Interview with horror writer Nicole Cushing

 

Nicole Cushing's novel A Sick Gray Laugh has hit me with the force of a revelation. Recipient of the prestigious Bram Stoker award, Cushing transgresses the boundaries of the horror genre, moving seamlessly between history, philosophy, satire, and nightmarish grotesquery. The novel is thought-provoking and emotionally dizzying. Written in a funny, lighthearted tone, A Sick Gray Laugh has a gloomy, eerie undertone that, coupled with the creepy, outlandish visuals, will haunt the reader long after finishing. The author was kind enough to take the time and answer some of the main questions I have about her novel, but before we get to that I'll offer a brief outline. Noelle Cashman, the main character, decides to write a book about "the overwhelming Grayness that's slathered over everything like a thick coat of snot." Grayness is a soul-crushing disease that affects many small towns, and Noelle is able to establish that the source of the infection is the town of Naumpton, Indiana. Digging into its history, Noelle discovers two utopian cults that settled in the area but were ultimately crushed by civilization. The leader of the first cult was known as The New Moses and preached a synthesis between Christian principles and those of industrial capitalism. Basically, The New Moses claimed that if infused with the divine spirit of moral joy, factory workers and their employers would live in perfect harmony. One necessary step toward achieving this state of bliss was that all members of the cult were to cover their faces with black veils, symbolizing ego death, and their absolute submission to God. The second cult was The Brides of the Holy Ghost who, under the influence of local Evelyn Wilson aka The Great Prophetess, come to believe that sordid Naumpton is the place of birth of the Antichrist and, hating both men and sex, were able to temporarily turn the struggling town into a matriarchy. Studying these two cults, Noelle deduces some of the principles of fighting Grayness. Grayness means order and civilization and should be countered with chaos and madness. Grayness is conformity and coagulation and should be countered with rebellion and separation. Animated by the aggressive weirdness of the two pioneering cults Noelle decides to form her own cult of misfits, built around female supremacy, chaos, and the Principle of Separation.     

Axl: Stephen King famously said, "I recognize terror as the finest emotion and so I will try to terrorize the reader. But if I find that I cannot terrify, I will try to horrify, and if I find that I cannot horrify, I'll go for the gross-out. I'm not proud." "A Sick Gray Laugh" doesn't fit neatly into the mold of mainstream horror; there are no monsters (human or inhuman) and almost no gore. How would you describe your brand of horror in relation to King's dictum and more established subgenres like body horror, cosmic horror, psychological horror and so on?

Nicole: You're correct when you point out that my characters don't struggle against traditional antagonists. They struggle against the menacing, palpable atmosphere around them. They struggle against reality. Each realizes they’re a part of a vast, hideous machine, and they struggle against that machine. Often, they struggle against their own brains. Therefore, I don't think King's taxonomy is all that helpful when applied to my work. Instead, I would describe my work as a variety of weird fiction, because weird fiction often depicts an alienated individual’s struggle against their surroundings, or against reality.

However, even that label may confuse the issue. So often, when someone says “weird fiction” they really mean “cosmic horror” or “Lovecraftian fiction” or “Ligottian fiction”.  They use “weird fiction” to refer exclusively to the Anglo-American tradition of cosmic horror, as articulated in short stories. I feel a stronger connection to the Continental European tradition of the weird, and to a couple of weird works from the Middle East and North Africa. Moreover, I feel connected to the tradition of the weird novel. Right now, I’m not interested in short stories.

Don’t get me wrong, I continue to respect and admire the work of Thomas Ligotti. But if you study his work and read his interviews, you soon realize he’s influenced not only by Anglo-American Lovecraftian fiction, but also by the global weird tradition. Upon exploring the international influences mentioned in his interviews I got hooked on them, myself! Therefore, Ligotti has been my “gateway drug” to the global weird tradition (and translated fiction, in general). For me, Ligotti’s work isn’t the final destination of the weird. It’s not a destination at all, but rather a door. And doors are meant to be walked through.

