INCEL: A Novel

by ARX-Han

"ARX-Han, in particular, is a formidable talent, as if Bret Easton Ellis decided to make a deep study of Reddit and the byzantine off-roads of evolutionary psychology. INCEL is, as its title suggests, the story of an incel. It is remarkably ambitious, plenty unsettling, and mordantly funny." Ross Barkan, novelist and journalist, writing in The Mars Review of Books ('Where Have All the Rude Boys Gone?') Suicidally depressed, twenty-two year old anon has settled on a if he can't find a way to lose his virginity by the date of his next birthday, he’s going to pick a fight with the biggest, baddest man he can find, and get himself killed.

For anon, social alienation is a simple matter of unvarnished America in the year 2012 is a brutal Darwinian hellscape where every man is engaged in a ruthless competition for access to attractive females-and losers like him are left to rot.

As he begins his first year of graduate studies in evolutionary psychology, the looming threat of his personal deadline mutates into a totalizing obsession to validate his theories and achieve sex for the first time. Convinced that he's discovered a special method for "hacking" the mating patterns in human behavior, he starts upon a path that only threatens to further destabilize his already fragile psyche, hurtling him toward a crucible of his own design.

★ ★ ★ From literary newcomer ARX-Han, INCEL represents the absolute frontier in transgressive psychological fiction. Savage, hilarious, and everything in between, INCEL is a pitch-dark comedy about one man's harrowing quest to ascend.

⚠ UPDATED 2nd EDITION RELEASE

Genres: Fiction

322 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 11, 2023

Reviews

[Greg Watson · Rating 5 out of 5]

The novel under review is titled INCEL, or as I like to call it, my autobiography. I begin with a bit of humor because if readers have encountered the term INCEL, it has been in the form of a MEME or social media putdown. INCEL stands for an involuntary celibate male. A man (usually younger) would like a wife, girlfriend, or someone to be intimate with, but he cannot attract such a woman. While it is fun to joke about the plight of the INCEL, the reality of hordes of generally miserable young men starved for female attention is one that should elicit alarm, not laughter.

It is sometimes supposed that a misogyny unites INCELS. It is as if a group of men has joined forces out of a shared loathing of women. More accurately, INCELS are united by a shared inability to attract females.

If there is one overriding theme of the novel, it is the non-personhood of its main character. By his name, anon, he does not exist in the eyes of humanity. He is forced to contend with his agony in the face of a society indifferent to his struggles and indifferent to him. ARX-HAN does a fine job of depicting the life of anon. He also links the struggles of anon to universal human suffering. It may be that the struggles of the INCEL seem remote from our experience. However, one is reminded of the closing line in Ralph Ellison’s The Invisible Man: “Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?”

INCEL: The Novel — A Stylistic Masterclass

Before examining the book in greater detail, I must comment on its style. Indie novels have a reputation (sometimes deserved) for being rushed and poorly edited. Such is not the case with the book under review. Great care has been taken to craft every sentence. ARX-HAN demonstrates a mastery of language use.

INCEL is also a novel of ideas, philosophical and especially scientific. ARX-HAN incorporates ideas from various scientific disciplines, such as biology, neuroscience, and especially evolutionary psychology. Readers like me, approaching the book from a liberal arts background, may encounter unfamiliar scientific language. But that’s not a bad thing. It is recommended that non-scientific readers keep Google handy to query unfamiliar terms.

The Characteristics of an INCEL

If there is one overriding characteristic of anon, it is his lack of skill in casual conversation or small talk. Part of this stems from ineptitude, which increases with each unsuccessful encounter with a female. On a deeper level, anon lacks skill in small talk because he does not care about it. He also lacks a desire to associate with others based on his cumulative social failures. When talking with anon, women apply (as anon imagines it) a filtering process by which his lack of skill in small talk is detected. He describes one encounter as follows: “Something in my words triggers the programmatic death of the interaction, and a seemingly promising opportunity disintegrates into ashes.” (1)

A unique sense of fatigue also characterizes the life of an INCEL. He is tired but not from overexertion. He is exhausted because of a sense of lack. His fatigue is due to “something that really should be present, but ultimately is not.” And “there is a particular type of exhaustion that comes from the prolonged absence” of female attention. Over time, this prolonged absence manifests itself in “a progressive load that presses on the structure of your psyche until the walls of reason start to buckle from within.” (2)

The INCEL is also characterized by a need to find validation or acknowledgment of his personhood from others, especially females. This need pushes anon to a level of desperation. In one encounter, anon inwardly observes, “I’m talking to the ninth girl that I’ve approached when my brain catches her staring at me like I’m an actual person.” This female acknowledgment of his personhood creates in anon “a warm, comfortable sort of feeling: the type of smoothly flowing opiate that gently washes over the folds of your cerebral cortex, dipping the whole of your sensorium in the sweet nectar of dopaminergic reward.” Unable to find acknowledgment of his personhood within himself, anon finds it “reflected in the lives of others.” (3)

Closely related to anon’s need for female validation is his sense of neediness and his inability to outwardly mask it behind a facade of indifference. His taller, muscular childhood friend Jason is able to attract women with seemingly little effort. Jason adopts a front of indifference toward women, masking any emotional need. In approaching women, anon attempts to mirror Jason’s attitude, but he is unable to hide his neediness because he is starving for female attention.

A pornography addiction also characterizes the life of anon. ARX-HAN skillfully dissects the psychology of porn addiction as a compulsion. “If a sense of agency is the feeling that you have when you are making choices, a compulsion is its opposite: a behavioral loop that’s achieved a relative degree of autonomy within the space of your mind, a backroom deal between your base desires and your better self.” (4)

Perhaps the most significant characteristic of anon’s life is his sense of shared misery with others. In Sartre’s play No Exit, three individuals die and go to hell. Sartre imagines hell as a hotel room. These three individuals are together in one room for all eternity, leading to the famous line of the play, “Hell is other people.” For anon, though, “the best thing about hell is that it contains other people.” Through hours spent online, he shares the misery of others. (5)

The novel has much more to ponder than what is presented here. INCEL is a stylishly written novel that skillfully connects the suffering of one individual to universal human suffering. It is not only a novel worth reading, but one that is worthy of careful reading.

Notes

ARX-HAN, INCEL: A Novel. POSITIVE XP LLC, 2023, p.11.

ARX-HAN, INCEL, p. 161.

ARX-HAN, INCEL, p. 187.

ARX-HAN, INCEL, p. 197.

ARX-HAN, INCEL, p. 200.

[L.A. Labuschagne · Rating 3 out of 5]

This breakout novel is profoundly accurate to the lived experience of that guy you meet on campus, buy study notes from, then copy and sell to everyone else at half price.

