an adorable little Victorian with a woodburning fireplace and a pantry and a clawfoot tub and a tall wooden fence completely enclosing the sunny, grassy backyard. Yes, everything was exactly as I hoped it would be. A miracle, considering I never saw the place in person before signing the lease. I’d done everything remotely and hoped for the best. And this house is the best. It’s hands-down the most peaceful place I’ve ever lived. Thank goodness for my real estate agent, who made the whole process, well…Easy.To this day, it seems the universe is conspiring to deliver me money, ease, and convenience. I don’t even worry anymore that I’ll randomly wake up back in my old shit heap of a life. My desired reality would never let me go like that. It cradles me to its bosom like a devoted mother, this absurd thing of happiness and ease, and for that I am profoundly grateful.
Chris Kelso is a Scottish writer of dark, weird fiction. I came to his work through Voidheads (Schism), and he’s since published Metampsychosis with Feral Dove, and most recently, a monograph on the film Possession with PS Publishing’s Midnight Movie Monographs.Possession, as it happens, is a long-time mutual obsession of ours, so when I freaked out in Chris’ Instagram comments about this monograph he very kindly sent me a copy. So I decided to interview him about it. He’s a great sport. Didn’t even get annoyed at my stupidly long ‘questions’, which are at times more monologuing than questions, honestly.ALICE: I think you said your research into Possession was a natural consequence of feeling reflected in the film, is that right? What was the impetus to write a monograph specifically?CHRIS: Yes, I think that’s often what happens. Writing is a response to overarousal. I have an emotional response to something and then I untangle it by writing it down. I can’t approach much in a purely intellectual way, and I’m certainly not an expert on, well, anything really, but I do know grief, insecurity, and grave self-loathing. I suppose addressing those intrinsic traits both motivated me and qualified me for the job of writing a monograph. And Possession is such a unique film, one which most people have an intense reaction to. So, I’m not special. I don’t think I have a particularly groundbreaking take on the film from an analytical perspective—that said, I didn’t really have much of a say in the matter. The reaction was authentic and part of my processing was to write this thesis. Żuławski’s Possession was merely a lens filter to modify the light before it hit the sensor.ALICE: “Writing is a response to overarousal” seems like one of those big truths I’m going to chew on for a long time. Because you’re right! Art in general is a response to overarousal. Yes, there’s the drudgery of it, and yes, you need a skill set to execute anything, but art seems like, at an essential level, where we put everything which overflows. Like a drip tray. What effluence you get depends on what’s overflowing: emotions or thought or images or whatever is too much.CHRIS: I agree. And I do feel really self-aware that these (intensely personal) artistic projects I've been involved with lately are serving that exact purpose: to contain that industrial run-off, but also to prevent further infection or contamination. The imagination should be drained like a cyst, because left untapped it’ll bleed out of your pores and make you do questionable things. This process is also good if you use emotional memory as a funnel. Lots of spill-prevention imagery here.ALICE: You might be able to tell I don’t like romanticising this process, at least not in public. I also think the best work comes from filth. (Well-tidied, precisely-described filth, but still.) Which is why I adore this film. Filth, as I’ve always thought of it, seems to be a similar idea to Julia Kristeva’s abjection. You mention Kristeva, and I’ve only recently started to parse Powers of Horror thanks to our mutual friend Elle Nash. How did you come across Kristeva’s work?CHRIS: Like you, I first came to Kristeva through Powers of Horror, but back in my university days. I was also looking for meticulous filth and all its acolytes. I find her to be a really fascinating thinker (most French feminists are), but also someone who is empowering as a female voice. Interestingly, she has a novel called ‘Possessions’.ALICE: I wanted to ask you about your feeling of possession over the film itself: you say it feels like it was meant for you somehow, that you dreamed about it before you’d ever seen it. I felt so much kinship with you there: I have dreamed about things, and the dreams carried the weight of meaning, even though I couldn’t understand that meaning at the time, and then I’ve later found out that not only did the dream have specific meaning, it was a clear and precise reference to something extant in the world, and so reflective of it that the dream seemed almost like precognition. I grew up in a very—how do I put this—post-Enlightenment household, and have been a soft sceptic all my life, and the process of developing true doubt is recent and unsettling, because belief itself was abject in my upbringing. How did this feeling of precognition change your experience of the world? Has Possession become something of a sacred object for you?CHRIS: That’s really interesting. I’d describe myself in similar terms, although in truth I tend not to think too deeply about it. The only thing I know for certain is that I know absolutely fuck all. I remain sceptical; like you I’m loosely aware of the roiling unpredictable energy of the universe. All I know is how I felt at that time, and how I chose to express that probably doesn’t do the phenomenon justice—because these things should not be defined by the limiting parameters of language. That said, I’ve gone along with it all. I’ve never tried to rationalise something so formative and emotional. Possession is totemic for so many people. It could just be the transcendent quality the film has, but to me the film is important in a way that’s difficult to define. ALICE: It feels right for you to be another Mark doppelgänger. I feel like there are uncomfortable lines connecting me to Anna like cobwebs. I wonder if the film taps into something universal when it comes to our shadow selves and dark sided emotions, and turns most of us into Anna and Mark doppelgängers. Do you think Żuławski intended that, or did he intend to say something about his own toxic relationship and tapped into common fears and insecurities while he was doing it? Reading your monograph, I thought there might be arguments for both: he seems to disregard the internal lives of other people (his actors in particular) in pursuit of his art, but the film does deal with several socially-relevant emotions like the toxic relationship between East and West Berlin, spying as a metaphor for observing our significant other, etc.CHRIS: Absolutely. I think it’s reasonable to assume Mark and Anna express an archetype of domestic insecurity and psychological fragility. I’m not sure about Żuławski. He was a very complex artist, a genius by most accounts, yet I’m still not sure he was consciously aware of his own intent. Granted, he was going through a devastating break up at the time and Possession was certainly a communication of his pain. Whether or not he had it all worked out, I’m not so sure. As you know, there is a latent or instinctive force at play when producing any kind of art. We’re subtly coerced towards certain themes and often that attraction will have something to do with where we’re at in our personal lives. Then again, he was a genius, so maybe he was consciously working through these themes with a kind of ordered methodology—planning dialogue that was pertinent and rich with subtext, forming deliberate metaphors, etc.ALICE: I rarely like high concepts which explore wordplay, but Possession is one of them. The film discusses possession in the demonic sense and possession as ownership, and what counts as possessing/being possessed. Your monograph mostly addresses possession as object. I've always been curious about why, given this, there are minimal references to Christianity in the film. In fact the only one I can think of is Anna's wordless discussion with a wooden Jesus mounted on a crucifix, immediately before her flashback miscarriage in the subway. I've always taken this as her rejection of religion: she says to Mark that she “miscarried faith.” In your monograph you discuss the miscarriage as a form of abjection: rejecting her married life with Mark, expunging it from her body, which would make it a form of self-interest, i.e. Kristeva's jouissance. Jesus fucking christ, this question is getting long (bear with me)... CHRIS: Long questions are always welcome! I’m so glad this book worked for you. It means a lot, because I was utterly terrified of what people would think.ALICE: I can only speak for myself, of course, but I appreciate anything which is carefully and deeply considered, especially if it gets me to think deeply in turn (especially especially when I’m allowed to pester the author with questions about it).Okay, so, first, do you think the ideas of Anna expunging her marriage and her religious beliefs can co-exist as interpretations? And secondly, if Anna's fucktopus is the larval form of the Mark doppelgänger, do you think it'd be fair to say that Anna is miscarrying her traditional marriage and the real Mark, in favour of the idealised, perfected version of Mark she needs?CHRIS: I think these two ideas can co-exist, absolutely. I was interested in finding an interpretation that would empower Anna, because I’m not entirely sure the director had that in mind when he was making the film. I think it’s likely Żuławski wanted Anna to simply be a bit of a mental she-devil who shagged a monster in an act of unbridled female promiscuity. I’m also not interested in Anna being a victim: she deserves better than that. I think you’re right, though. I think it's healthy and intelligent to project emboldening ideas to Anna’s character. I believe the miscarriage is a physical excretion of her old life to a man she never truly loved. In truth, the message and intention of the film is very muddy—and I suppose that’s why we love it!ALICE: This really speaks to the power of interpretation, because I find it impossible not to relate to Anna, and if the director really did intend her to just be an insane villain who fucked a monster, then my whole experience of the film is a simulacrum. But it’s a useful and beneficial one, right? Because otherwise I’d lose one of my favourite pieces of media. Anna being exclusively a she-devil in my head would make the film far less progressive to me, and therefore unwatchable. CHRIS: Me too. I think the audience has power here, though. We do have the ability to reclaim and reinterpret, to imbue and elevate. The film is more than just Żuławski; it’s also Adjani’s performance and the raw paranormal energy she brought to it. It’s the softer, more nuanced hand of Frederic Tuten. Art can take on many new faces the more people who look at it. I don’t think any of the truly ‘great’ pieces of art have one true interpretation anyway, despite what the creator intended. ALICE: This is why monographs like yours are so relevant and useful: they open new avenues of interpretation to an audience who might not otherwise connect with a piece of art. I don’t fully ascribe to “death of the author,” but maybe a soft version of it, like “the author should shut up and let us interpret their work on our own, thank you very much,” simply because these interpretations allow art to say more than it was probably intended to say. Of course we can and should consider the author’s interpretation of their own work, and the author’s situation and environment during its creation, but other interpretations have inherent value as useful simulacra. CHRIS: Hear hear! And I also think masterpieces can happen by accident sometimes, almost willed into existence by certain forces (the audience in particular would count as one of these extant contributing forces). Not to get all spiritual on you!ALICE: Why do you think Anna dies? Every time I watch this film I'm left with the impression that this was what she wanted: the two of them to die together. But I can't decide why I think that is.CHRIS: I’m going to give a bit of a cop-out answer to this one. Anna dies because she is the hero. And I believe all truly great things should end. Great TV shows should have a finale. Epic books should have a last page. Your favourite bands should disband. People should die. There is nothing more unnatural than ‘going on’. Our end is what gives our lives meaning in the snapshot of time we get to be here. If we kept going for hundreds of years we would become exhausted pain-camels made evil with boredom and apathy. Anna is the feminist hero we’ve needed for a while. She had to die to become a legend.ALICE: I don’t think that’s a cop-out at all! It’s an observation on the demands of narrative, and completely correct. I’m gonna pin you down with a different question, though: what do you think happens at the end of the film? I’ll tell you what I think happens: Mark’s incompetence at his spy job (i.e., not noticing that one of his bosses is in fact pink socks man), because of his divided attention due to the destruction of his marriage, has led to some international incident, and this results in the destruction of Berlin with an atom bomb. That’s what I see in the ending, like, this marriage was so fucking toxic it ended in nuclear war.CHRIS: Jesus Christ, that’s better than anything I could come up with. I think I’ll just glom on to your evaluation. ‘When you’re beat, you’re beat’, as they say. tips hatALICE: I'm talking a lot about Anna because your monograph was uncomfortable, which I think you intended, and one of the reasons it was uncomfortable for me is that it's an inevitably male point of view. I'm aligned with Anna, so a lot of your personal observations and interpretations of Possession are those which would have never occurred to me. It feels like we're standing on opposite sides of a sculpture and can't really imagine the sculpture from the other side. Which is kinda, you know, the point. And what it must have been like in Berlin at the time. Until reading your monograph. I never even thought Mark could be a pathetic character, an impotent one, or powerless—but of course he is. Your version of Mark was so convincing to me, I'm rethinking some of my past relationships. But still, Mark, for me, is the aggressor: I assume Anna's behaviour is in response to aggression Mark has no knowledge he's committing, or limited consciousness of, because Anna's behaviour has a desperate escapism about it which I recognise in myself, in my own desperation to escape, despite still loving my partner. There's a liminal emotional state where all you can think about is your toxic partner, and you don't want to end the relationship, but you want to pull away however you can, and you end up in completely nonsensical behavioural patterns as a means of escape without escape (Anna emptying cabinets, putting clothes in the fridge, preparing a cut of raw meat for nobody). CHRIS: I agree that Mark is the aggressor. He is also pathetic. Most aggressive, controlling, and insecure men are pathetic. That’s how they convince themselves and other people that they’re victims, and probably how they justify awful behaviour. Their patheticness is weaponised. Something I shamefully know about all too well.ALICE: In contrast to how your Mark tries everything to possess Anna and fails, I see Anna trying everything to satisfy Mark except the things she absolutely cannot do, or risk complete loss of her Self. She says, desperately, that she's failing him, she's a slut, she's a monster—she admits to all his accusations. She is willing to accept his accusation that she is not a socially palatable woman. You struggle with Mark's desire to control in your monograph, and you admit to feeling the same desire to contain and control a woman from your past. I noticed something, and I wonder if you know this: the monograph itself seemed (to me) to be a species of control. You want to get ahead of our opinions of you; you want to reassure us that you're okay now, you're cognisant of what you did—but you want us to feel a certain way about you, and even attempt to regulate our emotions through chapter-specific song suggestions. What's it like to grapple with this tendency to want to control? I deeply empathise with it: I experience a lot of obsessive thinking. Does thinking about Possession help you control the difficulty of controlling your desire for control? I don't have control over this question anymore. I think I'm asking: how are you now? Did you write this with the idea of reaching out to other people struggling with the issue of control?CHRIS: Yes, that’s a very astute observation. First, it’s interesting you mention Mark committing these small atrocities without even being aware of what he’s doing. I find that’s a common vice among young men, including me way back when. I think men can be so driven by lust that it genuinely clouds empathy. That’s not an excuse, but I think it rings true in most cases. I look back at my own failings as a human being and I can’t undo any of it. I am desperate to talk about it, though, and to improve myself. If I need to