That’s how literature advances. We stand on the shoulders of giants, yes. But we don’t stand on the shoulders of giants so we can look down at the giants. We stand on the shoulders of giants so we can better reach the next frontier.

My work follows in the tradition of novels like The Tenant by Roland Topor and The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera. I’m also influenced by novellas like The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat, The Hospital by Ahmed Bouanani, The Great Shadow by Mário de Sá-Carneiro, and The Seven Who Were Hanged and The Red Laugh by Leonid Andreyev. Most recently, I’ve been influenced by the novels of Witold Gombrowicz. His work exerted a strong influence on A Sick Gray Laugh.

Lest I seem unpatriotic, I should mention that I feel a kinship with some American weird novelists, too. Shirley Jackson and Caitlin Kiernan, in particular. But neither Ms. Jackson nor Ms. Kiernan weave absurdity into their work. You couldn’t call either of them “playful”. I, on the other hand, revel in gallows humor, and I see writing as a combination of self-discipline and play.

Axl: "A Sick Gray Laugh" features elements of both postmodernism and existentialism. Metanaration and irony are blended with more sombre reflections about the human condition, mental illness, and existential dread. What are your thoughts on mixing these two traditions?

Nicole: I don’t want to quibble too much with your question, but I’m not sure “existentialism” is quite the right label. For me, the phrase “existentialist fiction” conjures up images of Sartre and Camus and Simone de Beauvoir. It implies fiction that advocates for existentialist values. Didactic fiction. That’s not what I’m about. I’m not cheerleading for any particular system of thought.

But I get the gist of what you’re asking, and I can only say that the use of metanarrative and irony to address serious literary subjects is a very old trick. In the 1930s, Gombrowicz pulled it off in his novel Ferdydurke. Kundera’s novels do something similar, although his irony is more muted than that of Gombrowicz. It’s less nightmarishly absurd. One could argue that it goes back much further. Kundera, for example, claims Cervantes and Rabelais as influences. When it comes to matters of style and tone, my work isn’t really experimental. Or perhaps it is experimental, but only in the sense that I’m replicating an experiment that’s been performed many times before. Perhaps my only stylistic innovation is carrying that tradition forward into the realm of twenty-first century weird fiction, spiking it with a shot glass of transgression, and imposing it on a cast of working-class characters scrabbling together lives in the American Midwest. 

 Axl: Noelle Cashman, the hero (or anti-hero) of the novel, is a self-professed nihilist, fan of the work of Thomas Liggotti. She claims all beliefs are ridiculous and warns us against Moronic Hope. And yet, she's very determined to fight Grayness. What's the point of that fight? What is she trying to defend? Wouldn't a pessimist like Liggotti say that the whole world is Gray; that there's no exit? That maybe even Colors are Gray? Doesn't her ambition to destroy Grayness turn Noelle into an optimist? And doesn't her commitment to things Colorful and The Principle of Separation betray the fact she's still a victim of grandiose narratives and Moronic Hope?

Nicole: It’s been a while since my brain was fully marinated in A Sick Gray Laugh. (It’s now fully marinated in my work-in-progress.) But, if I recall correctly, Noelle’s quest is a quest for psychological comfort, above all else. That’s what she’s trying to defend (or, at least, obtain). She’s suffocated, in a psychological sense, and she wants to breathe.

 The fact that she makes an effort to breathe doesn’t really indicate that she’s an optimist. At least, not a capital-O, philosophical Optimist. She’s merely succumbing to the same reflex any suffocated individual feels: the reflex to fight for air.

But, for the sake of argument, let’s assume that you’re correct: she’s an optimist, of sorts. If this is the case, she’s a terrifying optimist, a sadistic optimist, the kind of optimist who is a walking advertisement for pessimism!  

But shouldn’t I be bothered that Noelle contradicts herself? I don’t believe this is a problem because Noelle admits as much. She tells the reader, directly, that she finds it impossible to stay committed to any belief. Her mind is hideously mutable. Her brain is like a kaleidoscope, with one important difference. Instead of constantly changing into various neat and tidy geometrical patterns, it changes into a series of monstrous, foul, asymmetrical blobs.