Incel is the story of that guy, known only as Anon, and his ongoing quest to rebuild western civilisation by any means necessary (getting laid). It’s a heartfelt and mildly overwrought novel about masculinity in the modern day, but it’s also a selection of 4chan posts knitted together into something that resembles the fractured psyche of that guy whose notes I plagiarised for strip club money. It’s pretty hilarious.

In terms of prose, it reads like 300 page academic article on debunked pseudoscience and pseudoscience so niche it’s retroactively debunked by the fact that nobody with a sex life has ever heard of it. Does this get tiring after a while? Yes. Does this alienate readers without a tertiary education? Probably also yes. Is it apropos of protagonist to a level I haven’t seen since Lolita, also yes. The frequent fight scenes provide a nice break from it, too.

Occasionally you’ll notice the prose jumps from first to third person and back again. Is this really annoying? No, not really, but you notice it just like the protagonist notices his distinct lack of game.

The difference between me and this guy is that when I go pub crawling in an overpriced H&M shirt, I make it work.

This is the basis of our friendship, what makes it possible if I remember that motif from the book correctly.

Also I kept envisioning the protagonist in a bucket hat, despite this never being mentioned in the prose. Anon seems like a bucket hat kind of White guy. That is, bad.

Overall, so I recommend Incel? Like, sure, I can see exactly why this book did not take 4chan by storm. Nobody likes to read a master’s thesis about a funhouse mirror designed especially to call the kettle black. Even if there are fight scenes and some remarkable tender emotional moments. But on the other hand, for what it is, Incel is one of the better books of the /lit/ renaissance in that it has punctuation in the right places and also isn’t an obvious grift.

Read it if you like Houllebecq, “intelligent” dark humor or a self-aware take on the manosphere. Don’t read it if you don’t like those things, but by a copy anyway to restore western civilisation and help anons everywhere get laid.

I give Incel 5/10, which I’m rounding up to 3 stars in the spirit of men everywhere who round up some very different measurements. Could never be me though lmao.

[Evan Agovino · Rating 4 out of 5]

Somewhere between a warning, a send-up and a polemic. Also a period piece, which while I don’t hold against it at all, have completely warped what this character type even looks and acts like in today’s America. I think the book got lost in its academic rabbit holes and some points, and wore its ridiculousness on its sleeve more than I would prefer, but really one of the more honest and probing novels I’ve read in some time

[Geofrey Crow · Rating 4 out of 5]

Incel is a difficult book. Not that it's difficult to read on a sentence-by-sentence basis. No, ARX-Han has crafted a highly readable style for this difficult novel.

What's difficult about it, then? What makes it difficult is that it places the reader directly inside the thought process of its protagonist. It lets the incel show us his own self-understanding. A little like Dostoevsky’s Underground Man, there's no trace of an authorial voice pointing out, “Here's where anon’s thought process goes wrong.”

And anon's mind is a deeply uncomfortable place.

Incel

Also like the Underground Man, the protagonist in Incel is unnamed in the text. On the rare occasions when the other characters in the novel call him by name, they merely address him as “anon,” because of course they do. For the most part the novel is written in the first person, although at tense moments it will switch to second person and really blur the line between you and anon.

So what's your problem? Pretty much what you'd guess from the novel’s title. You are a 22-year-old graduate student in evolutionary psychology (because of course you are) and your virginity has outlasted its welcome. You've decided to commit suicide on your 23rd birthday if you fail to change this situation by the end of the current year.

(And by the way–Incel isn't exactly a laugh-a-minute novel because anon takes himself so seriously. But the passage where he describes his chosen method for suicide really is deliciously funny.)

Most of the novel follows your attempts to get laid, your troubles in convincing your professor and fellow graduate students that your terrifying ideas for research studies are actually really good, and your experiences on the more anonymous ends of the hell known as the Internet. You also meet up with your sister Rachel every once in a while so the two of you can misunderstand each other. And you go drinking with your buddy Jason an awful lot, even though you're well aware that he's a really lousy wingman.

Research

Possibly the clearest picture we get of anon's problem comes when he's telling his fellow grad student, Andrew, all about his research ideas. Starting with some old studies where it was found that human females show physiological signs of arousal when watching recordings of chimps mating, he figures, “Well, why not get a couple of undergraduates together and track the woman's arousal the whole time?”

Andrew explains to him all the reasons this is a bad and even horrifying idea, but anon really doesn't get it.

And he doesn't get it, but he also knows he doesn't get it. He takes the same sort of systematic attitude toward approaching women that he would have liked to apply to an academic study. He tracks how many women he's approached in public, how many numbers he's been able to get, how many dates that's translated to, and how many times he's been able to seal the deal.

Which is really one of the high points of Incel as a novel. It's all in here. The unnatural feeling of forcing yourself into these interactions with total strangers. The feeling that everyone around you is scrutinizing and judging your every movement when all you're doing is trying to act on your most basic drive to connect. The approaches that seem to go so well, that get your hopes up only to lead to nothing at all.

There's a whole record here of types of emotions that rarely get expressed because they're not permissible. The feeling of going home to jerk off to pornography after a failed date with a woman you were only semi-attracted to. It takes an uncommon courage and vulnerability to write passages like this, let alone to put them out in front of the world.

Anon shows some remarkable self-awareness now and then. The word “autistic” gets thrown around a lot in the novel, whatever it means, and one thing it seems to mean is that anon is especially bad at modeling the mental states of others. He thinks about approaching women in terms of an experimental process–which is kind of inevitable when you're walking into these interactions expecting to be shot down over and over and over. On at least one occasion anon talks about how intellectualizing is a defense mechanism we use to shield ourselves from an unbearable pain.

Because the lives of women really are a black box for anon. Either because of his narrow goal-oriented approach, his analysis of everything from an evo psych angle, or simple autism… he has no felt sense of whether he's connecting with a woman or not. He gets better over time, after piling up painful experience on painful experience, but he's never sure what's going on in the other's mind.

Rarely have I ever seen the abyss of a woman's desire get such a painfully real evocation as in this novel.

Science

One of the more interesting little sub-themes of the novel comes from anon's attitude toward stories and literature as a whole. ARX-Han appears to be highly aware of some of the paradoxes in this area, which even if they're not fully developed in this novel might point to a further development in his work.

Anon is a scientist, through and through. He has a clear intellectual commitment to the idea that what really drives our actions is our genes’ need to propagate themselves. He has very little patience for narrative, religious, or metaphorical methods of expressing truth.

On at least two occasions in the novel, the tension between anon's scientific worldview and the fact that he's the narrator in a novel comes tantalizingly near the surface. The first of these comes near the beginning of the novel, where anon gives us a heart-rending story explaining why his friend Jason got into fighting.

