The Belan Deck

by Matt Bucher

Belan is the CEO and he needs this PowerPoint deck asap. The narrator, however, just wants to fly home - and he might not deliver what Belan is expecting. Set mostly during a delay at SFO, The Belan Deck captures one traveler's reflections on art, artificial intelligence, corporate life, David Markson, coincidences, and literature.

Genres: Fiction, Literature

96 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 7, 2023

Reviews

[Phillip Freedenberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Since the first moment I recall talking to Matt Bucher as a guest on the ever brilliant Concavity Show, I somehow very quickly felt as if I were at home talking with an old friend, thus my excitement for his new book, a poetic, Marksonian deluge into art, literature, artificial intelligence, metafiction, and history, dazzles brilliantly from the core of our hyper-fragmented Information Age with a clarity, grace and urgency that few books achieve, thus The Belan Deck is a book that I handle with delight, which I know I will find myself rereading it often, as well as recommend it to others with the highest regard. Please find your way into your own copy to support such a wonderful literary spirit from our own community that is a book oozing with the type of creativity that most readers I know are forever looking for in their next read.

I knew immediately in speaking with Matt that he was caring, attentive, articulate, intelligent, curious as well as passionate about literature, and it only takes the reader to pass a few pages into The Belan Deck to see that these same themes are deeply woven into his writing!

The Belan Deck almost acts as the placement of a hyper sensitive human antenna extended into our cold, dark accelerationist evolution into the Information Age looking for ways in which we can still mine and reflect back upon ourselves some deeply luminous sign of life that reminds us of the beauty resting within the heart of what it means to be human.

A must read.

Phillip Freedenberg
Author of America and the Cult of the Cactus Boots: A Diagnostic

Buffalo, NY
May 2023

[cycads and ferns · Rating 4 out of 5]

“‘Jimmy, is this regarding the issue of my ongoing employment.’
‘That’s on the agenda….But I need that deck sooner than later, OK?’”
He was trying to finish a PowerPoint deck for his boss, Belan. He was trying to keep his job but he didn’t know if he really wanted it. And while stranded at SFO, his thoughts wander from one topic to the next as he waits for his flight home.
“Gravity’s Rainbow was almost titled Mindless Pleasures.”
And, “John Smith, John Berryman was born.”
Straying from the deck, he considers the very human ability to get lost exploring a topic.
“A human being has the capacity to suddenly find a topic interesting and follow it indefinitely….An epiphany cannot exist artificially.”

He wonders if a single point from his presentation will be remembered. Looking at the photographs displayed at the airport he thinks, “The first photograph in the series is of a woman in what looks like 1920s clothes….what’s striking about this photo, why it’s on exhibit here, is that the woman seems modern. She appears to be from our era, stuck back then….What remains of a person after they’re gone?”
As his mind wanders, his thoughts become more troubling and pessimistic.
“Is it nonsense or brilliance? Wrote Virginia Woolf in the margin of her manuscript.”
And, “Seamus Heaney’s last words were a text message to his wife. In Latin.
‘Noli timere,’ which means ‘Do not be afraid’.”
He thinks of the untimely deaths of various artists, the places that are named for people who are now forgotten, the encroachment of AI stifling creativity, and his lack of job satisfaction. While the team assistant, Amanda, schedules a new flight and directs him to the new gate, he begins to wonder if Amanda was a real person.
“I realize I never met Amanda in person, but I assume she is not a virtual assistant.”

As he lines up to board the plane, he considers turning back, but then finally shuffles forward.
“Eventually all our graves go unattended.”

[Paul Dembina · Rating 4 out of 5]

An extremely quick read. This is a diminutive little volume of 120 pages consisting of the thoughts of a chap pondering his PowerPoint presentation for an executive called Belan. Mostly ruminations on the impact of AI I personally found it a little bit unfocused.

[Lee Thompson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Obviously a quick read, but a book one can sample from repeatedly. Funny, inventive, and highly relatable, especially for those in the arts caught in the trap of using their skills in the business world. Marksonion, sure, but Bucher puts his own touches on that approach. And I'm beginning to believe that this 'brain bites' narrative captures 'stream' of consciousness better than any other technique.

Also, appreciated that not all literary references were attributed.

Enjoyable and certainly recommended.

[Marc Nash · Rating 5 out of 5]

Video review https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpS93...

[Jay Sandover · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent short book. It’s written in the style of David Markson’s late novels, but Bucher takes that in his own unique direction. Here’s my review.

https://www.thevisionarycompany.net/b...

[TJ Wilson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book refreshed my literary spirit. Once in a while, you read a book that heavily captures the moment of now in a whimsically deep style that you have no other choice but to drop everything and give it your full attention. This is one of those books for me. A wonderful book.

[Daryl]

I liked this one a lot but as sort of a policy, I don't rate books by people I know more than in passing. If you know Matt and his scholarly endeavors and connections, you're likely to dig this one. Readers drawn to the work of the likes of Markson and other postmodern authors will surely see some resonances here.

