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Solarium
Bib is a mute, reclusive philosophy student with a compulsive addiction to reading. Hiding from society in an underground apartment, Bib scribbles his bizarre dreams that happen to coincide with the sudden disappearance of those around him. Gradually, Bib is forced out of his underworld to investigate an absent civilization, one where only the poor and social outcasts run free, where the city has reverted to an anarchic state of nature.
Flipping between Bib’s scribbled “dream diaries” and the novelized collapse of the modern world as told in footnotes by The Society of Bibliophiles, Solarium creates an atmosphere that seeks to bend the mind in the search for the body. The world of Solarium depicts a degenerative society, with themes of racial guilt, sexuality, and trauma. As Bib seeks to understand his condition, he looks to the past. While on the surface, Solarium depicts a story about a passive and manic academic, lying beneath is a passionate confession of shame, guilt, and desire.
Flipping between Bib’s scribbled “dream diaries” and the novelized collapse of the modern world as told in footnotes by The Society of Bibliophiles, Solarium creates an atmosphere that seeks to bend the mind in the search for the body. The world of Solarium depicts a degenerative society, with themes of racial guilt, sexuality, and trauma. As Bib seeks to understand his condition, he looks to the past. While on the surface, Solarium depicts a story about a passive and manic academic, lying beneath is a passionate confession of shame, guilt, and desire.
- GenresLiterary FictionFiction
531 pages, Paperback
Published July 20, 2023
2 people are currently reading
150 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
August 8, 2023
Solarium is a huge achievement.
It’s going to be difficult to write something truly worthy within the perimeters of a short GoodReads post. There is so much going on here.
Under the veil of the sci-fi genre, Matthew has written a novel incredibly on point for our current times. It essentially looks at the human experience, and therefore what it means to be human, with all our flaws.
The book uses literature as it’s vehicle, seen (or read) through the eyes of the mute, main protagonist, philosophy student Bib. Bib is a self-described manic reader, who throughout his life uses books and literature to escape from the world with which he struggles to connect.
Well read readers will most definitely appreciate all the literary references, both direct and indirect. So much is mentioned and referred to. Though Matthew has done an excellent job of keeping it accessible for all.
There are quite a few dream passages in the book, which is often a turn off for me personally. However, the skill of Matthew’s prose in these sequences was, to my mind, reminiscent of Bolaño in 2666.
Matthew tackles some huge issues within the book, including racism, sexism, homophobia and xenophobia. It asks some incredibly difficult and reflective questions. There were quite a few passages where I had to stop and examine exactly what I thought Matthew was asking of his characters. There are some challenging, and potentially triggering sections in terms of morality, and I guarantee you will ask yourself questions whilst reading.
I can’t possibly sum up everything there is to say about the book in a short post, other than to finish with strongly recommending that you get a copy and read it for yourselves. It will most certainly appeal not only to sci-fi fans, but all fans of literature.
It’s going to be difficult to write something truly worthy within the perimeters of a short GoodReads post. There is so much going on here.
Under the veil of the sci-fi genre, Matthew has written a novel incredibly on point for our current times. It essentially looks at the human experience, and therefore what it means to be human, with all our flaws.
The book uses literature as it’s vehicle, seen (or read) through the eyes of the mute, main protagonist, philosophy student Bib. Bib is a self-described manic reader, who throughout his life uses books and literature to escape from the world with which he struggles to connect.
Well read readers will most definitely appreciate all the literary references, both direct and indirect. So much is mentioned and referred to. Though Matthew has done an excellent job of keeping it accessible for all.
There are quite a few dream passages in the book, which is often a turn off for me personally. However, the skill of Matthew’s prose in these sequences was, to my mind, reminiscent of Bolaño in 2666.
Matthew tackles some huge issues within the book, including racism, sexism, homophobia and xenophobia. It asks some incredibly difficult and reflective questions. There were quite a few passages where I had to stop and examine exactly what I thought Matthew was asking of his characters. There are some challenging, and potentially triggering sections in terms of morality, and I guarantee you will ask yourself questions whilst reading.
I can’t possibly sum up everything there is to say about the book in a short post, other than to finish with strongly recommending that you get a copy and read it for yourselves. It will most certainly appeal not only to sci-fi fans, but all fans of literature.
August 9, 2023
Every once in a while you read a novel and realize that we’re in good hands in 2023. Solarium by Braden Matthew is one of those. Call it dystopian, call it otherworldly. I don’t know. What I do know is his sentences will astound you. He has also created, in Bip, the best character you’ll read this year. Nay, the past 5 years. For this to be his first novel is impressive. To have a voice that can convey a different world by sentences that are DeLillo-esque or McElroy-like is awesome. Yes, buy this book (link below) and be whisked away. Your consciousness will thank you after.
https://coronasamizdat.com/index.php?...
https://coronasamizdat.com/index.php?...