But then anon pulls the rug out from under us and says, “No, it's all genes, and stories are meaningless.”

The second time comes quite a bit later in the novel, when anon is chatting up a girl who just so happens to be an undergraduate Political Science major, minoring in Literature. He doesn't say anything to her, but we're treated to some thoughts about how scientific progress will inevitably make literature obsolete. Once again, anon takes it as a given that the ends of literature are better served by scientific knowledge–and once again, he's too worried about feminine judgment to express himself freely.

This line of thought isn't hugely developed in the novel, but it was highly intriguing whenever it showed up. And it sort of underscores the fact that the scientific digressions in the novel never achieve the kind of pathos found when anon encounters a wounded bird that's fallen out of a nest, or a worm that's crawled onto a sidewalk.

Because there is real pathos in the novel. Anon is well aware that people like him are caricatured as emotionless robots. And even though he's intellectual committed to the idea that it's all a matter of genes… he still saves a worm that's crawling over the sidewalk.

Anon never quite seems to work out the tension between his harsh Darwinian worldview and the fact that he's basically a kindhearted person.

The Part About Racism

I realize I've been trying to sweep this under the rug, but it's prominent enough in the novel that it needs to be mentioned. Anon is super racist. Like, enough that I almost stopped reading the novel about 100 pages in, where he spends a few paragraphs on a lengthy description of how much he can't stand the way Chinese people eat and then tries to redefine racism so it doesn't apply to him.

Probably it's inevitable that a novel of this sort will at least glance on the subject of racism. And in anon's defense, even if he's theoretically a racist he's pretty bad at being racist, considering that his best friend is Korean.

So just be aware that's in there.

The End

Incel is a novel about a not-particularly-pleasant character with a not-particularly-pleasant worldview. And while I don't want to go into detail about the end or get into spoiler territory, I will say the ending isn't without hope. Anon realizes, pretty painfully, that his worldview has been lacking and that other people suffer in complex ways that can easily escape his notice.

To sum up, Incel is a brave novel. With this novel, ARX-Han dares to bring light to a kind of experience that usually gets dismissed with a laugh if it's discussed at all. If this makes it a difficult novel it's because it's all too real and it's an all too honest depiction of a type of person who has become all too common.

This is the sort of novel that stares into the abyss. The sort of novel that allows a type of humanity to express its own truth in its own terms, without editorializing or trying to make things pretty. The sort of novel more writers ought to have the courage to write.

[Joshua · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m not sure if it’s entirely a good idea to talk about this kind of thing on platforms that have my real name attached to them (Goodreads and Substack). However, I think to review this book properly, I need to talk about my own experiences surrounding inceldom, and its accompanying nihilist, materialist life philosophy. From the ages of about sixteen to twenty-one, I identified as an incel, or an involuntarily celibate individual. I don’t think I’m an unattractive man, although you can judge for yourself by my profile picture, but a combination of a porn addiction, an obsession with love, and unconventional personality made it impossible for me to form and maintain romantic relationships during that stage of my life. As time wore on, this lack of romantic experience or success led me to increasingly believe that I was defective; there was something wrong with who I was that prevented other people from being attracted to me as they got to know me. The ideologies of the various pills (primarily: red- pickup artistry and seduction techniques, black- nihilistic acceptance that it’s just not meant to be for most people) were appealing during this time of my life. Their reductive materialism that women (and also men) are merely just flesh robots whose buttons you had to figure out how to push offered the dual exit valves of logical, iterated self-improvement (gotta learn the game bro), and nihilism (I was born this way, there’s nothing I can do), which were much more appealing than the difficult road of introspection.
Luckily, over the course of my junior year of college, I was saved by the intervention of Divine Providence. At the beginning of the year, I lost my virginity to a girl from tinder. It was an empty, shitty experience that left me feeling drained for weeks. This showed me that even “winning” in the world that the redpill and the blackpill believed in didn’t amount to much. At the end, I had a stepped into the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, saw a sunbeam shining down onto Jesus’ tomb, and knew I didn’t, and couldn’t believe in materialism anymore.
I have since had meaningful, if not as long lasting as I would have hoped, relationships with wonderful women whom I have loved. However, in the time between relationships, when love seems to have emptied out of the world, it’s easy to fall, if only for a little bit, into the Siren song of those ideologies that I know to be false. Why? And what can I do about it?

These are the questions that the debut novel of ARX-Han, Incel, attempts to answer.

Incel is narrated from the first person (although sometimes second person) perspective of a 22-year-old graduate student in psychology who self-identifies as an incel. The narrator, who is referred to as anon throughout the text is on a quest to lose his virginity before his 23rd birthday. If he does not complete this task, he plans to get into a bar-fight after using an experimental drug that will cause his head to explode if punched.
During most of the novel, it is not easy to have sympathy for anon. A true disciple of materialism, he treats his interactions with everyone, including himself, like they are with machines or inanimate objects. This especially apparent in his attempts to interact with women to get laid. Following the standard pick-up-artist playbook, all anon thinks he needs to do is follow the script enough times, and he will get a women to have sex with him.
What makes anon a somewhat sympathetic character, and what makes this book work in general, is that on some deep level, anon doesn’t actually believe any of this shit, nor does getting what he wants within this framework (sex) actually make him happy. There’s a scene midway through the novel where he rescues an earthworm from drowning. Anon’s best friend is Korean-American, despite anon being a self-proclaimed white supremacist. Anon also loves and respects his sister, while his internal monologue is filled with nothing but disdain for the decision making skills of women. And when anon finally manages to have sex, his mind dwells not on that experience, but on cuddling with his ex-girlfriend. What anon wants in reality is love, which is not something that can be obtained through pick-up artistry, or through his materialist worldview in general.

This theme is where Incel really shines as literature, and as an attempt at deradicalization. What many critiques of radical, “hateful” ideologies fail to do is move beyond this materialist worldview. This is perhaps easiest to understand in terms of racism. Proponents of racism love to point to things like disparate crime outcomes or IQ tests as justification for racist behavior. By engaging the scientific racists on this level, “anti-racists” are implicitly suggesting that if the racists were correct about intelligence disparities, that it would be okay to treat members of that other race as if they were sub-human. This perspective is totally dismissive of the inherent value of the conscious perspective of the other, even if that perspective is radically different from your own. It also doesn’t actually lend itself easily to “debunking” these ideologies, as evidence from the scientific literature can be found to support both the racist and anti-racist views.
Rather I think it is more powerful to axiomatically deny the importance of this shallow materialism. Consciousness has inherent value, even if it is that of someone of a different gender, race, or even species from you. Love and friendship cannot be explained merely mechanistically. There is magic and wonder in this world still.