Axl: Early on, Noelle discovers that The New Moses and his utopian cult use black veils to cover their faces upon their arrival in the New World. To them, face-covering is a means of erasing the ego and ushering in the Utopia of selfless moral joy. Later in the story, Noelle realizes that when wearing her balaclava she has the power to part the Gray Sea just as the original Moses parted the Red Sea. Does this power have to do with suppressing the ego like in the case of the New Moses? And, more generally, what is the role of Noelle's ego in her fight against Grayness. As a wannabe cult leader, she must be prideful and arrogant, which is also what separates her from the conformity of Grayness? Yet, at the same time, her ego must be deemed fluid and illusory by her commitment to nihilism and the unreality of everything. What are your thoughts on this dilemma?

Nicole: There’s a lot to unpack here. Let’s take the questions one at a time.

Does Noelle’s power to part the Gray Sea derive from suppressing her ego? No. It stems from her “re-enactment” (for lack of a better word) of something Colorful. 

What’s the role of Noelle’s ego in her fight against Grayness? Noelle’s sense of self is unstable, bordering on nonexistent. However, her suffering is a very idiosyncratic sort of suffering, the type of suffering that separates her from the rest of humanity (who don’t notice, or at least don’t obsess over Grayness). Her suffering seems distinctly her own. Thus, her suffering seems to confirm her selfhood. If Noelle herself were here to speak to you, she might paraphrase Descartes and say “I suffer, therefore I am”.

Is this a dilemma? I’m not one hundred percent sure. I would call it a complication or a paradox. I try to honestly depict life, and the experience of consciousness in particular. There’s no way to take on those subjects without encountering paradoxes. In many ways, the paradox is the point. I’m not giving the reader a puzzle to solve, or a philosophy to evaluate. I’m giving the reader an experience to be felt and an aesthetic to appreciate. 

Axl: Do you think Satan, as depicted let's say in Milton's Paradise Lost, as the rebel and opposer, would be an agent of Color and Chaos on Noelle's view. Can her outlook be described as essentially Satanic?

Nicole: I’ve not yet read Paradise Lost (though the Norton critical edition is in my to-be-read pile). That caveat aside, I think that even rebellion can be Gray, if it allows itself to become too predictably rebellious. Kneejerk rebelliousness can quickly turn into a dull, tiresome affectation. Only a thin line separates an opposer from a poser.

So I don’t think her outlook can be seen as Satanic. A static Satan is a Gray Satan. For Satan to truly be Colorful, he would need to rebel against himself from time to time. 

You can find a good deal on A Sick Gray Laugh and other horrors at https://bit.ly/3mLLIm2
Follow Nicole on Twitter @nicolecushing and Facebook Nicole Cushing.

The Cheerful Nihilist (On Ligotti's The Conspiracy Against The Human Race)

by Foul Apparatus  

From the first pages of Thomas Ligotti's The Conspiracy Against The Human Race, I knew this author would have his place among my spiritual masters, alongside Nietzsche, Cioran, Camus or Heidegger. This is a book I'll come back to again and again, as it reignited a private argument which will only end when I crumble under dementia or am six feet under. Besides the philosophical content, one of the most original aspects of this work is the synthesis between philosophical pessimism and supernatural horror. As both philosopher and horror writer, Ligotti is able to draw connections between abstract ideas and the concrete stuff that scares us in horrors: creepy dolls, clowns from outer space, unknown monsters of the deep sea, The Old Ones, decrepit mansions, and so on.