overcorrect laterally then that’s what I’ll have to do. That’s kind of what I’m doing with this book. It’s an acknowledgment of past transgressions and an untangling of a knotty ego. Control is a big problem for people who are profoundly insecure. At the best of times it feels like life is always slipping away from you, ultimately because of what you lack. You cannot control because you don’t deserve control. That’s your punishment. Yet you keep trying to insidiously impose your dominion over other vessels-of-consciousness, and if you’re a man you can feel entitled to those vessels. When these vessels-of-consciousness demonstrate agency you’re left reeling in a whole new spiralling vortex of uncontrollability. When you grow and realise you cannot control much of your own life, and nothing of other people, you go about seeking to impose it in more positive ways – like being an obsessive ‘fixer’ or giving too much of yourself to too many people. Or becoming a public authority figure like a teacher in my case. If this book connects with anyone then I’ll feel good about it, but the main impetus was really a selfish self-therapy. Maybe the book is voyeuristic in that sense. I think when my wife went through her pregnancy I realised my relationship to control had to change in a big way. The terror of watching my wife give birth. The terror of watching my newborn become a toddler. The terror of a new love that engulfs you in its fist, deeper and more agonising than any love you have ever experienced before or thought possible. You cannot live a life of control under those circumstances, so you need to recalibrate. I think I have a better grasp of it all now. I’m doing well – thank you for asking! I think I need to be ‘checked in’ with every now and again, lol. ALICE: Your research, speaking of, is impeccable. I especially enjoyed the final dialogue between Jörg Buttgereit and Graham Rae. What was it like, transcribing that? Getting to know two artists of that calibre?CHRIS: I owe that interview to Graham who is a close friend of Jörg. Jörg is obviously a wonderful director and it was a privilege to have him involved, reaffirming my belief that literature and discussion is the closest we get to true magic. ALICE: Ah, right! So let’s scrap that question, and ask another: have you had any interesting conversations about the film as a result of researching this monograph, which you didn’t write about (for whatever reason, like narrative flow or length)?Also, I couldn’t agree more: I feed on theory. I’m one of those annoying participants of a destination workshop who never wants to talk about anything but theory, haha.CHRIS: I actually have fairly regular interesting conversations about this film with my friend Rachel, who might love Possession more than we do. She would’ve written a much more interesting monograph, in truth, but all our conjecture and theories have wound up in the book. There is something about this film which brings people together in a weird, very specific way. I’m looking forward to chatting with you in person about Possession - and I’ll bring Rachel with me!ALICE: Looking forward to it!
My father dug his own grave. But he didn’t use it right away. For years, the grave lay unfilled and inviting. All he would do was visit it once in a while, stand by its empty feet, and sigh. I don’t know if it was a sigh of relief or impatience. He made us promise to leave the grave unmarked once everything was in its place. Everything has its place. I slept in the grave once. But not on purpose. It’s ill-advised to read meaning into sleepwalking so I won’t try. All I know is that I woke up surrounded by the peeling dirt and I didn’t feel scared. Whenever my mother and I asked him why he dug the grave, he would only say “everything in its place.” He never bothered to change the subject. He’d let the phrase punctuate his conclusion and shrug silently against our repeated retorts. No desire to fan any spark back into life. Every time the same dance—we’d either give up gracelessly and leave the room or let our irritation move us to another conversation topic. I told myself I’d never be like him. But when I woke up in the grave I didn’t get up right away. The walls fit my shoulders well. For a moment my tinnitus almost ceased. I didn’t feel safe but there wasn’t any fear either. There was space to rest, blue sky seeping in through my periphery as I inhaled the earth-soaked dew. I don’t know how long I stayed down there. I like to think that I would’ve felt days pass by, but let’s be honest. It can give purpose to dig a grave. That’s what I thought to myself when he first started to dig. Stabbing violently at the ground instead of yourself. To carve away at something new. And when there’s nothing left but a hole in the ground maybe the first thought is, “Finally, a place for me.” But then why not immediately jump in? Why leave the gap to scab and grow stale? Perhaps the digging is a merely a reminder. That in order to fill a grave one has to dig first. And perhaps by the time you’re done the callouses that have grown make everything a little easier to handle. And you remember that no matter how much you dig, you’re going to die anyway.
With just enough water in the tub to sluice through its gills as it thumps its caudal fin and arches its spine the carp could stay there for far longer than it will take to prepare the vegetables for the stock which the carp’s head and bones and skin and any parts not reserved will be joining the next morning. Its jelly eye fixes on the water stained ceiling which it doesn’t see as anything but part of what is above because the carp has never seen water stain or been even wet before the tub. When its head seizes up it catches the silver of the drain the carp knows as the moon because the moon controls the tides of the river where it lived as the drain controls the water into the tub. A ring of reddish soap scum circles the drain and if the carp could turn a bit it would see the same ring lining the upper third of the tub but the carp has never been on its side or front or back or anything because until the tub it wasn’t even but in the tub it is now the carp in the tub. All of this the carp tells the boy in the plaid pajama set. In his bed under the itchy wool blanket layered over the duvet over the kicked down flat sheet the boy thinks he is awake because he can hear the carp’s ceaseless thumping. He is awake because the carp is in the tub and would be awake even if the tub was far away like Hackensack or Ontario. Cocooned in the itchy wool blanket he creeps to the bathroom. It is dark except for the moon silvering everything inside. The carp thumps.Water slaps against the sides of the tub and beads across its scales.The boy places a finger on its side, retreating at the feel of its twitch. The carp thumps, unregistering.He places his finger again, stroking its dorsal fin. It is smooth against the pad of his index. He moves to put his palm on its abdomen, feeling the flex and roll of its muscles. Thump. Thump. Thump.Tomorrow they will use a rolling pin. Slit its gills to bleed and become water. The boy in the plaid pajama set feels the itchy wool blanket start to slip off his shoulders. One of his hands is white knuckled on the edge of the tub. The other wet on the carp. The blanket puddles on the ground.The carp’s thumping up and down a prayer to the tub and the water and the moon and the hands that plucked it from the water and the hands that placed it and the hands that will kill it. He presses, feels its bones. He will have to help pick them out of the meat tomorrow before they grind it.The carp has not known pressure like this. And it won’t. Because to know it it has to exist on the other side of it and the carp won’t. The pressure is now and so is the carp and when the pressure is gone the carp will not feel absence. The carp is where it is and takes no meaning from it. It is drowning and it is tight but as soon as it is not it won’t be.The edge of the tub is cold on his cheek. He wants to sleep but he is crying now.He doesn’t think the carp is sad. Or scared. But it is thumping in the tub because of him. In five years he will become a Bar-Mitzvah and with every step towards the Bimah he will think, Blessed are You, Adonai, our God, Ruler of the Universemay the fire alarm go off before I get to the Torah. Blessed are You, Adonai, our God, Ruler of the Universemay the ceiling fall before I get to the Torah. Blessed are You, Adonai, our God, Ruler of the Universemay Aunt Harriet have a heart attack before I get to the Torah. But God will let him get up on the Bimah and let his voice crack during his parshah and so he will learn lesson one: God is a bullshit artist.