I only have two minor critiques of Incel. The writing was beautiful throughout, although in a very specific style of that of a heavy internet user. However, I found the switch between the first person and second person perspective to be jarring and slightly unnecessary. This is supposed to be a window into anon’s consciousness, not an attack on our own. Secondly, I also found the afterword to be a little superfluous: the work can stand on its own two feet and doesn’t need a ten-page explication included with the book.

This was a difficult book for me to read. Although I don’t think inceldom or its related ideologies have anything to offer me or other young men anymore, there is still a lot of healing that I need to go through in relation to my own sexuality. At times I found I had to put the book down: I was so viscerally uncomfortable with how the book reminded me of my own past mentality and experiences. Perhaps that’s an indicator of how much healing of done. Or perhaps of how much I still have left to do.

Regardless, I cannot recommend Incel highly enough for its frank deconstruction of radicalization, and its startingly accurate window into the minds of many young men.

[sienna · Rating 4 out of 5]

this book would be almost unreadable to someone who hasn’t spent their entire life on reddit/in grad school/sexually repressed. luckily for me, i exist smack in the middle (one might say the μ) of the target demographic. all of that is to say that it captures something very specific that is NOT for everyone, and is probably not for many at all, but is 1000000% for me. tifa lockhart phenotype fr. if i were to criticize anything, the critique would fall flat bc most things i didn’t like make perfect sense when part of a novel length schizopost - when the prose gets grating and the perspective gets warped, it feels more like realism than flawed writing. i’m ok with that. really, at the end of it all, the book made me fucking sad. i know guys like this - i’ve dated them, i’ve loved them, i’ve hated them, i’ve been them. i don’t know what to say. i’m just sad.


(i must not porn, porn is the mind killer)

[pilleater · Rating 5 out of 5]

The tragedy isn’t new. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe accomplished the tragedy with his 1774 work, The Sorrows of Young Wether, which would later influence the Romantic period. The birth of the novel came about more than three centuries ago, and to this day, we are still fascinated by the technique that we can use printed language to construct creative fiction or prose. What is “novella,” or “new,” can only adapt to what we can do we the medium of the English language and how prose takes form as a new whole. Technology will always increase the potential of creative fiction and prose, and what is new will always transform the way we look at and understand textual art. As an example, 2023’s “Incel: A Novel,” found exclusively on Amazon.com delivers common tragedy with a new spin.

An “incel” is a common trope to describe a young male who is an “involuntary celibate.” The term is controversial itself, and I do not agree with its connotation and subculture that push it as a real subject. But the slang of being an “incel” is a placeholder to describe a man like Wether and his romantic pursuit of love and purpose in 2023, which is as old as the novel.

The author of the work, “ARX-Han,” markets the book as a comedy rather than a tragedy, like we are supposed to laugh and find the novel funny. However, there is a bleak seriousness in the text, as the first page is a disclosure warning the reader that “this is not a manifesto.” This assumes that ARX-Han wrote a political tract for an insecure audience he could have responsibility over. There is even a resources appendix at the end that includes a list of suicide hot-line phone numbers and websites. Both these warnings persuade me that ARX-Han is a Christian apologetic himself and wrote this more akin to The Screwtape Letters to save disbelievers.

The story revolves around a 22-year-old anonymous boy who wants to have sex at all costs. The setting takes place in the year 2012, a phenomenon year where the world would end. He believes that he can have sex by applying pick-up artistry skills of seduction. This, I believe, is ultimately true in the American landscape because of its hyper-fixation of capitalism and its influence on ethics in all aspects of American life. Men and women are indeed different and liberal democratic ideas of universalism distort and destroy natural pair bondings and confuse people further as exploitative objects of supply and demand. Max Weber, Émile Durkheim, and even Karl Marx have all predicted the same future situation we have now in 2023. America is indeed a failed state, and this novel could only accelerate that drive toward the suicide of capitalism.

American society tends to propagate an ideology that citizens are free to pursue whatever markets they want to commit to at the expense that there is no guarantee that profit is available for security or investment. Individualism projects itself upon society and people follow desires that don’t add up to reality. If a woman had a bad upbringing, she becomes a psychologist. If a man loves working out, he becomes a coach. Neither a psychologist nor a coach produces anything for people or society, and these jobs rely on private sector interest and borrowed money, antithetical to the concept of society. The psychologist and the coach rely on their selfish arrogance and continue their ignorance of an economic reality. If people just want to masturbate all day, what is stopping them from pursuing the dream of becoming a porn star? Jobs are created out of thin air, and nothing is ever produced for people or by them. Profit constantly needs a victim to exploit. This is the American state, and it relies on the same type of liberal projection also found in the narrative of Incel.

This common story of a man becoming “red-pilled” and destroying society is a popular trend in 2023 fiction. Matt Pegas wrote “Dragon Day” about an insecure college kid turned suicidal killer, Dan Baltic wrote “NUTCRANKR” about a businessman getting psychotic revenge on a lover and her feminism, and Alex Kazemi wrote “New Millennium Boyz,” about a 90’s nostalgic trip turning into self-destruction. Incel follows these same themes of “masculinity,” shame, and anger. Radicalization is the major thesis of these four novels.

In Incel’s Afterword, ARX-Han writes, “My friend took his life when he was twenty-three years old. After he died, I went to his home and read his suicide note… …I knew then the power of words.” The motivation text was written with the intent to save lives and to realize that the current generation of young people is headed in the wrong direction because of radicalization. To quote ARX-Han further, “I recognized the pain in these anonymous, digitized voices; the swirling vortex of torment, entitlement, and rage that seems so effective in activating the latent combustibility brooding in the minds of many a young man. …had I found the ghost of my friend?” The millennial generation could be described as internet prisoners, where the influence of Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube makes everyone “famous” one way or another. This arrogance plays out in the selfishness of the liberal mind and is projected with parasocial relationships and fake forms of freedom that rely on consumption.

ARX-Han takes a note from Jean-Paul Sartre and writes that he is “integrating philosophy with literary expression to directly address the question of nihilism.” This statement alone can only bring up the fact that Incel is, indeed, a Platonic story of hidden homosexuality and virtue ethics. The “homosexuality” in question is the forlorn expression of the suicidal friend, and the text is a dialogue between an abstract form of Socrates seducing Alcibiades. If there is “deradicalization” happening, the direction is back to a Platonic society, and not the liberal one we have now.