July 13, 2023
Best book I’ve ever read
May 9, 2024
Wowww.
I haven’t read a novel like this before. The way all of the themes and narrative and meta narrative run through it all is making me sit here and think and feel and take it all in.
I have to admit about half way through I put it down for an extended amount of time and then coming back it was hard to get back into and reorient myself. That was also the same as I chipped away at the various dream sequences. That is more I guess reflective of myself than Braden’s writing.
Also it really all came together for me in the third act (I guess the third act or at least the final third of the book.)
“In this way books are simply the organs of our experience”
Well done Braden and thank you for introducing me to Bib and this world and reminding me that this isn’t the end. To continue to live into the sacred middleness.
I haven’t read a novel like this before. The way all of the themes and narrative and meta narrative run through it all is making me sit here and think and feel and take it all in.
I have to admit about half way through I put it down for an extended amount of time and then coming back it was hard to get back into and reorient myself. That was also the same as I chipped away at the various dream sequences. That is more I guess reflective of myself than Braden’s writing.
Also it really all came together for me in the third act (I guess the third act or at least the final third of the book.)
“In this way books are simply the organs of our experience”
Well done Braden and thank you for introducing me to Bib and this world and reminding me that this isn’t the end. To continue to live into the sacred middleness.
July 12, 2023
In our curious pursuit of the vulture through “the lighthouse of language,” as our books face extinction and the “words will (one day) simply run out of space,” below our feet, we take our final steps into the Human Theater…
Solarium is an artfully constructed, contemplative, deeply human novel in which author Braden Matthew brilliantly explores the multidimensional points in which literature, philosophy, technology, the digitization of consciousness, cinema, entertainment, religion, bibliophilia, taxidermy, trauma, family, race, divinity and mortality intersect in such a way that the reader is quickly reminded, while reading Solarium, that the novel still serves as the long standing criterion of contemporary form in which we measure and explore the fundamental discourse that explores what it means to be human.
When thinking reflectively about the function of Solarium, the resonant central scope of the book captures an open exploration of a complex dialectic as it relates to the roots of the human/ spiritual pursuit of meaning, while critically positioning such considerations directly against the moral and ethical pressures of the colossal obstructions that we face when exploring the possible ways in which we may positively seek to evolve as a species in a way that not only identifies the shackles of our faults but it also invites us readers to remove them from the ankles and wrists of a future generation, yet what shimmers brilliantly within Matthew’s book is a compassion, imagination, and insight that may just be the beacon of light we need to help better steer our ship into a brighter future.
What is most exciting about the achievement of Solarium is that these vitally important literary benchmarks are the primary mechanics of what good fiction should embark upon as its objective, one which Matthew wildly succeeds at realizing with his impressive debut novel.
Solarium explores the intersection between the maladaptive bigoted inculcation of a racist American will (a systemic pedagogical education of generationally exchanged learned hatred) and the socio/cultural rise of the militarization of a destructive exclusionary modality of repressive tribal ideology in an attempt to not necessarily aim its well conceptualized form of a novel doubling as a brilliantly urgent literarily constructed critical theory to openly unravel a panoptic look into the heaping depravity of the deeply functional systemic aspects of how racism and privilege has been built into the masonry of the hegemonic power structures of the very framework of the American empire, which is not to say that the book does not illuminate these macroscopic themes, as it does with a profoundly well articulated, creatively composed sense of rationalism, but Solarium also serves as a heartbreaking, ground level, character driven fictional case study exploring how the mechanics of hatred within empire are not only systemically interwoven variables built into the patchwork of civilization, but they are also outlined within the text to be shown as horrific draconian intellectual values that have somehow failed to fully decay in the bog of failed history which we are able to clearly uncover in Matthew’s marvelous book, which we observe are concepts that are taught and passed from generation to generation and in many cases passed from fathers to sons and what these discoveries within the world of the book reveals is that in order to change the faults of a hateful and privileged system manufactured by controlling interests intended to prohibit equal access to prosperity, opportunity, love, inclusion, and the equality of future generations, it is our responsibility, not just as readers but as compassionate human beings to fight the very roots of racism on the ground in which they are sown.
Solarium is a deeply personal work that, as I understand it, relative to it being positively characterized as “philosophical fiction,” is that the existential function of philosophy at work in the book is being explored, not simply as a circular practice of theory for the sake of theory, instead the “philosophy,” or the central concerns of the book are being practiced as an applied approach to seeking some measurable consequentialist outcome of what the relationship that a particular philosophy holds to the evaluation of a dilemma as it provides new possible meaning, thus Matthew is performing the important act in his fiction of grounding philosophy as a practical application in the world capable of provoking change within the larger historical discourse around it rather than simply allowing the function of philosophical fiction to thrive merely as a propulsive theoretical discourse whose only outcome is the construction of further discourse, rather here it is being used to create real change or new possible meaning.