[Jack Waters · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic meditation on impermanence, movement, the rhymes of lives, and the consuming progress of technology. It's impossible to avoid mentioning David Markson while talking about this book. I imagine Markson would have blurbed the book had he not shed his mortal coil. Matt Bucher is a compass of literature, and I've never been led astray by his recommendations. I am happy now to be able to recommend one of his own books now. I'll return to The Belan Deck again and again.

[Wendy Liu]

“Why would anyone adopt a 21 year old? Is that even possible? Man adopts man.”

Perfect quick read while stranded at the airport. Matt is a friend and a lovely human being.

[aimee · Rating 2 out of 5]

Like I get it but no thank you

[Richie · Rating 5 out of 5]

“It's more than simple attention defcit: a deep need to escape from one path and pursue another rabbit hole until another escape presents itself.”

“AI is not improving our lives. Technology is not helping us work less or pursue more creative lives. What would you do if you didn't have to work? Belan would never ask this. Belan doesn't care about anything except some numbers on a screen. He's more of a robot than the computational algorithms he owns.”

“One appeal of AI: no backstories. Consciousness created out of circuitry. No character arcs or empathy or bathos.”

Stumbling onto Concavity Show during the height of the pandemic kept me sane. It has since provided me with hours of entertainment, led me to new favorite writers and books, and linked me up with some awesome people on this silly platform. Matt Bucher is the co-host of Concavity Show and the author of THE BELAN DECK.

Our protagonist is at SFO waiting to leave California to return home to his family in Texas. We meet him while he’s considering the presentation he is charged with giving to the CEO of his company, and how it is received will likely determine the trajectory of his career. In between renaming the PowerPoint deck, the reader is afforded access to the synaptic jumps of association of his imbedded knowledge — or maybe trivia? — that feels as real as the drudgery that is waiting for a plane to board. Bucher touches on the ethical dilemma of flawed humans creating AI; the CIA funding the likes of The Paris Review for propaganda purposes; amoral tech bros; creativity vs. economic necessity; and the utility of literature and art.

The format of this book — brief lines of thought or memory or factoids that spill into the next — perfectly encapsulates the idea of fragmentation of our culture (and our even shorter attention spans). One of my favorite ideas explored within this novella is the very human experience of falling down a Wikipedia rabbit hole, which is a wholly different experience than that of AI vacuuming up any and all pieces of information, and Bucher perfectly captures this experience with these 119 pgs. A highly recommend you seek this short book out.

[W.D. Clarke · Rating 4 out of 5]

This

This?

This document

document

is overwritten when you make changes in Play Books. You

You

You should make

You should make

make a copy of this

a copy of this copy

of this before you

you
Page 10 the leading cause of injury-related death
Page 60 Until five years after his death
Page 74 Demands at least a birth or a death, notability
Page 74 Early Life. Career. Death. Works.
Page 83 Death on the boat

edit it.

All your annotations.

Annotations last

Last synced January 29, 2024.

2024
What
What is
What is the value
What is the value and
and utility
utility
utility of a lifetime
a lifetime of reading
of reading
reading?

One could write in one’s free time, one told oneself.

Coleridge’s last words: “My mind is quite unclouded. I could even be witty.”

Witty

All Wikipedia articles are interconnected. The world is impossibly small.

Almost certain that David Markson never used copy and paste

never saw a Wikipedia article.

Page 23 Down a deep Wikipedia rabbit hole.
Page 28 No use-case for a Wikipedia rabbit hole
Page 45 The Wikipedia rabbit hole as art, as immersive escapism.
Page 65 Wikipedia is the number one result
Page 65 Wikipedia, made by humans

Putting sentence fragments into bullets is not the same thing as writing.

Page 65 Made by humans

I am quite content to go down to posterity as a scissors and paste man for that seems to me a harsh but not unjust description.

Said James Joyce.

Page 65 Made by humans
Page 78 A human being
Page 65 Made by humans

The role of “poet” can only be filled by a human being.Page 79 Like a human being
Page 79 A real human
Page 80 likeness of a human.
Page 91 Human-centered
Page 95 human qualities
Page 95 not to replace human beings

The best parts
of the deck
are copied
directly
from other decks.

It’s just not a deck.

Said Jimmy. I don’t know what it is, but

but it’s not a real deck. It’s a jumble. It changes tenses. It’s

It's a commonplace book.

Maybe there’s something good or interesting in there, but it’s buried.

A wraithlike
shadow
passes
by. There is no real

There is no real ending

ending. It’s just
the place where you
stop. Nos habebit humus.

Is it nonsense or brilliance? It's

It’s all cumulative.