I wouldn’t say nihilism or rage is evil. Classical nihilism is a good thing and has accelerated production, technology, and mankind’s pursuit of getting rich without capitalism. It’s rather the liberal type of nihilism, and the further distortion of the school of nihilism, that is an issue because it enforces liberalism as a core value to physics and reality. Just like what Jacques Lacan has argued about the Marquis de Sade, the post-Enlightenment can only result in discourse about sadism and desire, and whatever gets in the way is an enemy of the state. This assumes that nihilism made this possible when in reality it was a discourse between the Rousseauian ideology and Sadist criticism.

In Incel’s narrative, the protagonist is referred to by the name “anon.” The novel begins with him trying to ask girls out on a date. Anon is incredibly analytical with his seduction skills by assuming it has to do with precise detail or scientific function (humor is implied). The detailed nature of Anon’s gaze reads like a Cormac McCarthy confession. It becomes a game for Anon, and his depression lingers on with each failed attempt, fixating on the goal and ironically, not the process.

As said in the afterword, Anon’s narrative is somewhat of ARX-Han’s projection of the “incel” or of cause-and-effect anger. At a subconscious level, the text can be read as the author’s hidden feelings about the world, even though it may be presented as “fiction” and not a “manifesto” of any sort. What is interesting is that Anon makes proper citations throughout the text, that without a first-person Gonzo narrative, could instead be presented as actual academic research. Something similar was established with Nick Land and Sadie Plant’s “theory-fiction” of “Cybernetic Culture Research Unit.” It’s a funny device and reminds me of Jack Isidore in Confessions of a Crap Artist. The “novel” is about inward thinking and analytical operation. What I love is Anon’s sexual desires coming out, even though he tries to hide them with rational decision-making. The best thing an author can do is describe eroticism in personal detail, as it enlightens the soul of the reader with beauty and intimacy.

Like in Kazemi’s text, ARX-Han creates a collage of internet-related words found in both incel culture and “human biodiversity” semantics. A skim through the pages reveals words like “Tyler Bateman,” “Reproductive success,” “productive psychology,” and “phenotype.” The words have a common trend of being related to biology and matter. There are also figures of incel culture and concept, which are too long to list here, but apparent in the text if understood out of context of each sentence.

In the text, there are also subtle criticisms of the liberal state, such as “a taxpayer-funded poster presents a multi-ethnic panoply of gleaming white smiles printed over a slogan that commands me to Celebrate Our Differences.” Anon’s observations are correct of the American state, and I don’t think ARX-Han could make an argument that this is not its intention, that there are indeed “hack” professors, and that we lost intellectual interest in the analysis and history. There is no need to follow a society that is decadent and destructive, and I believe the real tragedy behind Incel is the society that attacks Anon’s psyche. What is supposed to be “satire” often condescends the intellectual reader who deconstructs and finds new sincere meanings in the text.

There is renewed interest in the work of Chuck Palahniuk and especially focused on his 1996 novel, Fight Club. This also relates to the work of Jim Goad, who wrote the hatecore punk zine Answer Me!, and later with Jack Donovan and his book, The Way of Men. The focus on Palahniuk is central to understanding Incel and the ideal that men live in a weak society. In sum, it could be justified as “We buy things we don't need with money we don't have to impress people we don't like.” Anon’s downfall is his innocence and his realization he has been exploited this entire time by a corrupted system. What is “transgressive” is a misnomer and rather a raw realization of what is happening to society as it falls. The allusions in the text relate to revolution and death.

It utterly confuses me that such a profound and stupid thing like “hookup culture” could exist at the twilight of American capitalism. It is bizarre that liberalism believes that everyone should be treated as equal individuals, and yet when women want to have sex, they turn into commodification to get raped by men who are confused and looking for a lover. If both “consent” to such rape, it’s supposedly not that and rather mutual murder they enjoy on each side. The hypocrisy leads to distrust, sexism, commodification, and alienation from the very liberal system that believes there should be integrity in everyone, even though a woman’s sexuality relies on masochism and arousal over-penetration. I write this as criticism against incel culture because incels believe sex should be demanded of them like a McDonald’s cheeseburger, even though the hookup culture rewards people with good seduction skills and ethics around liberalism. This is ultimately hypocritical to our understanding of sex and continues to cast people in dark ignorance by letting men treat women as objects and let women choose their killers based upon irrational whims. If a woman denies a man’s courtship and then throws herself at a random brute to get raped for the fun of it, she is evil. This is how I read into Incel, and what I can take from it.

I wrote before that Dan Baltic’s NUTCRANKR was similar to Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Wether. Now when I think about it, I was really trying to address the notion of virtue ethics and why a man needs to make a sacrifice for a woman at all costs. This thesis would go against ARX-Han by stating that suicide is a favorable protest and outcome of a man who follows virtues over false ethics. Yukio Mishima is famous for his outrageous ritual suicide and his dedicated works of the protagonist sacrificing himself for a greater cause. I wouldn’t make any conclusion that there is equality between people or that everyone equally suffers, as that is a Christian understanding of the world. What is missing in Incel is the unapologetic force to act without regret, as shame seems to belittle everything.

Incel is a long read that changes direction often. It is in the tradition of the play, which I can easily see be converted into a movie. Depression plays the role of drama, and can only end in death. Is the novel a critical answer to the incel problem? No. I believe the text starts to read like Jay McInerney once it gets into the middle, and Anon is transformed into a film noir agent when we forget about the lingo.

The best part is chapter 23. “Tuesday after class the redhead texts me she’s free around nine on Thursday night. I decided not to kill myself.” This limited chapter shows how playful the text can be when dealing with an incredibly depressive topic of loneliness and failure. Incel can save readers’ lives and show them that there is something greater than parasocial consumption. The novel can be a remedy.

You can buy Incel on Amazon.com.

-pe

10-22-2023

[WhitePillMedia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm fairly mixed on this. I did enjoy parts of this where we do get more into anon's head and his personality, that stuff is very good, but the academic regurgitation was frustrating to read through. I think anon was too much of a blank slate and the plot was slow and meandering. Touched on some good topics though.

[Icefyre · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first found out about Incel by Arx Han from Twitter. It was a post about how his book, Incel, dealt with being a lonely young man in this cruel modern world.

How cute, I thought to myself. Yet another pile of self published drivel to be shilled on social media. When will these amateur writers learn to give up and stop polluting everyone's timelines with their garbage? So I scrolled past the aforementioned tweet, and that may have been the end, had I not seen another post on /lit/ promoting his book.

Fine, I thought to myself. You win, Arx Han. I'll read your stupid novel. The ebook was only $7 on Amazon anyways, the same as a monthly Netflix subscription with ads.

And I was surprised at how good it was, much better than the crap that passes for TV. It was quite the educational read. Actually, I learned many things from this book: The first thing I learned that was that evolution doesn't give a fuck about me. I learned that violence is the purest thing there is. I got a firsthand view of Jason, the Korean Gigachad, beating the shit out of helpless normies. I learned that I am a fucking monkey.