Ligotti draws the distinction between optimists and pessimists about life. Pessimists think that the existence of the human race is a tragic anomaly and that being alive is mostly meaningless suffering. The evolution of consciousness is a terrible accident as it amplifies our torment, making us aware of our own mortality and the fact that we're basically meat in a meat-grinder. The universe is a cold, dark place where no one can hear our screams and our horizon is smeared with blood. For the pessimist, the faster this nightmare existence ends, the better it is for everyone, and we should lament every birth as a violation of blissful nonexistence. By contrast, for the optimist being alive is all right; he has no major complaints as he's likely under the spell of a grand narrative featuring God, Family, Nation or The Good, a fabrication that infuses his life with hope and meaning. For the optimist, consciousness is a wonderful thing as it allows us to know the world and gives us the power to plan and change it for the better. On his view, the human race is special and noble, it rises above the rest of creation as man alone was awarded the power of consciousness, and the freedom and responsibility that come with it.

Following Norwegian philosopher Peter Zapffe, Ligotti argues that optimists manage to stay optimistic because they're able to minimize their consciousness and zombify themselves. This trick can be achieved in four ways: isolation, anchoring, distraction, and sublimation. On Ligotti's view, these four methods constitute what he calls "the conspiracy against the human race," in the sense that by this process of more or less conscious self-deception we avoid facing the pointless cosmic butchery we're trapped in, and thus we miss our only salvation, which is our outright extinction as freaks of nature.

When we use the first method, "we isolate the dire facts of being alive by relegating them to a remote compartment of our minds. They are the lunatic family members in the attic whose existence we deny in a conspiracy of silence." According to the second method, in order to "stabilize our lives in the tempestuous waters of chaos, we conspire to anchor them in metaphysical and institutional "verities"—God, Morality, Natural Law, Country, Family—that inebriate us with a sense of being official, authentic, and safe in our beds." The third method aims at turning a blind eye to cosmic horror by "distracting our minds with a world of trifling or momentous trash. The most operant method for furthering the conspiracy, it is in continuous employ and demands only that people keep their eyes on the ball—or their television sets, their government's foreign policy, their science projects, their careers, their place in society and the universe, etc. The final method consists of us sublimating "our fears by making an open display of them. In the Zapffean sense, sublimation is the rarest technique utilized for conspiring against the human race. Putting into play both deviousness and skill, this is what thinkers and artistic types do when they recycle the most demoralizing and unnerving aspects of life as works in which the worst fortunes of humanity are presented in a stylized and removed manner as entertainment. In so many words, these thinkers and artistic types confect products that provide an escape from our suffering by a bogus simulation of it—a tragic drama or philosophical woolgathering, for instance."  

   

Ligotti's main message is not news to me, since I've been an Emil Cioran (whom Ligotti calls "a maestro of pessimism") fan since the tender age of thirteen. Furthermore, I'm deep into existentialism, have a couple of grim horror books of my own, and am also into Depressive Suicidal Black Metal, a subgenre of Black Metal aimed at conveying feelings of alienation, loneliness, despair, and at reminding people that suicide isn't such a bad idea. However, Ligotti's passionate and clear arguments, his beautiful and honest style, and the graphic way he portrays our sorry existence has made me revisit my stance on these core existential issues. I have two interrelated critical comments on Ligotti's book, after a first reading. The first one concerns the psychological type of the cheerful nihilist, and the second one describes one of the main challenges for the pessimist, the challenge of being a nobody.