Introduction for Logan for his Reading from 'Doom Is the House Without a Door' at Comfort Station on Saturday, August 16, 2025–Kathleen RooneyBook launch playlist: DOOM UNLEASHEDLogan Berry’s latest book gets its title from the Emily Dickinson poem “Doom is the House without the Door—” whose first stanza says:
Doom is the House without the Door—‘Tis entered from the Sun—And then the Ladder's thrown away,Because Escape—is done—
Logan Berry’s literary house also has no door, but not in the sense that one is trapped inside by walls lacking egress. Rather, nothing blocks this house’s threshold because the builder wants us to walk in and snoop.
Logan Berry’s literary house is an M.C. Escher-style mansion with infinite rooms stocked with impossible objects, warped perspectives, twisted geometries, and funhouse reflections.His literary house is a Piranesi drawing come to life, rife with endless staircases, akin to that artist’s Imaginary Prisons, full of subterranean vaults and extreme machines and round towers and men being stretched on the rack and grand piazzas lit with smoldering fires and connected with drawbridges and gothic arches, hung with rusty chains and scented with fetid wells and decorated with monsters in bas-relief.Logan Berry’s literary house is in every sense of the word a capriccio; in English a caprice—an architectural fantasy that puts new buildings and archaeological ruins and other artifacts and detritus in fantastical combinations that gratify the artist and intrigue the viewer with their dreamlike juxtapositions and liberty of imagination. One etymology for capriccio is that it derives from the Italian for the unpredictable movements and behaviors characteristic of a juvenile goat, suggesting that the work should be as freakish and mercurial as the artist can make it.Logan Berry’s literary house is a structure only partly built, but currently without end, an edifice that will keep growing until he either stops (perish that thought) or dies (perish that too, but everyone perishes).The oldest email exchange between myself and Logan that I could find is from January of 2014. He was a student in my intro to Creative Writing class at DePaul. Everyone had to write an elegy and Logan’s, addressed to his sister and called, “I Will Die Lex,” was so promising that I asked his permission to share it with the class and I’ve been a fan ever since. It ended:
Death staked His claimLike Columbus and his flag España.Fingers trace the entry,Sting sings.
Hand thrown aside.My body, a stepping-stone in the slush.Soot Sunset.
That was the open door I walked through to commence my tour of Logan Berry’s literary house. I feel lucky that I’ve got Transmissions to Artaud (Selffuck, 2020), Run-off Sugar Crystal Lake (11:11 Press, 2021), Casket Flare (Inside the Castle, 2023), Ultratheatre: Volume 1 (11:11 Press, 2024) and now Doom.About this room of the building, I have written: “A visual and verbal fantasia of money, meat, and misery, Logan Berry’s Doom Is the House Without a Door dances to the demonic, infernal rhythms of the 21st century. To look into this book’s gargoyle face is to risk allowing it to reap your soul. Its phantasmagoria of fucked-up fatherhood makes voyeuristic perverts of us all.” Logan Berry’s literary house is perpetually under construction, a kind of Winchester Mystery House, never-ending and mystifying: why did the creator do this? His literary house is above all a memory palace of things he cannot forget. Once we visit, we cannot forget them either.“Nature is a haunted house—but Art—a house that tries to be haunted.” Emily Dickinson wrote that in a letter to Thomas Wentworth Higginson in 1876.Logan Berry’s literary house is haunted. Long may he haunt.
“That’s wonderful, Sam,” the voice says, cooing. “May I call you Sam?”The voice is low, mellow, musical. The English it speaks is careful, cultured, unhurried, seductive (or so Sam thinks; he’s become a connoisseur over the years). Its tone is polite and comforting with just an edge of anticipation. Normally, this voice has rarely been given the freedom to speak so much, to reel off so many carefully-edited chunks of information. It senses an ultimate victory.“Sam, or Sammy,” Sam says.“That’s wonderful, Sam,” the voice repeats. “Now, all you have to do—”“My mother used to call me Sammy,” Sam says. “And both my grandmothers. But not my grandfather on my mother’s side: he called me Ig, short for Iggy, I dunno why. My grandfather on my father’s side didn’t call me anything. He croaked long before I was born. I didn’t know him, obviously. Although I did dream of him, once. I recognized him from the old Polaroids, and in my dream he sort of had a static, faded appearance, and he approached me while I was in a library, the first library I remember, torn down long ago, he just sort of slowly came my way between the stacks, walking like he was in a swimming pool, and he called me Nathan, which is my father’s name, and I told him so, and boy was grandpa confused, he was in the wrong dream, which is absurd, but I don’t look anything much like my father, so I don’t know why grandpa called me Nathan, but then again I suppose because he never met me he didn’t know I’m Sam, and I felt very sorry for him, it must have taken a lot of effort to show up in a dream only to discover you’ve screwed up, that you’re in the wrong damn dream. My father, by the way, calls me Samuel.”A moment as the voice realizes Sam has finished.“That’s wonderful, Sam,” the voice says a third time, hesitant but pushing forward. “Now, all I need you to do is send the two hundred and eighty-five dollars to the address I’m about to give you, and once we’ve received it…”Sam, calm, listens, writes, nods. He worries about the dead grandfather he never met, worries that his grandfather is still wandering from dream to dream, looking for his son and never finding him.Sam sends the money.The next time he orders a bacon cheeseburger, Sam asks that the pickles and lettuce be left off. This is the first time he has done this, rather than pick off the pickles and lettuce later. “I don’t seem to be digesting them properly,” he tells the kid taking his order. “I love them, but now they don’t love me. It’s like I haven’t even eaten them. They just slide through me, and it’s disgusting. Same goes for the fried mushrooms. Next morning they’re there, swimming in the bowl, shorn of breading, otherwise intact. I don’t understand. Anyway, the burger comes with fries, right?”Sam calls his doctor, makes an appointment. He goes to the appointment, is early, brings a stool sample, pisses in a cup, opens his veins for an armada of blood tests.He follows up with a dietician, buys over-the-counter probiotics on his own initiative. He switches from table salt to sea salt. He avoids milk. He buys four bottles of sparkling Moscato D’Asti because it’s cheaper to do so in bulk with his CVS rewards membership, and is carded at the register. “I’m forty-six,” Sam tells the checkout lady. “No, you’re not,” she says, looking at his ID, “you’re forty-four.” Even though he is taken aback by this—who in their right mind goes around thinking they’re older?—Sam laughs and says, “Well, I’m thinking ahead,” and gets the hell out of there, bottles clanking in the inadequate plastic bag which is only seconds away from breaking.“Now, what this means,” the voice says, rolling right along, “is you are not charged a single penny for the first two months, and after that it’s only a nominal weekly charge, and you won’t be bothered by reminders, it’s all done automatically. With me so far, Mr. Riboste?” This voice is strong, clear, aware of its teeth, exudes confidence and knowledge. The voice hasn’t asked him if it’s all right to call him Sam, although Sam has been waiting to give permission.Sam nods, with no one to see him. “Still with me, Mr. Riposte?” the voice says.