It is important for readers to know that the stakes are high when it comes to what I believe Matthew is attempting to achieve with his book and while Solarium is beautifully dressed with a luminous array of “metafictional pyrotechnics” dancing vibrantly both inside as well as outside of The Human Theater, these marvelously realized structurally poetic and literary techniques are never removed from their function in that they each serve to tell us a new story that radiates with necessity, urgency, timelessness, courage, creativity and vision which reminds us that books are not only dangerous, but books such as Solarium dare us to not only newly perceive the world, but Solarium also dares us to go out and change the world around us.
Matthew’s book is structured with a beautifully realized complex arching narrative geometry that fits skillfully into a newly emerging “genre” of books working in a post-structuralist/ meta-modern paradigm in which the themes of meaning and the future of books themselves about books relative to our current capitalist drives toward a humanity consumed by the emergence of firm cultural divisions coupled with the accelerated absorption by a looming technological singularity that puts at risk the future of books, as well as potentially jeopardizes the means in which we cooperatively relate across deep rooted divisiveness with one another as a species thus, Matthew’s debut novel inspired a necessary elevation of spirit which should be required in our books which preserves as well as contributes to the heightened progressive evolution of the very mechanisms of our most sacred outlet for continuing to always strive to more deeply explore our ongoing historical critical discourse on the nature of what it means to human, in this regard, Solarium is a tower of vibratory light and energy beaming out from Matthew’s brilliant lighthouse of language which shines with such luminosity that we are given a great cause for celebration through the consideration of this work in the future of books to not only heal us, but to also more beautifully move us into a brighter future for our species.
There is something very meaningful as well in the early “arching narrative geometry” in which the protagonist, while coming of age, under a prevailing nefarious technocratic organization that claims books should not be read as they can “consume the intellect,” as well as “implant seeds of deception,” this, the Human Theater software is designed to automatically produce intensified lateralization/ self-care/ mental equilibrium, yet as we meet Bib, our protagonist who navigates the challenging themes of privilege/ literature/technology/race/love/mortality/trauma,
we find in his stories that he leans into literature for connection/ insight into the tradition of exploring human meaning through literature, and we learn that our great books are all founded upon our conflicts/ triumphs with these deeply human qualities, thus if H.T. were to prevail, this would remove from us the very vital creative processes we use as a species to share and explore these complexities, furthermore if books were eliminated as the grandiose mirrors of our experiences it would deaden us to more deeply mine what it means to be human, thus we would lose our grasp of what it means to be human without books, thus for H.T. and the other dominant hegemonic power structures, the species becomes easier to control and divide through the proliferation of devices such as bigotry/racism/etc. hence the value of books/literature as we see so well on display in Solarium, serves as the means by which we capture/record/express the existential potentials for better and worse to become a central utility required for the sustainability of both species and civilization. These ideas, to me seem to be alive in Solarium with such exuberance and care that this book is a must add to everyone’s “to be read,” pile!
Phillip Freedenberg
Author of
America and the Cult of the Cactus Boots: A Diagnostic
July 2023
Buffalo, NY
Solarium is an artfully constructed, contemplative, deeply human novel in which author Braden Matthew brilliantly explores the multidimensional points in which literature, philosophy, technology, the digitization of consciousness, cinema, entertainment, religion, bibliophilia, taxidermy, trauma, family, race, divinity and mortality intersect in such a way that the reader is quickly reminded, while reading Solarium, that the novel still serves as the long standing criterion of contemporary form in which we measure and explore the fundamental discourse that explores what it means to be human.
When thinking reflectively about the function of Solarium, the resonant central scope of the book captures an open exploration of a complex dialectic as it relates to the roots of the human/ spiritual pursuit of meaning, while critically positioning such considerations directly against the moral and ethical pressures of the colossal obstructions that we face when exploring the possible ways in which we may positively seek to evolve as a species in a way that not only identifies the shackles of our faults but it also invites us readers to remove them from the ankles and wrists of a future generation, yet what shimmers brilliantly within Matthew’s book is a compassion, imagination, and insight that may just be the beacon of light we need to help better steer our ship into a brighter future.
What is most exciting about the achievement of Solarium is that these vitally important literary benchmarks are the primary mechanics of what good fiction should embark upon as its objective, one which Matthew wildly succeeds at realizing with his impressive debut novel.