It's

It's The Belan Deck
Matt Bucher

[Lee Klein · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must for David Markson fans. The form is Marksonian, Markson comes up, as does his Author, but the content extends Markson to something at times meta or descended from Nicholson Baker's The Mezzanine but otherwise wholly itself, with emissions or entries (not sure what to call all the separate Tweet-length paragraphs) about PPTs, AI (loved the Allen Iverson line), Wikipedia, Google, the San Francisco airport, convergent facts about baseball, the news that Jennifer Egan (who famously published a novel with a chapter rendered in PowerPoint) dated Steve Jobs for a year, and a sense of the contemporary Silicon Valley/San Fran business environment (tech bro on skateboard, respected guru artist-level coder who wears black tees, walks around barefoot in the office, and takes month-long surfing vacations). A short small book, read it in two sittings. Author hosts a podcast (The Concavity Show) that I've listened to a few times and liked -- at first it was about DFW but has evolved to include interviews with esteemed writers such as Christian TeBordo, Adam Levin, and Kyle Beachy (who's quoted in this).

[Erik Eckel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maybe once a decade a compelling book arrests my attention with its ability to accurately capture current culture and the state of the technology industry or digital innovation. In the mid-'90s, that book was Douglas Coupland's Microserfs. M.T. Anderson's Feed and Po Bronson's The First $20 Million Is Always The Hardest are two other works that, at least for me, demonstrated similar capacities. Now a new title has arrived from a new but maybe not so unsurprising source.

Anyone who's familiar with Wallace-i, the David Foster Wallace-related listserv, The International DFW Society or the Concavity Show podcast should know Matt Bucher. The guy stays busy. He's a podcast producer, content developer, editor, project and product manager and now, author.

Bucher's tidy new gem of a novella, The Belan Deck, reminded me at once of Microserfs. You can tell Bucher's spent time working within technical capacities, and he's familiar with Austin and San Francisco (where companies for which I once worked some eight or so years were headquartered and I also traveled regularly). The new novella captures all the angst AI is generating in a frenetic industry known for moving uncomfortably fast and, at times, in seemingly alien and arrogant ways.

Whether touching on art or artificial intelligence, corporate values or the enduring potential of a Field Notes journal, Bucher rapidly covers vast ground. If you're seeking a unique and original contemporary read exploring many of today's challenges, a work that will remain with you long after you've finished, give this new book a go. You won't view a PowerPoint presentation or overzealous CEO the same way again, I promise.

[Downward · Rating 3 out of 5]

this is an engaging and brief read (you could do it in about an hour probably) about a man creating an endless powerpoint deck about AI, with the stakes being that it will likely be the last thing he does before being fired if it is not excellent. the novel updates David Markson's structure, syntax, rhythm, and themes (you'll see Markson mentioned in almost every review and he's mentioned frequently throughout the novel, so it's not like Bucher is ripping this off or running away from it or anything), but does so in a way that lacks the emotional gravitas that Markson brings to the table, so it feels kind of like a cover song. I like Matt Bucher's other novels a lot and look forward to whatever he does next.

[Eric Roling · Rating 1 out of 5]

Totally missed the mark for me. Lots of comparisons to David Markson, but as others have mentioned, it felt like a cover band's hollow copy of Markson's work. It was missing heart, and felt rather trite. At times, I was expecting the book to end with the author revealing that they used an AI to write the book in Markson's style. The comparisons to Microserfs are completely lost on me.

It felt like a lot of disjointed observations, and then riffing on them - so and so died on the same day. Ooh - so and so died a day apart. Why??? No reason.

[Peter Knox · Rating 4 out of 5]

Meant to be read in one sitting, this short read is anything but breezy... it's funny, it's cutting, it's smart.

The narrator conveys the uniquely modern problem of late capitalism in an age of AI, with a looming deadline of a powerpoint deck due for his boss to present.

There's no art in slides, or is there?
Can this work be done in an airport?

The alienation of the worker, the artist, this meta-fiction works on many levels, from knowledge-worker satire to poet vs the machine. Suggest you pick it up and let it linger in your brain.

[Brandon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wandering alone through an airport, trapped in one's thoughts, obsessed with a meaningless work assignment that you'd much rather elevate to something special, perhaps even sublime. That's a situation that hits home hard. I have seldom read a book that felt like it had pried open my skull the way this one does.

[rumbledethumps · Rating 2 out of 5]

This kind of novel is extremely difficult to do well, to make its seemingly random one or two sentence thoughts cohere into a whole. Unfortunately most of this one felt mostly like a bad Twitter account.

Ther were a few interesting or funny parts, but not enough to make me like it. Best thing about it was that it was short, and I could be done with it in one sitting.

[Plantcore]

It's an engaging read. I was positively surprised by the rythm of some of the prose. There are a lot of quotes, some of them unattributed. It's a book that does not want to be criticized. So I'll be silent about the AI takes.

[Derek Ludwig · Rating 1 out of 5]

1. this was some kind of novel about somebody creating a PowerPoint presentation that they didn't really want to make
2. the format of the book was just seemingly un-related random comments that maybe were related to AI?
3. I just didn't really "get" the book

[Steve Lively · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant!

See also:

😉

[Ollo · Rating 1 out of 5]

The product of an untalented bottom-feeder, with greasy praise from the like.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's not a novel, but I'm not sure what it is. Getting the PowerPoint ready

[Bindu Upadhyay]

Felt like someone extracted exact thoughts from a person's head and put it into a book. I didn't get most of the references, and well, not a book I would recommend even for the sake of experimenting.