By the end, I couldn't help but feel pity for our hapless main character, Anon. But it was a pity mixed with revulsion. Anon is an entertaining storyteller, yes, but he is a sick man, trapped within the confines of his own skull. He cannot help but view the world through his diseased lens, and by proxy, his sickness passes to the reader. It is not his viewpoints that are so harmful: those are comical and easily refuted, even by the other characters in the story. No, it is Anon's inability to connect to others, his profound sense of isolation, that is truly damaging.

Let this be known: the true danger of the incel isn't his views, it's his narcissisism. This book is the spiritual sequel to Notes of the Underground by Dostoyevsky.

Incel is a modern classic. It captures the spirit of the digital age, the intersection of meat and cyberspace, Valhalla and the abyss. But at the same time, I absolutely detest it. Anon makes me sick, and he is overly preachy. Jason and Rachel sound like grad students as well, and between the three of them, I wanted to tear my hair out.

It's a shame, really. Despite its flaws, this book deserves accolades, scholarship, and a vast readership. It will achieve none of those things. There are many men who would benefit from reading this book. But they will never read Incel, as such a book can never achieve mainstream success. Popular culture isn't ready for this book, and never will be.

But perhaps you are, reader.

[Keith [on semi hiatus] · Rating 5 out of 5]

You thought you were the only one in hell?

ARX-Han, you don't know how much I loved this book.

To use phrase loosely (and pun equally intended) - if only I could shout my love for it from the rooftops - doesn't do it enough justice; you've opened my mind to a whole other level of literature.

Life is damn busy and I just do not get the time to devote more of it to drowning myself in the enthralling minutes of reading that are brought from your writing.

Please, I beg of you, continue on your path for gifting to the world the greatness of this massively underrated work and general neo-genre, you are literature's last remaining hope.

[Thanos Chatziioannou · Rating 5 out of 5]

A truly harrowing view of the early adult dating market with a protagonist who is equal parts victim and equal parts perpetrator. ARX - Han's language is extremely entertaining, a real treat for any reader who needs elaborate sentences to immerse themselves in a fictional universe. Overall, the book is a newcomer masterpiece and finishes with the most realistic way possible for such a premise, a man that views women with deterministic values, curses at himself and the natural order and dreams of a heroic masculine end - no absolution, no real accomplishment, no solace, just the crushing realizitation that your plaguing concerns cannot compete with the crushing reality of your neighbor (take this sentence literally). 100% would recommend the book and waiting for more from this author!

[David R. · Rating 4 out of 5]

**Minor spoilers

Who is the most oppressed group of people on Earth? If you answered Zack Snyder fans, you’d be correct. But let’s go a little deeper. Who is the second most oppressed group of people on Earth? That would be Incels (hey, why are you mentioning Zack Snyder fans twice?). Incels are a marginalized community who simply want some poontang and to be taken seriously.

I first became aware of the portmanteau in 2014 after Elliot Rodger murdered six people at my alma mater. For those of you who have perhaps managed to live this long without encountering this concept: Incels are a terminally online subculture of men who identify as involuntarily celibate. They are unable to find sexual partners despite deeply desiring it. More recently, they attribute the 80/20 rule to playing a significant role in their suffering. This rule states that 80% of women only desire the top 20% of men. This concept was explored in the recent Netflix miniseries Adolescence (brilliant show, but more entertaining was the right-wing reaction claiming left-wing people believed the show to be a documentary, even though the only people I ever saw calling it a documentary were reactionaries…).

This past month, I read two novels—both were titled Incel. Both were released in 2023. Even their covers are similarish.

This recalls memories of 1998, that epic year when Armageddon squared off against Deep Impact, while A Bug’s Life went toe to toe with Antz. But imagine if all four of those movies were called Armageddon (and imagine if all four were directed by Zack Snyder).

Despite identical titles and, presumably, similar subject matter, the books could not have been more different from one another. Before I dive into the books themselves, I just want to point out how this should be inspiring to authors. Never fear being unoriginal. One subject can be mined forever and ever if the author is talented enough (or audacious enough to tackle a subject despite their talent not matching their ambition).

One of these books was good (almost great), whereas the other was a silly pile of shit. One feels like it was written by an Incel, whereas the other feels like it was written by someone far too intelligent to be an Incel. You’ll just have to read on to find which is which.

Incel, by Matt Duchossoy, follows Wayne, a hapless Incel. Wayne has two friends in his life (twins: one male, one female). They film their attempts trying to rizz up women in public places. Wayne’s friends eventually get way too freaky-deaky with their “content”. Case in point, they go to a waterpark and attach razor blades to the interior of a slide so they could film a hot girl going down it and getting cut up.

Their videos gain them some notoriety among the online Incel community. Wayne, who’s a passive observer throughout the book, wants no part in their schemes, but he doesn’t resist all that hard either when they keep roping him into their videos. Other videos they make include the kidnapping and torture of a teenage girl.

A central location in this novel is a local Shake Shack. So much of the fucking story takes place at a Shake Shack. I understand people write what they know, which includes utilizing familiar locations, but for the love of all that is holy, I never want to see a Shake Shack ever again. For no reason, a waitress expresses interest in Wayne. Keep in mind, Wayne isn’t even interesting among his deplorable friends, so why a quirky waitress would have noticed him, let alone expressed any interest in this dork, is beyond me. The book makes no attempt to make it make any sense. She wants to get with him because the plot necessitates it. The book requires Wayne, our lonely virgin, to aim for the sun, to get so close just so his wings melt. This is the final straw for him. Unable to seal the deal with the dreadlock-touting white manic pixie dream girl, Wayne decides he’s going to shoot up a teenage birthday party with his twin comrades.

Keep in mind, the novel never really gives us a clear view of what Wayne is thinking. We know Incels, such as Elliot, have turned to violence, but this book makes no attempt to explore it. It’s like Duchossoy read the Urban Dictionary definition of an Incel once and wrote this entire book without doing any further research on the topic. Now, an Incel is the gift that keeps on giving if you want to explore themes of lust, loneliness, alienation, toxicity, the damage of being terminally online, navigating modern dating, power dynamics in sexuality, and so on. This book does none of it. It’s shallow and surface-level. We are told Wayne is lonely and horny, but we never see how it shapes his life and influences his decision-making. We know what Wayne wants, but we never learn what he needs. Other than wanting to get laid, we know absolutely nothing about him. He is not a character. He’s a blank slate, and the author failed to fill in the details.