First, I and many others I would imagine, don't consider ourselves either pessimists or optimists, but are cheerful nihilists. Being a true pessimist is pretty hard. In The Trouble with Being Born, Cioran claims "I do nothing, granted. But I see the hours go by—which is better than trying to fill them." Cioran here refers to the excess of lucidity the pessimist endures, which, however, brings him closer to the ugly truth of life, and he proclaims this to be better than being a busy self-deluded puppet invested in killing time. Be that as it may, not many people are inclined to just sit around and see the hours go by. Eventually, they'll start doing something. Off themselves? Maybe. But the "maestro of pessimism" is quick to point out: "Only optimists commit suicide, optimists who no longer succeed at being optimists. The others, having no reason to live, why would they have any to die?" So, do what then? Camus' point in The Myth of Sisyphus is that the absurdity of the universe, in and of itself, has no bearing on how we should live our lives. Whatever we do is of no consequence in the big picture. Now, some might find this depressing and just decide to see the hours go by and wallow in self-pity. But the cheerful nihilist sees this grim state of affairs as pretty liberating. The universe is a playground where you can do whatever, as there are no parents in sight (or gods). The world is an amusement park and why not have some fun before surrendering to infinite darkness? The cheerful nihilist is neither a pessimist nor an optimist, he's mostly agnostic and non-committal. While he's aware that consciousness amplifies suffering, he also knows that it makes possible higher pleasures, like reading and writing books, which even Cioran himself has indulged in most of his life, when sick of watching the hours go by. So, the cheerful nihilist is not prone to any extreme views as the total eradication of humankind. Also, his commitment to life doesn't involve the delusions the cowardly optimist clings to. The cheerful nihilist is not fully anchored in any values and keeps a critical, ironic distance toward any grand narratives with a happy ending. He is, after all, a student of postmodernism. The cheerful nihilist might engage in sublimation for the fun of it, not with the heroic, virginal fervor of someone like Nietzsche, but with more restrained enthusiasm. The cheerful nihilist floats in a universe of scepticism, uncertainty, and irony, but, despite his awareness of the ugly truths behind the scenes of daily life, he's trying to enjoy what existence has to offer till sickness and the Grim Ripper make their necessary appearance.       

Second, I think being a true, fully consistent pessimist is not only hard but almost impossible. It's really a tough position to hold, without appearing hypocritical. Martin Heidegger has argued that human beings, as beings-in-the-world, exist mostly in a state of inauthenticity. That is, simply put, they do what others do, what They do, what is done. We mostly live in the inauthentic human soup of The They, we do what's expected of us in a zombie-like fashion. We keep busy, plan for the future, always ahead of ourselves, absorbed by some job or another. This goes on, Heidegger argues, until our awareness of our own death hits us and our knees buckle. No one else can die in our place, we face death alone. This gives us anxiety, and only in this state of fear of death do we become authentic, because death forces us to see our lives as our own, and no one else's. However, Heidegger argues, humans don't linger in this state of anxiety for long. Eventually, they reach a decision about the trajectory of their lives and then succumb again, willy-nilly, to the force of The They. The They is our home. Authenticity is just a bad trip we normally forget about. Now, the options of what to do with our lives are provided on the public market as predefined social roles. Tired of your job? Go back to school. A recent injury doesn't allow you to have a career in hockey? Try an office job. You don't know what degree to aim for? Try traveling around the world to find yourself. It follows that, like most of us, the pessimist cannot sustain the state of anxiety for long. Eventually, he'll submit to the power of The They and just live like others do. Like in the case of Cioran, he gave up on watching the hours go by and became a famous writer. He was also a voracious reader. In the same vein, Ligotti points out Lovecraft's interest in architecture. Schopenhauer was a monarchist and professional Hegel hater. My point is that despite the dramatic posturing, most pessimists are just like the rest of us, subject to the force of The They, they live like most of us, enjoying some things, hating others. And if they de facto take part in this inauthentic communal life, then what right do they have to say life is no good? Isn't that a bit hypocritical? Like some emo youth with a Nocturnal Depression t-shirt shopping in the organic section and complaining about the poor selection or an antinatalist trying to become a nurse. This schizoid Dr. Strangelove-type appearance is not a good look for the pessimist. It raises doubts and questions. Moreover, pessimists can't kill themselves either because only optimists kill themselves. Suppose then that they decide to live like pariahs, losers, at the margins of society? After all, Cioran famously claimed: "Only one thing matters: learning to be the loser." However, this, on the face of it, is a project, something to strive for. Like being the town drunk, being the loser is a social role, still in the social space of The They, though, admittedly, on the margins of that space. Cioran was well-aware of this challenge the true pessimist faces, which is one of the reasons he turned down a handful of prestigious literary awards claiming that one cannot write a book like The Trouble With Being Born only so one can cash a literary prize.