“One hundred and ten percent,” Sam says, “although I know there can’t be more than a hundred percent of anything, unless I’ve been misled. I’ll never forget the way Mr. Klebber, my fifth grade teacher, tried to prepare us for fractions. You sound just like him, only without the smoker’s rasp. A couple years ago I saw him at the bar of a strip club which is now a Burger King. I remember that he sat at the bar, his back to the strippers, nursing some tall drink in a frosted glass, and I never understood why anybody would go to a strip joint and not look at the strippers, but then I saw that the wall behind the bar was nothing but mirror, so you could see the action, only in reverse and a trifle warped. I said hello to him, but he didn’t know me, and when I reminded him that I had been his student back in the day, he only made one of those ‘pffft’ sounds when I mentioned the school, and he didn’t have anything further to say to me, just went back to clutching his drink, which had an umbrella and cherries on a spear, and watching the reflection of the stripper who, at the time, was my Aunt Patti on my mother’s side and was only ever invited to the big yard parties, nothing intimate like Christmas. She’s still around, although she’s not stripping anymore, which is probably all for the best, considering she’s north of seventy.”“That’s great, Mr. Riboste—”“Call me Sam.”Sam learns there is nothing wrong with him, but his doctor suggests he might be under a lot of stress or might be developing an ulcer. Sam doesn’t respond. His doctor presses the point. “I’m under no stress at all,” Sam says. His doctor says okay and hurries off to be late for his next patient.Sam’s sister asks him what happened with Uncle Herman’s electric trains because she wants them for her son, Toby, who hasn’t been born yet. Sam says, “Ask mom.” His sister tells him that Mom was the first person she asked and that Mom said Sam had taken them when he moved out. Sam denies this. “Where would I put all that junk?” Sam asks. His sister has never visited him; she has no idea of the cramped dimensions of his dump. “All that stuff is probably still in the basement,” Sam says. His sister says if the trains were still in the basement, Mom would have told her. “Go over and look anyway,” Sam says. His sister says he should go over and look, he’s closer. Sam reminds her once again that be that as it may, that yes he is closer to them, distance-wise, he is no longer closer to them, emotional-wise, even though he’s still closer than his sister, and besides, all those trains that Uncle Herman left behind were from the early Fifties, and that her future son, if ultimately desirous of fun in the form of scale-model trains that ran around in a loop, would probably want the latest models and not a pile of heavy junk that was so old its machinery growled whenever they were pressed into action. His sister says she doesn’t know why she calls; she can’t talk to him.“Everything you’re doing is perfect, Sam,” the voice says, aggressive and bright. “Now just go ahead and click on the link I just sent you.”Sam does as he’s told. “And now?” he asks.“Do you see the attachment, Sam?”“Yup.”“Go ahead and download the attachment, Sam.”Sam downloads, waits. A rainbow wheel spins. He and the voice wait for the wheel to disappear.“I hope you aren’t feeling pressured in any way, Sam,” says the voice. Bright, aggressive, but not bullying. The voice of the younger brother Sam always wanted.“I’ve always been good at following directions,” Sam says, “except for this one time when I just couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to put up a pup tent, and I think that was because it required two people to put it together and there was only me. This was at a camping trip, my first, I was really young, during college, I think junior year, a bunch of us drove across the state to a place just along the river, the camp sites high up, you had to drive a long, curving road that wound its way up, and I had to drive separate because my friends and their girlfriends had loaded up the van with all sorts of stuff, and they were busy putting up their tent, a real deluxe thing, it slept six, but they had suggested I not bunk in with them because, well, at some point they were going to get intimate and they didn’t think I’d want to suffer through something like that, so there I was with this little tent I’d picked up last minute, cheap, couldn’t figure it out, and the little hammer that was included wasn’t much better than, like, a jeweler’s hammer, tink-tink-tink, not doing much of anything, they were all laughing at me, tink-tink-tink, then they weren’t laughing because, as you can imagine, it got to be annoying, and then later there was this big storm, you could hear it coming through the trees before it hit, a great whooshing, and my tent blew away, I ended up sleeping in my car.”“You didn’t deserve that, Sam,” the voice says. “Now go ahead and open that attachment.”Sam sees her when he was certain he would never see her again. She is there, handling plates, telling a young salesperson that she’s just looking. She hasn’t seen Sam.Sam considers making his presence known to her. “Well, this is a nice surprise,” he imagines himself saying. To which he imagines her saying, “Oh my God, I’ve been thinking of you,” while Sam says, “You have?” while she says, “Quite a lot, actually,” while Sam says, “Good things, I hope,” while she says, “There are no bad things,” and then he imagines them telling each other how they’ve been for the past eighteen years, what they’ve been doing, how each other hasn’t changed at all, and she says, “You know, I’ve always wanted to tell you that I made a mistake,” while he says nothing, not maliciously, but he hopes he knows what’s coming, and she goes on, “The thing is, Sam, you’re the love of my life, and I didn’t know it then, or I did know it but was too afraid of my feelings, they were that strong, so I ran, and I really, really hope you can forgive me.”None of this happens. Sam watches her pick up a box of stemless wineglasses, tuck it under her arm, and head for the closest register. As she passes, she sees Sam, but there is no recognition in her eyes, he could be one of the displays, she’s on her way, no doubt to the man she told him, long ago, that she was going to marry, the man that wasn’t even there to lug her wineglasses.“You need to act quickly, Sam,” the voice says. This voice reminds him of the elder pastor from his church who baptized him and who later, when Sam was fresh out of college, listened to Sam’s ongoing concerns about life and love and trauma without giving so much as spiritual advice before hastening off to a Stewardship Committee Meeting. “But you’ve been so good at acting quickly,” the voice continues. “I don’t want you to feel pressured, however, Sam.”“I’m good,” Sam says.“Love it. I know it sounds too good to be true, Sam, or maybe you think it’s too true to be good, ha ha ha.”“When I was little boy,” Sam says, “First Grade, I went out during recess and I went on the slide, but my foot got caught in the side rail, my left foot, I was wearing blue sneakers with white laces, I can remember it like yesterday, and the kid behind decided to slide down anyway and I went over the side, I was dangling by my left leg, looking straight down at the asphalt, nobody noticed, and I don’t know why I didn’t call out, maybe I was certain that I was seconds away from my skull busting open like a ripe melon, but this other kid, Brady Sorrentino, was suddenly below me with his arms outstretched, telling me he’d catch me, he was a bigger kid, he’d been held back a year, not the brightest kid but real sweet, very handsome, the girls all had crushes on him at one time or another over the years, and there I was swinging from that slide like a piñata, certain that Brady wouldn’t catch me but hoping he would, and still nobody, none of the teachers, none of the other kids, had noticed my peril, but there was Brady’s sincere, trusting face, Brady reaching up to me, and I didn’t fall, I hauled myself back up onto the slide, slid down, got up, walked away as best I could, and by ‘best I could’ I mean limping, and I never went back on that slide, and when I turned to thank Brady for the help he had offered, he was already off kicking a ball across the playground, and I never thanked him, not properly, not at all, because he hadn’t saved me, and I didn’t want to embarrass him in front of the other kids by thanking him for being so brave and coming to my rescue. Years later I heard that Brady had gone to jail for something, I don’t know if I ever heard for what, and he might still be in jail, but I don’t know.”“You can pay with gift cards or cryptocurrency, Sam,” the voice says, “and I, for one, am so glad you didn’t take a header off that slide.”“It sucks, after nineteen years,” Sam’s boss tells him, “but what can you do?”“Twenty-one,” Sam says.“Twenty-one what?”“Years.”