The Checkered Flag

Friends of the Author may be interested to know that as we approach the virus-addled publication-date for ANTHROPICA (September 1st 2020), the Author is experiencing many emotional emotions, some of which we of Poets & Suicides feel compelled to list and analyze despite (or because of) the fact that the number of registered subscribers to this indispensable contribution to the Author’s dispensable vision is (and always has been) Zero. And so:

First, the Author is feeling some small degree of pride. ANTHROPICA is a book that was authored with enormous conviction over a very long period of time. Some say four years. Others say seven years. Still others say the process began when the Author was 8 years old, struck dumb by the idea that billions of people were burning petroleum in their homes and automobiles and yet, somehow, there would be enough petroleum for the next day, and the day after that. The brilliant writer Sam Lipsyte has called ANTHROPICA “a madcap, Moebius strip of a book,” which is not only a pleasing description but also captures the feelings the Author experienced while authoring it. The book constantly loops back on itself, like a snake swallowing its own tail, before withdrawing again to widen its own circle; the Author felt himself flirting with madness before retreating for sanity before diving headlong back into madness. Lather, rinse, repeat. The idea that this dangerous process has ultimately resulted in a book that others will be able to read is gratifying, and the Author is thus gratified.

But the Author is also feeling fear and anxiety, because he is well aware that the hope contained within the word “forthcoming” is often quickly dispelled by the realities of the word “released.” The Author feels uncharacteristically confident that most readers of ANTHROPICA will not really get ANTHROPICA. It’s a big book, full of what the writer Rick Moody calls “gorgeous hyperbolic prose,” and it does not hold a reader’s hand. It’s one of those You Have To Work For It books that very few of the Author’s fellow humans seem interested in. So the Author is preparing in advance for the book — which, for the record, the Author considers his magnum opus, a masterwork and a culmination of two decades of striving toward this exact text — to be panned, tossed aside, or simply ignored. The Author will surely attempt to find humor in these dismissals, but they will also cause him Pain, and as (non)readers of Poets & Suicides are well aware, Pain is the one thing the Author has already accumulated in excess.

And then there is another feeling. Perhaps we could call it nostalgia? Or melancholy? The Author is aware that he is neck-deep in middle age, and that there are very few Publishing Moments ahead of him, and the awareness of ANTHROPICA as, perhaps, his Last Text of Real Substance is forcing the Author to reckon with his mortality, and by extension, with all the things he has done wrong in his mostly misspent life. The Author has done some good in this world, we do not deny it, but he has not always been his own best Author, and ANTHROPICA will soon enter the stream of things trailing from the Author’s present into the Author’s past, where it will no doubt be sucked into one of the same eddies containing the Author’s various other personal and professional failures.

One thing is certain: The Author feels a lot riding on ANTHROPICA, and as much as he tells the editors of this magazine that he does not care about sales or reviews, as much as he says the book’s publication is its own reward, as many times as he tells us that what matters most to him is that he can hold a physical copy of ANTHROPICA out to his wife and children and say, “Look what I made,” we the editors know that he wants the book to do well and to garner an enthusiastic readership. His failure is really going to hurt. We look forward to reporting on it. In the meantime, Alis grave nil. May language release you from its lies.