Solarium explores the intersection between the maladaptive bigoted inculcation of a racist American will (a systemic pedagogical education of generationally exchanged learned hatred) and the socio/cultural rise of the militarization of a destructive exclusionary modality of repressive tribal ideology in an attempt to not necessarily aim its well conceptualized form of a novel doubling as a brilliantly urgent literarily constructed critical theory to openly unravel a panoptic look into the heaping depravity of the deeply functional systemic aspects of how racism and privilege has been built into the masonry of the hegemonic power structures of the very framework of the American empire, which is not to say that the book does not illuminate these macroscopic themes, as it does with a profoundly well articulated, creatively composed sense of rationalism, but Solarium also serves as a heartbreaking, ground level, character driven fictional case study exploring how the mechanics of hatred within empire are not only systemically interwoven variables built into the patchwork of civilization, but they are also outlined within the text to be shown as horrific draconian intellectual values that have somehow failed to fully decay in the bog of failed history which we are able to clearly uncover in Matthew’s marvelous book, which we observe are concepts that are taught and passed from generation to generation and in many cases passed from fathers to sons and what these discoveries within the world of the book reveals is that in order to change the faults of a hateful and privileged system manufactured by controlling interests intended to prohibit equal access to prosperity, opportunity, love, inclusion, and the equality of future generations, it is our responsibility, not just as readers but as compassionate human beings to fight the very roots of racism on the ground in which they are sown.
Solarium is a deeply personal work that, as I understand it, relative to it being positively characterized as “philosophical fiction,” is that the existential function of philosophy at work in the book is being explored, not simply as a circular practice of theory for the sake of theory, instead the “philosophy,” or the central concerns of the book are being practiced as an applied approach to seeking some measurable consequentialist outcome of what the relationship that a particular philosophy holds to the evaluation of a dilemma as it provides new possible meaning, thus Matthew is performing the important act in his fiction of grounding philosophy as a practical application in the world capable of provoking change within the larger historical discourse around it rather than simply allowing the function of philosophical fiction to thrive merely as a propulsive theoretical discourse whose only outcome is the construction of further discourse, rather here it is being used to create real change or new possible meaning.
It is important for readers to know that the stakes are high when it comes to what I believe Matthew is attempting to achieve with his book and while Solarium is beautifully dressed with a luminous array of “metafictional pyrotechnics” dancing vibrantly both inside as well as outside of The Human Theater, these marvelously realized structurally poetic and literary techniques are never removed from their function in that they each serve to tell us a new story that radiates with necessity, urgency, timelessness, courage, creativity and vision which reminds us that books are not only dangerous, but books such as Solarium dare us to not only newly perceive the world, but Solarium also dares us to go out and change the world around us.
Matthew’s book is structured with a beautifully realized complex arching narrative geometry that fits skillfully into a newly emerging “genre” of books working in a post-structuralist/ meta-modern paradigm in which the themes of meaning and the future of books themselves about books relative to our current capitalist drives toward a humanity consumed by the emergence of firm cultural divisions coupled with the accelerated absorption by a looming technological singularity that puts at risk the future of books, as well as potentially jeopardizes the means in which we cooperatively relate across deep rooted divisiveness with one another as a species thus, Matthew’s debut novel inspired a necessary elevation of spirit which should be required in our books which preserves as well as contributes to the heightened progressive evolution of the very mechanisms of our most sacred outlet for continuing to always strive to more deeply explore our ongoing historical critical discourse on the nature of what it means to human, in this regard, Solarium is a tower of vibratory light and energy beaming out from Matthew’s brilliant lighthouse of language which shines with such luminosity that we are given a great cause for celebration through the consideration of this work in the future of books to not only heal us, but to also more beautifully move us into a brighter future for our species.
There is something very meaningful as well in the early “arching narrative geometry” in which the protagonist, while coming of age, under a prevailing nefarious technocratic organization that claims books should not be read as they can “consume the intellect,” as well as “implant seeds of deception,” this, the Human Theater software is designed to automatically produce intensified lateralization/ self-care/ mental equilibrium, yet as we meet Bib, our protagonist who navigates the challenging themes of privilege/ literature/technology/race/love/mortality/trauma,
we find in his stories that he leans into literature for connection/ insight into the tradition of exploring human meaning through literature, and we learn that our great books are all founded upon our conflicts/ triumphs with these deeply human qualities, thus if H.T. were to prevail, this would remove from us the very vital creative processes we use as a species to share and explore these complexities, furthermore if books were eliminated as the grandiose mirrors of our experiences it would deaden us to more deeply mine what it means to be human, thus we would lose our grasp of what it means to be human without books, thus for H.T. and the other dominant hegemonic power structures, the species becomes easier to control and divide through the proliferation of devices such as bigotry/racism/etc. hence the value of books/literature as we see so well on display in Solarium, serves as the means by which we capture/record/express the existential potentials for better and worse to become a central utility required for the sustainability of both species and civilization. These ideas, to me seem to be alive in Solarium with such exuberance and care that this book is a must add to everyone’s “to be read,” pile!