In writing such a shallow and, frankly, juvenile book, Duchossoy shows a striking lack of knowledge about not just Incels, but literature. In a way, by writing such a shallow book with weakly defined characters, Duchossoy did something pretty Goddamn Incely—demonstrating a complete misunderstanding of human characteristics. Perhaps he’s a secret genius. In writing a book about Incels, he went full Incel and produced a steaming pile of garbage.

The book is violent, but not in a way that is meaningful or shocking. It’s there because, at the bare minimum, a human being who’s done a five-minute Google search on Incels realizes the story should culminate and some form of violence inflicted on the innocent.

None of it really amounts to much. There are no further explorations of the human condition, loneliness, or even how the desire for quick and easy content can lead people to ruin the lives of others.

Incel by ARX-Han is about 22-year-old Anon, a graduate student in evolutionary psychology who’s convinced that he's discovered a special method for "hacking" the mating patterns in human behavior. Naturally, he’s a virgin who spends a lot of time arguing on Reddit. He makes a pact with himself—if he can’t get laid before his next birthday, he’s killing himself.

In terms of style and content, it could not be more different from Duchossoy’s book. For one, this reads like an academic dissertation. The language is purposely difficult and scientific. This is alienating. It works to the book’s credit and detriment. Incels, by their nature, are inherently emotional beings. Irrational and delusional males masquerading as Logic Bros. This book is stripped of human emotion, relegating all human interactions, ideas, conversations, and the like to their base, scientific formulae. It’s the cold, clinical Stanley Kubrik approach to storytelling. In a way, I feel Logic Bro would have been the more appropriate title. Every page of the book is Anon’s thought process desperately trying to find logical solutions and hypotheses to every human interaction and desire.

The book goes on long diatribes about biology, philosophy, theories, dating, relationships, etc. Nothing is left untouched. Han goes at length to remove everything human about desire, sex, and love to treat them as nothing more than quantifiable scientific phenomena. Does it entirely work? I’m not sure. I hesitate to assign this book a rating because I am still thinking about it.

On the one hand, it’s clever to remove all the humanity from such human desires as lust (wanting to get laid) and treating it like a long-winded master’s thesis, but on the other hand, are Incels the right subject for this?

I won’t pretend to know Han’s intent, but by making this such a cold and clinical book, I never felt Anon’s loneliness. I understood he tried and failed to get laid throughout the book, but to what end? His thoughts are so analytical and intellectual that they fail to register as emotional. I never saw how getting laid would have any emotional resonance with him. Perhaps that was the point?

Anon does eventually get laid towards the end, and he finds the event itself was utterly unremarkable and does not make him any happier. At first, I thought I had missed a page because it was so abrupt and given no fanfare. I thought this was a stroke of genius. Create an entire book about a character trying to get laid, only to not describe the moment at all, and then move past it as if nothing happened. Because, frankly, that’s all it is at the end of the day. It’s something that all humans build up in their minds, which ultimately doesn’t really matter and doesn’t make us any happier if we’re still suffering from whatever it is we’re suffering from.

It’s to the book’s detriment that Han eventually does describe the sexual encounter. I don’t think it was necessary.

Han is a very talented writer. His prose is unique, as is this book. As mentioned earlier, it’s almost too intelligent to be a book that focuses on Incel. I’m torn as to whether this book worked for me or not, considering its strengths so often work against it. Perhaps that’s what makes the book genius. I’m not saying every book about this subject matter needs to exclusively focus on lust and alienation, but the way Han chose to tell this story didn’t make me feel the plight of Anon. Even if a character’s thoughts are repulsive, a well-written story will either compel you or implicate you into sharing them. Anon is not a human being. His thoughts are 1s and 0s.

But the more I think about it, the more I think that maybe this is the ultimate Incel novel. Perhaps by removing all that is human and treating human sexuality and desire as nothing more than the phenomenon of atoms and all that shit is the ultimate statement on this. It puts these individuals under a microscope and reveals how petty and insignificant their desires truly are in the grand scheme of things.

I’m struggling. I go on Reddit, and I see nothing but morons with no interesting insight spreading terrible ideas and anointing themselves authority figures. Anon, simply put, is too intelligent and insightful to be an actual Incel. Yes, he’s a virgin, but an Incel? I don’t know.

I really enjoyed the dynamic and combating philosophies of Anon and his one friend, the nihilistic martial artist Jason.

If it sounds like I’m being overly critical of this book, know that I’m not. It’s because I see a talent in Han, and I’m just not sure if this book was the proper channel for it. To clarify what I mean, check out Roger Ebert’s review of Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs. He gave it two out of four stars. He didn’t hate the movie, and he saw Tarantino’s talent was undeniable, but he wanted to see it more focused or better utilized. Unlike Ebert, I loved Reservoir Dogs, and I think Han’s book is closer to a four than a two. My frustrations or critiques have more to do with me than whatever his intent was. The fact that I’m still thinking about the book at all is a testament to its worth.

The book will frustrate you and test your patience.

I do not personally know either of these authors. I follow Han on Substack but have never interacted with him. I’m sure Duchossoy is a perfectly nice guy, and I only wish him success with his books. On Goodreads, he is quite prolific, having published (I believe) four books in only a couple of years. They all have far more reviews than Han’s book, so he definitely has an audience.

I think Han has the potential to write truly interesting pieces. Even if his Incel didn’t fully come together for me, I immensely enjoyed its individual parts. So, both Incel and Incel are flawed works, but for different reasons. So, dear reader, if you are looking for the ultimate Incel novel but don’t know which to choose, what’s one to do? The obvious answer is to read CoinciDATE by David R. Low. It has no flaws. Zero.

[Jess · Rating 3 out of 5]

Being generous, since the author seemed quite likable in an interview; really more of a 2.5. Dude cites Bret Easton Ellis as a key influence, but has precious little of his stylishly nihilistic vibe and vim. More just earnest and wonky: DFW vibes channeled through internet-age right-wingery.