Ligotti is aware of the power of the survival instinct and how it can blindside us even if consciously and intellectually we want to reject it. Then, given that humans, like all animals, are hardwired to be social, maybe it's best to look for the authentic pessimist in the ranks of the mentally ill, those malfunctioning brains that make installing the sociability program almost impossible. In this respect, Ligotti's description of depression is telling:

"This is the great lesson the depressive learns: nothing in the world is inherently compelling. Whatever may be really "out there" cannot project itself as an affective experience. It is all a vacuous affair with only a chemical prestige. Nothing is either good or bad, desirable or undesirable, or anything else except that it is made so by laboratories inside us producing the emotions on which we live. And to live on our emotions is to live arbitrarily, inaccurately—imparting meaning to what has none of its own. Yet what other way is there to live. Without the ever-clanking machinery of emotion, everything would come to a standstill. There would be nothing to do, nowhere to go, nothing to be, and no one to know. The alternatives are clear: to live falsely as pawns of affect, or to live factually as depressives, or as individuals who know what is known to the depressive. How advantageous that we are not coerced into choosing one or the other, neither choice being excellent. One look at human existence is proof enough that our species will not be released from the stronghold of emotionalism that anchors it into hallucinations. That may be no way to live, but to opt for depression would be to opt out of existence as we consciously know it."

Thus, the depressive would be a good candidate for an authentic pessimist. From a Heideggerian perspective, a depressive is no longer a being-in-the-world. He's a puppet with its strings cut off, an existential abortion. As Ligotti puts it, depressives need not "apply for a position in the enterprise of life." There's a gaping abyss between the depressive and the world, a darkness that strips him of the luxury of an identity or a sense of will. For the depressive, saying or thinking "I" is nothing short of a miracle. There's usually telltale signs of depression, so that even when a depressive decides to participate in the enterprise of life, they give themselves away easily. They're awkward and out of synch with the others, they either talk too much or are too quiet, they laugh too hard as if to keep the inner darkness at bay and reassure themselves that they're really succeeding at playing the game of life like all the others, and that the game is real. However, deep down, they know that the trick won't work and the illusion will dissipate soon, like the makeup running down the face of an alien dressed as a clown. When it comes to parties or other social gatherings, the depressive either cancels at the last moment or leaves early as they feel they can't ignite their socializing engine. If the engine starts, the depressive is the last one to leave the party as he knows this is as good as it gets for him and the usual darkness patiently awaits at home. A few years ago I had this friend suffering from Borderline Personality Disorder. I've noticed that even when she'd take a stab at socializing, she would refuse to appear in group pictures. Later, she explained to me that she wants to live like a ghost. After she dies, she confessed, she wants people to wonder if she truly existed. 

This notion of being a living ghost reminded me of John Darnton's brief portrayal of someone suffering from Cotard's syndrome in his book Mind Catcher, when his character, neurosurgeon Kate Willet, visits a psychiatric ward for severely mentally ill.    

"The room was dimly lit and she could not see very well, but she didn't care to get a better view. There was one bed in the room and a young man supine on it. His wrists and ankles were tied to the sides of the bed with thick white straps, and he was lying totally stiff, as if he were a piece of wood. His eyes were open and staring straight up at the ceiling; they didn't move. Nor did he seem to blink. His skin was ashen gray. His shirt was off, and when Kate looked closely, she saw that his upper torso and his arms and his ankles and his face were covered with wounds—deep angry red gouges running in parallel lines. He had evidently inflicted them upon himself with his fingernails.

The administrative assistant came up behind them. When she spoke, Kate almost jumped out of her skin.

"That is an unfortunate man," the woman said. "He has an extremely rare illness called Cotard's syndrome. [...] In this case, the patient has no emotions whatsoever. He's totally without affect. The patient is stripped of all signs of life. In fact, he becomes convinced that he is actually dead, and it is impossible to rid him of this particular delusion. At times he will smell his own flesh rotting. And at other times he becomes convinced that worms are crawling over his rotting corpse, and he scratches himself without ceasing. For that reason, he must from time to time be restrained."