Phillip Freedenberg
Author of
America and the Cult of the Cactus Boots: A Diagnostic
July 2023
Buffalo, NY
July 21, 2023
Disclaimer: This review is not a true review. It is more of a summary composed of the author’s own words. Call it an enthusiastic proclamation. I leave reviewing to the real reviewers. I am simply sharing my enthusiasm for the work with this summary / prose collage.
*
DO NOT PARTICIPATE IN THE PRIMITIVE PRACTICE OF READING!!!
Readers are Sadists, Extremists and Terrorists. Books create sickness in the mind. Those who read come into disagreement with themselves and, thus, with reality.
Don’t you want to feel happier? More relaxed? Return to reality?
This is a contagion. An infection spreading. You are consuming ancient pathogens previously called, in a more primitive time, “philosophy,” “literature,” and “poetry.” Don’t you want to patch up the gaping wound in your cognitive functioning that swells and expands? Reading is an outdated mode of knowledge-absorption. It is no longer accepted in our New Society.
That is why we have the “HUMAN THEATRE.” The Solution. A sure way to put an end to this despicable antiquated practice of reading books. No longer will books consume the intellect planting seeds of deception along the way. No longer will one have to feel bored. Boredom being the source of meaninglessness, depression and loneliness. The Human Theatre will stimulate the mind. Give the mind exactly what it needs. Stimulation. Not boredom. Not meaninglessness. No, none of that.
No longer will individuals delude themselves into thinking they truly under What Is and What Isn’t. Deluding themselves into thinking, they have gained perspective and a better understanding of themselves. Delusion and resistance. Resistance against higher education. The development of dangerous beliefs.
But thankfully there is hope. There is the Human Theatre. Mr. Feeds Mobs’ Human Theatre. A software that ensures the safety and security of the children. An affordable and sustainable surgery that will provide hope once more for the hopeless. A virtual reality that enhances right brain control. Emotional management, stress moderation, efficient problem-solving, technological innovation, and the great equality of all things. All it takes is willing participation and a small incision.
With over two million virtual-reality channels where, through this quick and painless procedure, all five human stimuli are engaged in a 100% human body-mind experience. Be your own God. Meet God. A lifetime of content!
Of course, there is some resistance. S.O.B. — the Society of Bibliophiles. Isn’t there always? How nice would it be if the Human Theatre could exist without opposition? But no, the S.O.B exist and they have to oppose. Proclaiming that the Human Theatre spits in the face of human dignity and splits the human soul into two. Everyone condensed into one computerized singularity — arbitrarily herded into a procrustean carnage of individual desires. How dramatic. These crusaders clutching their beloved books to their chests. They want us to fail. They want the Great Unplugging.
And then there’s Bib. A young man journaling away. A diarist keeping one ongoing. Is he a rogue signal sent to disrupt the Human Theatre servers with his literary tale? Is he the one that will bring about change? What do we know about Bib? Bib catalogues. The phenomena of his life: objects, people, and places, organizing them into strict categories of being and reality that he could pocket and retrieve at will. Perhaps it’s rebellion against the unalterable feeling of loneliness. A loneliness felt by someone suffering from muteness(a sort of slurring and sputtering of the speech). A disability which made Bib retreat inside the underground fortress of his mind.
One could almost describe him as “papery,” or as having the sort of body that could easily be “torn” up into tiny pieces with a dull, drab, and pastel complexion. Bib attends a university where his imagined world transforms into coherent reality. He studies philosophy. He enjoys the process of immersion. Immersing himself into paragraphs and sentences. To lose himself in the lighthouse of language. To lay awake long in the night, by the light of his bedroom lamp, sitting until his legs fell asleep and his back grew stiff from all the reading! Swallowing and gluttonously devouring cornucopias of absurd ideas, each book a different entrée. To fill even the most minute of clockwork spaces with his irregular reading habits. Refusing to conform to the Human Theatre and wanting to remain unplugged. To remain faithful to grasping books in his hands. Thumbing through the spine. Sliding his finger over its bindings. Without them, he would collapse into utter meaninglessness.
Is Bib’s diary a reliable account of reality? Can we trust the words jotted down? Reflections of a misfit from his intellectual, internal hideout. A diary, much like a novel, is not written to tell you what to think, but how to think.