“Is that so? Huh. Well, it doesn’t matter, because we, as you know, don’t have a severance package, although in certain cases leadership will decide to maybe throw in a month’s pay, even two months’ pay.”“What’s leadership giving me?”“I said in certain cases, Jim.”“Sam.”“Huh? Oh, yeah. Sam. I always got that wrong, it sounds so much like Jim. The things our minds do, right? I just need you to sign there at the bottom, and you can just leave your badge on my desk.”“How was your day, Sam?” the voice asks. Sam is almost certain he’s heard this voice before. It is like satin. It is like sunshine. He tells the voice how his day was.“Did you sleep okay, Sam?” Sam says he assumes he did because he felt rested, if not refreshed, when he woke up.“What did you eat for dinner, Sam?” Sam says he wasn’t hungry, but he’d had a can of smoked oysters and a bag of raisins for lunch.“I love talking to you, Sam,” says the voice. “I love talking to you even more than I loved talking about my husband, who died, if you remember me mentioning it. I love the fact that you were so sorry to hear that even when you didn’t know the man. I love that you’re sincerely interested in my child, in my child’s health and welfare, and that you think that my child going to school in another country was a smart move even considering our little problem right now. I love that you’re here for me, Sam, or there for me, and I’m here for you, Sam. I don’t have anyone, Sam, no relatives, no friends. Just you, Sam. You listen, you tell me such wonderful things about yourself, you make me feel like you’re right here in the room with you, Sam.”Sam feels warm, despite the heat being shut off. He doesn’t just feel warm; he feels engulfed in radiance. He listens to the voice and feels himself looking up at a small boy hanging from his left foot from a slide, he feels himself smiling, a forced smile of encouragement; no, a genuine smile of responsibility, a smile encouraging trust, the small boy so close Sam can almost reach him and release him, take him away in his arms.
Driving through the Detroit suburbs, cutting through traffic, honking and cursing at other drivers, the brothers make their way to the crematorium. It is difficult to keep up with the long hearse. Traffic seems to move automatically for it just as it blocks the brothers’ car.“I know,” the older says to the younger.“Yeah?” the younger asks. They are still navigating the void which now defines their relationship—the change from middle-and-youngest to older-and-younger.“I was just agreeing that I probably shouldn’t have told Nana to shut the fuck up.”“Coulda been handled better,” the younger says.They pass a Big Boy, but the large, cherubic statue of the eponymous boy is nowhere to be seen.“He could be anywhere.”“If she just,” the older brother continues, “—she wouldn’t stop talking about how hard it was to put on her bra this morning. We’re closing the coffin and that’s what you’re talking about?”“You know how she is. Besides, it was sorta funny,” the younger says.Sirens wail from behind them, and the car lurches onto the shoulder along with the rest of traffic, trying to avoid the glittering pieces of glass and shattered reflectors ground into the curbside. A police cruiser passes, black and emotionless. A few minutes later, more sirens, and another cruiser—this one tailing an ambulance—passes before speeding off to the right through the next intersection. “Nice blinker, asshole,” the older brother shouts, gunning the engine to catch the hearse again. They have the address for the crematorium. It is printed in embossed letters on nondescript business cards in each of their breast pockets. Neither reaches for theirs. Instead, they weave through traffic—cutting off HVAC trucks, minivans ferrying children to soccer games, classic cars taken out for the beautiful weather—unable to bear the thought of the hearse leaving their sight. They have to remain together for the final trip.“I thought you were going to get arrested,” the younger brother says.“It’s fine, those cops were driving worse than me.”“No, I mean a few days ago. When the cops came, after—you know.”“I just don’t see why they need to be involved. It was hospice, not a fucking crime scene.”The younger brother lets silence hang in the air. They both need it, have been entertaining aunts and uncles, cousins they’ve only met once before, friends and acquaintances of tenuous and forgettable relation. It is what they are supposed to do, and maybe if they make themselves useful, they can forget everything else. Like how, as children, the boys used to fight over who got to die first – which of the three in their war games, their cops and robbers, would make the sacrifice so the others could live another day. It always devolved into the two others pulling the dead one up, changing the rules at the last minute—no, you didn’t die, it’s my turn—until they fell on each other in a hilarity of fists and dying breaths, swoons and skinned knees. And always, always they were on the same team, all robbers and rebels, the cops and enemy soldiers hiding in the tall wheatgrass, shadows conjured by the darting eye.At the crematorium, the funeral director reiterates that, per Michigan law, someone must accompany and identify the body before cremation. She says there were issues in the past where people were given anonymous ashes—usually from horses. After all, she tells them—her hands open and upturned as if trying to prove she has nothing to hide—a person just doesn’t leave that much ash. People always expect more. Nothing up this sleeve or that.They follow her into the back room. It is not difficult to identify their brother. They’d just seen him. And then they are ushered out by the director and an attendant, asked to wait for a few minutes please.The brothers make coffee in the waiting room. It is every waiting room, every doctor’s/dentist’s/attorney’s. The magazines and pamphlets differ only in content, not form. Navigating the Steps of Grief. How to Ask for Help. Mourning a Loved One. The younger brother points out that the front of the building doesn’t even say crematorium—just Services. The older brother says that the steps of grief were actually developed for hospice patients, were meant to help people accept their own deaths and not others’, which should be obvious because only the dying have assurance that their grief will end.Then they make more coffee, because really, there’s nothing else to do. Then the younger brother says something that cracks the older one up, sets them both laughing and laughing so hard someone comes from a side room to check in because they must be mistaken, it must be keening cries and not laughter, or perhaps the two men in charcoal suits were tricked by the sign and don’t know where they are, but they assure her it is their brother in the long cardboard box in the back being packed away for a final delivery, and it is ok because they are still laughing, cannot take their minds off of the joke, whatever it was, because then they will think about how the younger brother reached into the casket to trim his brother’s beard before the ceremony, how the older one had screamed at the cops to get their hands off, can’t a man even fucking die, how their little fists had grown into hands that still sought one another, wanting to pull each other up and say no, you didn’t die this time, it’s my turn, how this is the last time their three bodies will be in the same building and then the director comes from the back room saying they’re ready, and of course they thank the man who is waiting for them beside the furnace, not simply because they are supposed to, in fact they really mean it, are deathly serious when they ask how his day has been while he points at the cardboard box on the conveyor belt, instructs them to say their goodbyes and to press the small green button, and the older brother says it’s a shame that it’s a button and not a lever, that this moment should have some more memorable tactile input than a button, and the younger one points out that it’s not even a button, just an image of a button on a touch screen, all signs and simulacra play pretend make believe and then the conveyor is going and the box trundles past with its awful lightness its terrible weightlessness reminding them how easy it was to lift him that last time so light the box must be empty because how could they not expect more not expect the ashes to escape somewhere beyond sight or touch or representation and what was the joke again how did it go?