To sum up, the authentic pessimist, as opposed to the emo poser, is most likely to be found in the ranks of those suffering from mental disorders. Unable to fully dissolve himself in the forgetfulness of the They, his surplus of consciousness giving rise to a chronic alienation, the true pessimist is a master of killing time, time is the enemy as each second takes him closer to inevitable death, and also because time is the reminder he already is dead, but not yet buried. As Cioran says, "A book is a suicide postponed," a suicide that will always come too late, as the true pessimist, being already dead, sees no point in final gestures or affirmations.

Like I said, these are just two of the multiple thoughts and ideas I've had while reading Ligotti's marvelous book The Conspiracy Against The Human Race. His incisive style, clear argumentation, beautiful prose, and grim imagery will make me come back to his book and read his fiction work as well. As a cheerful nihilist, I hope Ligotti's dark fiction is delightful and that my ability to enjoy good books lasts for many years to come.  

Odin Rising and Lords of Chaos (part 1)

The Writing Dead

Beware, the dead are writing! They happened on a new way to trap us and eat our brains: zombie writing. As it's to be expected the writing of the undead is boring and foggy, impersonal and vague, tinged with unfocused nostalgia for real life. However, that writing has the terrible power to induce sleep and leave one defenseless in the face of a zombie attack It's crucial for our survival to be able to distinguish zombie writing from real writing. For that, we need to go back to the source of authentic writing and tattoo on our still-functioning brains the words of a master about his craft. I speak, of course, of Emil Cioran, Nietzsche's most significant disciple. 

“A book is a suicide postponed,” Cioran reminds us. “Write books only if you are going to say in them the things you would never dare confide to anyone.” "True confessions are written with tears only. But my tears would drown the world, as my inner fire would reduce it to ashes" "I like thought which preserves a whiff of flesh and blood, and I prefer a thousand times an idea rising from sexual tension or nervous depression to empty abstraction."

Now we have the litmus test for zombie writing. The dead don't commit suicide, being already dead and all, and therefore they can't postpone their suicide. The undead have no confessions to make and no tears to shed. The dead don't hurt, they have no emotions, no sex drive, no melancholy, they just want to feed on flesh and brains. The dead don't bleed either. If you cut the words of zombie writing with a knife, the wound doesn't bleed, no tears come out, but only the pungent stench of busy locker-rooms, the boiling pus of repressed nightmares, and the white sand of boredom.

Zombie writing is a serious threat to our survival as a species. Zombies write for money, the living are their customers. The undead use money to produce more dead prose and gradually annihilate their hapless victims with their poisonous offerings. The larger the web the more flies get stuck in it. Why are the living paying for this junk? Well, for the same reason they buy heroin: sedation, abdication, the promise of decay hidden in a shot of Krokodyl, the thrill of forgetting. Being human, let's face it, is hard work. All these thoughts and emotions, this constant torment of lucidity, it can get pretty exhausting. And for what? There's no reward for being human. Most of us want out, whether we know it or not. We want to apply for bankruptcy, we instinctively know there's no winning here. The EXIT sign flashes red under our fragile web of mundane thoughts and empty gestures. We just want to die and shed our consciousness. We dream of the Paradise of mummification. We want to discard our existence like a filthy rag. We crave the bullet, the guillotine blade, the black sack over our heads before strangulation. We're eager to find our Jim Jones and ask for our promised cyanide. That's why we read about riding nonexistent dragons and setting nonexistent cities on fire, we fantasize about nonexistent castles and kings and Disney princes and princesses, we fancy ourselves superheroes to make up for the deeper, nagging knowledge that we're not fit for life.  

I voice this warning about zombified art but it might be too late, the infection is spreading fast, the siren call of Death has turned into a totalitarian command. Besides the Edgetivist trend, no one seems to care about their lives. Human life is cheaper than during the Black Plague. On the positive side, I realize I have something in common with the undead, there's something to cannibalism. And I don't mean in Jeffrey Dahmer's sense, clean skin is probably just as disgusting to chew on as inked skin. But more in line with Emil Cioran's dictum: “Sometimes I wish I were a cannibal – less for the pleasure of eating someone than for the pleasure of vomiting him.”