This novel rips the thin curtain dividing the living from the dead. It is about both. Life and Death. Reality vs. Imagined Reality. It is a thesis on escape and solitude as a philosophical concept. It is a work which looks at our own inherent violence. At the prospect of digitizing consciousness. It focuses on ideas of assimilation and oneness. It is also a cautionary tale of technological advancement. A coming-of-age story. It is about the central character’s desire to escape his whiteness and the White Man’s Ideological-Machinery. It is also about his sister, mother, father and both of his grandparents. It is about love, even if the lead character finds in a mortuary with a young woman majoring in thanatology. It is about a poem written but delivered to a wrong address, opened by a dumbfounded insurance adjustor in New Orleans. It is about a private diary of all his dreams, nightmares, and fantasies, dreamscapes on which the adventurous sleeping-self embarks. It is an opportunity to examine a library. The ability to take a swim or rather drown, in Bib’s private library. It is about religious concerns and familial commitments. Power and power struggles. Boundaries and the traumatic “splitting” from The Brothers Karamazov. It is about books. Reading. Letters forming words, forming lines forming cubed tableaus of meaning. It is about the examination of dehumanized attachment. It is about an ascetic acolyte in this hermetic cell, finally able to peer through a hefty aperture from which he could see the world without it crushing him. It is about placement and displacement. About feeling like there never existed a place for our protagonist. Freedom. Fate. Paralyzed Possibilities.
If you favorite thing in the world is reading. If you are the type to read a book in your closet, holding a flashlight up to the pages. Unable to go a day without reading sentences, lines, paragraphs, without installing yourself within a world that was not your own. If you clothe yourself in the garments of literature and huddle near the hearth of your own private library. Pick up this book and immerse. Light up a Marlboro (cigarette is optional) and partake in the pleasurable high asphyxiating under the tree with this book. Through books, we can escape the inescapability of existence. Not to mention that this book accentuates the power we, as humans, possess to enlighten. There is something to learn. Something to grasp. A reminder here and a relatable psychological analysis worthy of thinking over in another.
“This book is a growing florescent light, whose strobes painfully jabs at our feeble eyes with a sharp and corrosive edge. Read Me Now it cries.”
This book send ripples of stimulus down to your toes.
5/5
*
DO NOT PARTICIPATE IN THE PRIMITIVE PRACTICE OF READING!!!
Readers are Sadists, Extremists and Terrorists. Books create sickness in the mind. Those who read come into disagreement with themselves and, thus, with reality.
Don’t you want to feel happier? More relaxed? Return to reality?
This is a contagion. An infection spreading. You are consuming ancient pathogens previously called, in a more primitive time, “philosophy,” “literature,” and “poetry.” Don’t you want to patch up the gaping wound in your cognitive functioning that swells and expands? Reading is an outdated mode of knowledge-absorption. It is no longer accepted in our New Society.
That is why we have the “HUMAN THEATRE.” The Solution. A sure way to put an end to this despicable antiquated practice of reading books. No longer will books consume the intellect planting seeds of deception along the way. No longer will one have to feel bored. Boredom being the source of meaninglessness, depression and loneliness. The Human Theatre will stimulate the mind. Give the mind exactly what it needs. Stimulation. Not boredom. Not meaninglessness. No, none of that.
No longer will individuals delude themselves into thinking they truly under What Is and What Isn’t. Deluding themselves into thinking, they have gained perspective and a better understanding of themselves. Delusion and resistance. Resistance against higher education. The development of dangerous beliefs.
But thankfully there is hope. There is the Human Theatre. Mr. Feeds Mobs’ Human Theatre. A software that ensures the safety and security of the children. An affordable and sustainable surgery that will provide hope once more for the hopeless. A virtual reality that enhances right brain control. Emotional management, stress moderation, efficient problem-solving, technological innovation, and the great equality of all things. All it takes is willing participation and a small incision.
With over two million virtual-reality channels where, through this quick and painless procedure, all five human stimuli are engaged in a 100% human body-mind experience. Be your own God. Meet God. A lifetime of content!
Of course, there is some resistance. S.O.B. — the Society of Bibliophiles. Isn’t there always? How nice would it be if the Human Theatre could exist without opposition? But no, the S.O.B exist and they have to oppose. Proclaiming that the Human Theatre spits in the face of human dignity and splits the human soul into two. Everyone condensed into one computerized singularity — arbitrarily herded into a procrustean carnage of individual desires. How dramatic. These crusaders clutching their beloved books to their chests. They want us to fail. They want the Great Unplugging.
And then there’s Bib. A young man journaling away. A diarist keeping one ongoing. Is he a rogue signal sent to disrupt the Human Theatre servers with his literary tale? Is he the one that will bring about change? What do we know about Bib? Bib catalogues. The phenomena of his life: objects, people, and places, organizing them into strict categories of being and reality that he could pocket and retrieve at will. Perhaps it’s rebellion against the unalterable feeling of loneliness. A loneliness felt by someone suffering from muteness(a sort of slurring and sputtering of the speech). A disability which made Bib retreat inside the underground fortress of his mind.
One could almost describe him as “papery,” or as having the sort of body that could easily be “torn” up into tiny pieces with a dull, drab, and pastel complexion. Bib attends a university where his imagined world transforms into coherent reality. He studies philosophy. He enjoys the process of immersion. Immersing himself into paragraphs and sentences. To lose himself in the lighthouse of language. To lay awake long in the night, by the light of his bedroom lamp, sitting until his legs fell asleep and his back grew stiff from all the reading! Swallowing and gluttonously devouring cornucopias of absurd ideas, each book a different entrée. To fill even the most minute of clockwork spaces with his irregular reading habits. Refusing to conform to the Human Theatre and wanting to remain unplugged. To remain faithful to grasping books in his hands. Thumbing through the spine. Sliding his finger over its bindings. Without them, he would collapse into utter meaninglessness.