In which Kazuo Ishiguro runs a dating hotline on the radio like in Sleepless in Seattle
MEHello?KAZUO ISHIGUROHello, you’ve reached the Kazuo Ishiguro Dating Hotline. My name is Kazuo Ishiguro. How can I help you tonight?MEOh, wow. I didn’t think you’d actually pick up. I’m Ellie. I loved The Buried Giant.KAZUO ISHIGUROEveryone loves The Buried Giant. We’ll see what Guillermo does with it. Are you dating, Ellie? MENo, but it’s all a bit more complicated than that, don’t you think?KAZUO ISHIGURONo, not really.KAZUO ISHIGURO hangs up the phone. It’s a really bad dating hotline.It’s a pretty good dating hotline.
In which Statler and Waldorf review Bridge Over Troubled Water
STATLERMore like “So Long, Frank Lloyd Wrong”!WALDORFWhere is this bridge over troubled water? I’d like to jump off it!They laugh.STATLERThe only living boy in New York? Not after I get my hands on you! WALDORF“Why Don’t You Write Me”? Why don’t you write some better songs!STATLER“I’m begging you please” to stop singing!They laugh. The air feels tight.
With The Surrender of Man (Inside the Castle, 2025), Naomi Falk examines twenty works of art, using each as both touchstone and springboard for scrutiny of modernity. An exhibition of the psychic space inhabited by the intersection of time, memory and art itself, the book unravels as a stream of commingling impulses. Falk’s often febrile interrogations display a hunger to get to grips with the interior world as it probes contemporary existence. At times raw, inspirited, raging, and contemplative, the volume acts as a catalyst for the author’s questioning nature, and stridently asks what the hell is art for anyway? I spoke to Naomi about the book.Rebecca Gransden: What led you to The Surrender of Man for the title?Naomi Falk: The title had been in place before the book was anywhere near being finished. My attraction to it is a little complicated. There’s an obvious element of gendered language that goes hand-in-hand with the biblical proportions of the phrase, and it felt interesting to me to have a title of the book that was pretty deeply conflicted with the text itself. The sentence within which the title is housed is a significant turning point in the text, at least for me. RG: When reading the book it’s immediately clear that a great deal of care has gone into visual presentation. Was this a collaborative process with the publisher, known for their attention to the aesthetic experience of a book, or did you make strong stylistic choices from the book’s early inception?NF: John Trefry designed the cover and then Mike Corrao designed the interiors, and I am woefully indebted to them both for giving such a gorgeous body to the text. John and I already had such a strong overlapping aesthetic impulse, which was part of the reason I was so intent on working with him. He designed the emblem of my name at the bottom left of the book, which speaks to our mutual love for metal…. We actually did an hour-long set for Montez Radio together a few months back.RG: Objects possess transformative potential when you look closely, fastened by their makers—both human and otherwise—and cracked into the world.When considering the book’s formation, how much thought was given to its status as an object, an artwork, in its own right?NF: I am extremely invested in the book as object; I’ve worked in art book publishing for years; I’m an editor but also a designer and producer and publisher. Of course I’m going to care about those things; this isn’t an assembly line. Hundreds and hundreds of years of bookmaking history behind us. So much to draw from; so much at our fingertips. A text deserves a beautiful vessel! And a book doesn’t have to be expensive to make. I’m not going to waste my time making something that looks and feels like shit, even if I’m fine with buying things that look and feel like shit. RG: You’ll see how arbitrarily I’ve come across most of these works of art.An obvious question concerns how each work of art is chosen for inclusion in the book. You cover this aspect at length and I was struck by how the contemplation you offer becomes part of the book’s quality as a whole. When you reflect on the selection process, what stands out to you now?[caption id="attachment_17852" align="alignright" width="338"] photo credit: Andy Zalkin[/caption]NF: A lot of the younger artists in the book are folks I met through the passages of my daily life (which is outlined in the text). The lasting creative ramifications that someone’s work can have on you become most pronounced once you’re no longer in continuous contact with the artist: people move, new lifestyles emerge, we grow away from each other and become variants of ourselves that might not be compatible with the people we once knew. But the essence of their art and their ideas linger and entwine with your own work. Those hazy tethers come up again and again. Friendly spirits.It was also important to me that this not be a book of my favorite artworks. We have lived through such an intensity of listicles and “favorite things” in the past fifteen years, I worry we confuse the artist with the artwork they love…RG: They are taking over.The above quote is referring to words, words taking over, and suggests a multitude of interpretations. The book’s language at once contains the potential for manifestation, a means to precision, but also intrusion and alienation, an occupying force. For The Surrender of Man, was a clear stylistic approach embarked upon from the start, or did this evolve over time?NF: My writing evolved a lot over the course of writing the book, which took quite a lot of time because of the research that went into it (and because of the necessity for me to continue experiencing art to finish it). I kept feeling a pull to abstract the writing more and more, to imbue it with less uninterrupted academicish-leaning research and more language. The art in the book IS the lifeblood of the text, so the feeling of the language really needed to reflect a relationship between me and the art, and not just my projections… It actually caused some problems for me on an artistic level, and I made several revisions to the entire manuscript, which probably made the book messier than it ought to be…RG: How does the idea of confession arise in the book? Do you view The Surrender of Man as belonging to the tradition of the confessional?NF: To the extent that I implicate myself in the book, yes I would say it could be shelved within a tradition of confessional writing. I certainly don’t have plans to do it again!RG: What parts do dreams play in the book? You recount a recurring dream, and many times your responses to art are infused with the rich, uncanny symbolism associated with dreams. How conscious were you of the unconscious when writing The Surrender of Man?NF: I was possibly even over-concerned with the unconscious when writing the book. My dreams, and the dreams of others, are the wellspring of my writing practice. Increasingly, increasingly, it feels as if life is just the dream’s interlude. RG: No other generation of writer had been inundated with disembodied—but verifiably real—other people and their thoughts and feelings during the writing process in this way. Felt special, cursed, fresh.I think it safe to say that we are at a point in history where a lone mind has never before been exposed to such a number of psyches outside of its own. When it came to the writing of the book, is this something you moderated, or, alternatively, encouraged?NF: To use a phrase received from said outside psyches, there is a fair amount of “whataboutism” that I experience as I write. A tendency to want to make things more and more universal or interpretable to the point where what I am writing becomes only thinly tethered to its original meaning. It’s a real problem, and I’m working on it.RG: The idea of transformation recurs throughout the book, approached from differing angles. When you set out on The Surrender of Man, did you know what you wanted from it? Has that perspective shifted since its completion and publication?NF: On a broad level, the yearning and satiation of creating and publishing your work is so bright and abstract; it’s really hard to put into words. At one point in past years it all felt quite far away…I am happy I had the chance to experiment with the format, and that everyone involved with bringing the book into the world was supportive of that. As I mentioned earlier, the opportunity for the text itself to go through a series of new iterations, because of the freedoms I was afforded by Inside the Castle, supported every other intention of the work. RG: The format of the book seems a natural one for you, and is potentially endlessly mineable. Would you