Questioning Everything

It is a terrible day at Poets & Suicides, as we endure yet another self-lionizing and ill-conceived “site contribution” from The Author, who has apparently seen fit to recommend books that, unlike his own books, do not serve primarily to alienate and defeat countless would-be readers, sending them running back to their video game consoles and inane animal-memes.

The moment does, however, have the editors of Poets & Suicides thinking about Influence. The Author has, after all, been at the controls of many a Writing Workshop, and his students have often asked: “If it is true, as you The Author say, that our goal is to become ourselves on the page, and that we should each endeavor to write the fictions that only we, as individuals, can write, then why do you continually provide us with mandatory writing prompts that expressly require us to imitate other writers?”

The Author is accustomed to having intelligent individuals see through his half-baked pseudo-intellectualism, but this is a rare case in which he has formulated a response that could be True, or at least Not False: in order to become oneself, one must first become many others.

In any event, we herewith provide The Author’s list of recommendations of “books that make you question everything.” Please note that each of the books on this list has been far more successful than The Author’s own insane diatribe, ANTHROPICA. Influence, apparently, confers no benefits beyond the aesthetic (if it confers anything at all). But we, the editors of Poets & Suicides, must admit—despite earlier, ungenerous remarks about the inaccessibility of The Author’s work and The Author’s tendency to alienate the very people he wishes to lure into his flammable tent— that it’s a pretty good fucking list. We recommend enjoying these tomes with a bucket of your favorite fried food and several liters of vodka while piloting a deep-sea submersible into the center of the Challenger Deep.

Alis grave nil! May language release you from its lies!