Is Bib’s diary a reliable account of reality? Can we trust the words jotted down? Reflections of a misfit from his intellectual, internal hideout. A diary, much like a novel, is not written to tell you what to think, but how to think.
This novel rips the thin curtain dividing the living from the dead. It is about both. Life and Death. Reality vs. Imagined Reality. It is a thesis on escape and solitude as a philosophical concept. It is a work which looks at our own inherent violence. At the prospect of digitizing consciousness. It focuses on ideas of assimilation and oneness. It is also a cautionary tale of technological advancement. A coming-of-age story. It is about the central character’s desire to escape his whiteness and the White Man’s Ideological-Machinery. It is also about his sister, mother, father and both of his grandparents. It is about love, even if the lead character finds in a mortuary with a young woman majoring in thanatology. It is about a poem written but delivered to a wrong address, opened by a dumbfounded insurance adjustor in New Orleans. It is about a private diary of all his dreams, nightmares, and fantasies, dreamscapes on which the adventurous sleeping-self embarks. It is an opportunity to examine a library. The ability to take a swim or rather drown, in Bib’s private library. It is about religious concerns and familial commitments. Power and power struggles. Boundaries and the traumatic “splitting” from The Brothers Karamazov. It is about books. Reading. Letters forming words, forming lines forming cubed tableaus of meaning. It is about the examination of dehumanized attachment. It is about an ascetic acolyte in this hermetic cell, finally able to peer through a hefty aperture from which he could see the world without it crushing him. It is about placement and displacement. About feeling like there never existed a place for our protagonist. Freedom. Fate. Paralyzed Possibilities.
If you favorite thing in the world is reading. If you are the type to read a book in your closet, holding a flashlight up to the pages. Unable to go a day without reading sentences, lines, paragraphs, without installing yourself within a world that was not your own. If you clothe yourself in the garments of literature and huddle near the hearth of your own private library. Pick up this book and immerse. Light up a Marlboro (cigarette is optional) and partake in the pleasurable high asphyxiating under the tree with this book. Through books, we can escape the inescapability of existence. Not to mention that this book accentuates the power we, as humans, possess to enlighten. There is something to learn. Something to grasp. A reminder here and a relatable psychological analysis worthy of thinking over in another.
“This book is a growing florescent light, whose strobes painfully jabs at our feeble eyes with a sharp and corrosive edge. Read Me Now it cries.”
This book send ripples of stimulus down to your toes.
5/5
December 1, 2023
Sui generis.
Books about bibliophiles ring too true for me. I dream of books, bathe in books, eat books without condiments, I drink books black, without cream sugar or a wedge of lemon, I take them straight, not watered down. I burn only abridged editions. I store books in my car, my shoes, my closet, under the bed, in the bed, between the couch cushions, and even within my own body. So I identify with the book-crazed narrator of this story. Books are an escape, and a gateway leading out of the labyrinth of loneliness, leading only to a more complex loneliness.
This novel posits, in a variety of forms and through a myriad of methods, what literature means in the modern age. He ropes in a wide-ranging deep-dive into racial politics, the role of technology, and the depiction of a tyrannical family life. There are uncertain questions about religion left up in the air. But this is not a novel with easy answers. One must excavate certain substrata, which is not to say that the surface layer plot is not interesting. It is unpredictable. The strange absence of ebooks pervades a dystopian, post-Fahrenheit-451 world, where Netflix, I mean The Human Theatre has taken over society's collective unconscious.
I was a little confused about the character named Paprika, who was a very liberal girlfriend, who simply disappears and reappears. She does not seem to count toward the narrator's loneliness quota. How could someone so anti-social as Bib end up with such a rocking hot GF who is totally down for anything physical? I felt that it could have been explained. Maybe they shared a love of books and philosophy. But her character seemed a bit like a convenience. Though her contributions to the discussion were interesting. When Bib suffers from muteness, how did he meet such a soul mate, and why does he let her vanish from his life without so much as an acknowledgement of her absence?
This is not the first time I have read about humanity disappearing into a virtual world of their own making. The way this is contrasted with reading is thought-provoking.
There were too many typos in this book, so I wish there would have been one more passthrough to catch them.
