Preparing the last book of "The End of the Vampire Craze In New York" and posting it today (hopefully). Response has been good. It's a very very weird book, so I don't really feel like emailing my friends through a Facebook fan page and saying: "hey! you should read this now!" You know, it's like if I was Lars von Trier and I created a Facebook fan page for "Antichrist" and then you got this unsolicited email in your Inbox that said: "Lars requests you be a fan of Antichrist." And because you are a Facebook friend, you felt you needed to sit through the scene where the lady smashes Willem Dafoe's nads with a rock even though it made you very uncomfortable; you know, just to show your support. Because I, as Lars van Trier, might run into you one day at Ditmas Park and quiz you on the movie just to see how attentive you are to your Facebook friends.
Sometimes I wonder why I couldn't just be the writer of like "Happy Fun Ball" or something. You know, have the facility to churn out these rollicking adventures. I've been thinking about all this a lot lately. My literary idol in college was William Burroughs. I was already writing a bit in his style before I discovered him at the library. So when I saw that this guy was writing similar to me I felt great, because I felt somebody understood. But my professors absolutely hated Burroughs. They hated Burroughs and comics. Not "real" literature.
And I tried to read "Naked Lunch" on a plane once to distract myself from a panic attack I was having, and it just about made me lose my shit. But I love the idea that a book – a simple book – can make somebody lose their shit just by its words; almost put the reader in an altered state of consciousness. Burroughs did that. Lovecraft is the master of that, and Poe is really good too. There's an author named Dennis Cooper who wrote this book called Period. The book is a total mind-fuck. I bought it and threw it away on two separate occasions. Just because it frightened me to have it in the house, as if it was some sort of grimoire. There comes a point during this short novel where the story loops in on itself, and it just fucks you up.
I'll probably buy that book again.
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