consider a further book of a similar kind, or do you feel you’ve explored the format for as far as it can go?NF: I aim to keep working within the nonlinear, and mostly nonnarrative. Although my current project DOES have a “story,” the “story” could be condensed into a few sentences. So many other people are writing good “stories.” I’m not a good storyteller, so I can leave it to other people to bedazzle readers with twists and turns and enticing character development, for now.RG: What don’t you want the book to be?NF: A definitive guide to interpreting art.RG: You mention an early attraction to transgression and horror, particularly horror movies. Are there films you would consider as complimentary to The Surrender of Man? Any recommendations?NF: I’m not sure if any films—excluding, perhaps, film essays—are complimentary to the work, or at least I haven’t found them yet. This text is very much in the service of other mediums. But if we’re talking about spooky movies…I suppose that my impulse for theatrics and drama comes from the obvious blueprints: The Hands of Orlac, any number of Poe adaptations, the Universal Monsters. I am obsessed with giallo films, the Saw franchise, Herschell Gordon Lewis, anything with a fantastical edge, the original and remake of Candyman, Hard to Be a God, Woman in the Dunes, and everything that Anna Biller has ever done. Is this turning into a listicle? Importantly, my friends Chris Molnar and Amy Griffis and I just saw the New York premier of the new Quay Brothers movie, Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass. That one is on my required viewing list. No one does it like they do. RG: Are there notable works you almost included but left out of the book? Or works you’ve encountered since the writing of The Surrender of Man that you wish could have featured?NF: I mean, kind of yes, but I need to fight that impulse. The purpose of the book seems to be the happenstance nature of so many of the inclusions, and if I tried to think of the scope of art outside of the specific years during which it was written, I would be doing a disservice to my own project.RG: The messiness of my mind has only become more pronounced as years and their memories accumulate. My ability to thread a cohesive narrative or to focus on a singular topic can’t parallel so many other writers I admire and I’m sure you can tell by the writing here that I don’t really want to find harmony and cohesion anyway.To what degree is The Surrender of Man a response to internet culture?NF: I think that most of my work is steeped in my lifelong participation in internet culture. I love the Web; I still feel excited about it every day. It raised me, in many ways. Video games have been instrumental in my writing style. The sense of awe I felt watching my dad play Myst when I was a girl has never left me. The strange collapse of distance between me and friends and strangers in the early years of AIM. Roleplaying in the Neopets forums. Being on MySpace trains… I don’t think The Surrender of Man is a response to the internet insofar as it has a sense of fragmentation or perhaps a lack of “focus.” I am looking for connection (within myself and with others) through my work in the same way that my internet personalities are signals or offerings…RG: The book is released by Inside the Castle. What attracted you to work with them, and how have you found that process? NF: Chris had brought Inside the Castle to my attention years ago. I couldn’t believe I wasn’t already familiar with them at the time, because as mentioned previously, I have an existing foundation for appreciating the kinds of texts ITC publishes. Work that offers an unusual amount of experimentation, work that might even be unconcerned with being understood. It’s been the best experience; no notes; a true dream.RG: I’m screaming into the bathtub because it brings me clarity.What has The Surrender of Man brought to you? NF: Solace, quiet, a sense of heightened wonder in regards to others and the work they create.RG: Where next?NF: The closure of this portal opens a new one, so now I’m working on a book-length piece of fiction.
Your wife was overjoyed when your uncle drowned in three inches of water at the bottom of a cave. It meant your family would inherit his house. Although you both wished it wasn’t in such tragic circumstances. That’s what you kept saying to people. Not that you had any strong feelings about him or his death. You barely knew him. Was spelunking in Chile a normal pastime of his? Nobody knew him well enough to tell you. Not at the funeral, not during the will reading, nor when you took his place in his very respectable neighbourhood. They would say he was a strange man. An eccentric, one elderly lady had said kindly, more kindly than was necessary. While your wife ripped everything in your uncle’s dingy house out to start again, you took a strange, small set of stairs down to the piss room. That’s what you’d both end up calling it later. It wasn’t quite in the basement, but also wasn’t on ground level. It was as if your uncle had specifically requested the room be created, on its own separate level. Inside, it was a perfect square, lined with shelves which were, in turn, lined with jars of piss. All in the same type of jar, large and wide, which distorted the wall behind in varying shades of yellow. All were labelled with numbers you could discern no meaning from. Some were so aged the piss had turned dark and rusty inside, winking metallically at you, standing outside the piss room door.
2
Ten years later, the piss jars stood, immovable. Your wife had wanted to get rid of them as quickly as possible. She thought them disgusting, a reminder of a sad old man, not well and not liked. The more you’d learned about your uncle, gleaned through the stacks of papers found throughout the house, the more the two of you understood him to be a bad man. Not just an unkind or cold man, but a man who actively worked to disparage and ruin those around him. There was a time where your wife even believed the jars of piss to have played a role in his evil deeds. Maybe they were cursed, she’d whisper to you in the night. You didn’t know any more than she did. Despite the overwhelming physical evidence, you secretly believed your uncle to be misunderstood. You fought to keep those jars. Not only to preserve them, but to live alongside them. At first you could say it was because of the difficulties of moving so many heavy jars up into the daylight surface of the house, not to mention the horrors of accidentally dropping one. But now, with your wife ten years tired and your children ten years grown, arguing to keep the piss room feels futile. But every time you’d looked at it and thought how much more sensible it would be for you to use this room for storage, or a home gym, or a man cave, visions of your uncle, choking to death in an inch of stagnant water sprang into your mind.
3
Your uncle had started spelunking late in life. Like almost everything else, he did it alone. The drowning seemed to be a long-overdue inevitability. There were many letters from his old instructor begging him to take a buddy next time. One of these days he wouldn’t come home. The last day you saw your kids, you got a letter from your father. It spoke of the day you were born, and the hopes your father had had for your future. It apologised for how hard things had been when you were younger. It told stories of your uncle when he was a young man, the paths he chose that led him to this end. He loved his brother, but he was a troubled soul, your father told you. He needed things others didn’t. After that letter, more came. Official documents from your wife’s solicitor. Late payment notices for the electric company, complaints from the HOA. Then, one handwritten and yellowed, from your uncle. It detailed his plan to reach out, just when he knew your resolve would be close to giving out. He told you not to listen to your wife or your father. They had a vested interest in this plan going wrong. He knew you’d be up for the challenges this lifestyle would demand of you. He knew there was something different in you from the first day he saw you. You would be the one to hold this heavy burden. Not just for yourself, but for all of mankind. None of this surprised you. You have left the fear and uncertainty of earlier years behind you. You are chosen. You are capable. You are not going to die face down in a puddle and you are not going to become your father. You are the guardian of the piss and you are going to live forever. You slot both letters into the piles of yellowed papers in your office. The piss jars glitter at you in the darkness and you linger for a moment before you close the door.