In terms of editing, it could have been tighter. There were many scenes which provided a nice rhythm or even a shock to the reader's sensibilities, but the chronology was muddled, or at least unclear in a few parts. I am thinking of the character Abdullah (or however it was spelled), and how he seemed like a latent homosexualized friend, and I don't think I am reading into it because there is talk of love toward the last pages of the book between them. And their connection to Feeds Mobs, or the inventor of the Human Theatre. What, exactly, were they trying to accomplish going into his taxidermy headquarters and carrying around a decapitated bat? The scene was stirring, psychedelic, but also seemingly random.
I loved certain parts of the book enough to let most of the inconsistencies slide by. You have to remember that this is a disaffected, unreliable narrator, who is so immersed in books I would not be surprised if reality were ultimately meaningless to him. The Society of Bibliophiles was an interesting addition, contributing a layer of metafiction and letting in a fresh breeze of worldbuilding. Finally, the blind librarian and the despotic father, while emotionally resonant, were ultimately mouthpieces for the authors interests in philosophy, race, family, and religion. The diatribes were pretty entertaining, and the sentence level craft was excellent, barring a few hiccups where a missing word or extra word marred an otherwise superb sentence.
I would love to read more by the author. He is not a slave to form or cliché like many debut authors. He seeks after the imaginative diction and the hidden texture of language to provide a titillating and ultimately enjoyable experience for the reader. Sacrificing character development for an in-your-face account of flawed characters speaking their mind, and leaving enough open-ended questions floating in the reader's blasted psyche to keep them thinking about it long after the final page.
Books about bibliophiles ring too true for me. I dream of books, bathe in books, eat books without condiments, I drink books black, without cream sugar or a wedge of lemon, I take them straight, not watered down. I burn only abridged editions. I store books in my car, my shoes, my closet, under the bed, in the bed, between the couch cushions, and even within my own body. So I identify with the book-crazed narrator of this story. Books are an escape, and a gateway leading out of the labyrinth of loneliness, leading only to a more complex loneliness.
This novel posits, in a variety of forms and through a myriad of methods, what literature means in the modern age. He ropes in a wide-ranging deep-dive into racial politics, the role of technology, and the depiction of a tyrannical family life. There are uncertain questions about religion left up in the air. But this is not a novel with easy answers. One must excavate certain substrata, which is not to say that the surface layer plot is not interesting. It is unpredictable. The strange absence of ebooks pervades a dystopian, post-Fahrenheit-451 world, where Netflix, I mean The Human Theatre has taken over society's collective unconscious.
I was a little confused about the character named Paprika, who was a very liberal girlfriend, who simply disappears and reappears. She does not seem to count toward the narrator's loneliness quota. How could someone so anti-social as Bib end up with such a rocking hot GF who is totally down for anything physical? I felt that it could have been explained. Maybe they shared a love of books and philosophy. But her character seemed a bit like a convenience. Though her contributions to the discussion were interesting. When Bib suffers from muteness, how did he meet such a soul mate, and why does he let her vanish from his life without so much as an acknowledgement of her absence?
This is not the first time I have read about humanity disappearing into a virtual world of their own making. The way this is contrasted with reading is thought-provoking.
There were too many typos in this book, so I wish there would have been one more passthrough to catch them.
In terms of editing, it could have been tighter. There were many scenes which provided a nice rhythm or even a shock to the reader's sensibilities, but the chronology was muddled, or at least unclear in a few parts. I am thinking of the character Abdullah (or however it was spelled), and how he seemed like a latent homosexualized friend, and I don't think I am reading into it because there is talk of love toward the last pages of the book between them. And their connection to Feeds Mobs, or the inventor of the Human Theatre. What, exactly, were they trying to accomplish going into his taxidermy headquarters and carrying around a decapitated bat? The scene was stirring, psychedelic, but also seemingly random.
I loved certain parts of the book enough to let most of the inconsistencies slide by. You have to remember that this is a disaffected, unreliable narrator, who is so immersed in books I would not be surprised if reality were ultimately meaningless to him. The Society of Bibliophiles was an interesting addition, contributing a layer of metafiction and letting in a fresh breeze of worldbuilding. Finally, the blind librarian and the despotic father, while emotionally resonant, were ultimately mouthpieces for the authors interests in philosophy, race, family, and religion. The diatribes were pretty entertaining, and the sentence level craft was excellent, barring a few hiccups where a missing word or extra word marred an otherwise superb sentence.
I would love to read more by the author. He is not a slave to form or cliché like many debut authors. He seeks after the imaginative diction and the hidden texture of language to provide a titillating and ultimately enjoyable experience for the reader. Sacrificing character development for an in-your-face account of flawed characters speaking their mind, and leaving enough open-ended questions floating in the reader's blasted psyche to keep them thinking about it long after the final page.
March 26, 2024
At times I thought this book was going to collapse under its own weight, but it has one of those rare endings that makes everything before it better.
May 11, 2025
I have never read anything quite like this. I cannot believe I am not seeing any reviews by women. This is a great, thought provoking book.
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