[Jesse Larkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Started on Wednesday November 6th 2024 and finished on Saturday December 7th 2024
A college student commits to a suicide pact.
Anon is going to get laid or die trying.
Literally.
Processes life like an algorithm
This is played to a multitude of effects ranging from comically sardonic, spiteful and horrific, to palpable sadness
Desperate to overcome cruel Darwinian realities
Outrunning statistical improbabilities
Trapped in a hyper self awareness getting lost on obsessive human biodiversity fixations
A mind overly preoccupied; cluttered and running at max capacity
Projects his insecurities
Can only endure relationships with people if there is a caveat of weakness that equalizes their status in the social food chain
Stuck lashing out against the modernist “rectangles” he holds culpable for dominating the social scene he is flailing in
Withheld from a censorious world of passionate human emotions that he is both purposely and unintentionally rejecting
Structurally the novel reads as a metatextual series of isolated incidents deterministically strung together to create the mythology for why this is happening to our central character
Like a slice of life anime with a general end goal
There are direct overlapping thematics with Yeager’s Amygdalatropolis
With the central character being “anonymous” he is a virtual symbol
Experiencing an identity crisis literally becoming anonymous due to him being lost in these obsessions
Alienated by the failed promises of dissatisfaction loops from pornography
Ongoing thematic discussions of Determinism v Free Will
Scenes of kickboxing matches play an important role in mirroring this; the idea of freedom within something restrictive and contained like bowling with the bumpers up
The nightmarish indifference of the animal kingdom transposed onto waking life
The human need to mythologize
To categorically decompress a scenario; excusing genetic realities no one wants to have to confront
Value and worth and how those things are determined
Being able to put yourself in another’s perspective
To fulfill the purpose of a narrative arc; expecting it to carry significance but still being left with the everlasting present and not having the true ability to take in that awareness or adapt to the learned lesson
The incalculable human condition
Returning to the womb of human experience without hidden pretenses just the submission of pure connection
Densely layered sentence structure; digitized and merciless in its execution
Calculated geometric violence spherical and graphic—unrelenting and animatic
Could visualize it vivid and dripping wet with color
Crudity to the sexual frankness yet diagnostic medical and observant
Symbolic nihilistic imagery
Detached instances of second person can be seen as confronting the readership but never feels antagonistic
I was very anxious leading into the final chapters as the weight of his decision started looming ominously
There are a couple significant differences that have been made to the story over the years and while I prefer the original I can understand the changes.
I got glossy eyed on occasion and actually teared up twice
Very solid shit made it into my top 10 I read in 2024
I’ve heard the author say in the past the next work will not be as dense as this which makes sense that he would adapt his aesthetic appropriately to whatever the material is. Very curious what the prose styling of the next piece will be and how it will look alongside this cornerstone of literature for this sphere

[G.S. Richter · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm sat the whole way through thinking: "Man, I hope this dude gets laid."

[lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hilarious, poignant, a bit too on the nose of how my internet brain functions.....a bit too familiar.... I feel this is our generation's Infinite Jest

[Freyr Þorvaldsson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extraordinary novel. Dark and uncomfortable. Like being pulled into a bleak vortex.

[Victor]

"The people Bruno happened to meet during his life were mostly driven by the research of pleasure, that is, if one includes in the notion of pleasure the gratifications of a narcissist kind, linked to other people’s regard or admiration. Thus were put into place different strategies, called human lives."

- Michel Houellebecq, The Elementary Particles

What are the raw truths that make up human experience? Why do people act the way that they do?

ARX-Han's series of biographical vignettes follow a twenty-two-year-old struggling to get laid before his twenty-third birthday in an extraordinarily verbose manner. Basically, the protagonist is an overthinker who puts human interaction under a microscope. Trendy philosophical phrases like "hard incompatibilism" and "qualia" are thrown around by the protagonist, who is a masters student in Evolutionary Psychology. Surprisingly, famous 2020s Rationalist figures like Scott Alexander or Eliezer Yudkowsky are referenced directly. This aligns with the materialistic, physicalist, hyper-online philosophy guides the voice of the protagonist, "Anon." In one scene, he compares people streaming out of a nightclub to excrement coming out of an an*s. You could probably call him a psychopath. The author's one-of-a-kind voice is at once fanciful and unsettling, invoking a jarring sense of recognition among those that grew up playing video games and surfing the Internet. Fights in bars are described with HP points, conversations with women are described as subroutines. The novel revolves around topics that were popular on 4chan or Reddit a few years ago, such as pickup artists, evolutionary psychology, and race science, and the theories animating this exploration of human behavior could be described as Nietzchean: it is a dog eat dog world and everybody just wants to f*ck.

I have never read a book quite like this, though it is reminiscent of Houllebecq's Elementary Particles and Dostoevsky's White Nights. This book is about sex, but it is also about race. As a self-identified White nationalist, the protagonist delineates various racist beliefs as he interacts with Chinese international students in his college and even his Korean friend, Jason. In fact, the protagonist talks about Asians almost constantly throughout the whole book. He fixates on his own "tribal in-group bias," expecting to ascend to a Hyperborean Valhalla upon his death, and referencing the popular belief that Black guys have bigger d*cks. He begrudgingly befriends a "gook" only after they are able to mutually physically fight off a series of attackers in gory fashion, thus -- quote unquote -- releasing mutual doses of oxytocin and dopamine despite their differing phenotypes. This is all for show, as under the hood of Incel is a complex racial satire. The author is a Chinese-American man. I was reluctantly fascinated by this, as I am also a Chinese-American man. However, I am not sure if the satire works. It is pretty ugly stuff. Everybody knows that "satire requires a clarity of purpose and target lest it be mistaken for and contribute to that which it intends to criticize." Thus I would only recommend this novel to other Chinese-American men with a grain of salt. It is noteworthy, however, that "Incel" includes a bona fide literary examination of some of the ugliest beliefs among Americans that have resulted from mass immigration of East Asians to the West. You see these thigns on Instagram reels comments as well as hear it in bars but people don't really say it to your face. There is probably a certain value to this. Asian women got "Minor Feelings," and "Crying in H-Mart." Asian men got "The Souls of Yellow Folk" and "The Loneliest Americans." And Eddie Huang. That's it. ARX-Han might be the Camille Paglia of Asian men.

Literature can be a refreshing illumination of the raw truths of human experience. “The body is our general medium for having a world," wrote Merleau-Ponty, and taking this in stride, ARX-Han writes unflinchingly about the body, about race, sex, pornography, the will-to-power, violence and intrasexual competition. He does so not as a cigarette-smoking French feminist from the 1960s but as a hyperonline Chinese-American Reddit-using man from the 2020s. Is this a notable difference? Perhaps we have the duty to set in front of ourselves what is noble and just, and therefore, not "Incel." But ugly as it may be, "Incel," asks certain important questions, including how modern life has transformed intimacy.

The denouement of this novel is quite compassion-begging, even beautiful.

Obligatory "I am not an incel" note. Thanks.

[Ian Barr · Rating 4 out of 5]

'The first thing you have to understand about evolution is that it doesn’t give a fuck about you.' ~ INCEL, Pg. 6

I feel a bit mixed about INCEL after finishing it. On the one hand, the style and prose are a masterwork that are beautifully written and articulated. It’s definitively different and unique from other fiction on the market, unabashedly itself in a sea of pandering fiction that toes the line as though it’s afraid to offend anyone. On the other hand, the majority of this book confronts uncomfortable topics from the POV of a deeply troubled individual. The character anon presents himself to the world as the average white American male, but lurking under the surface of his everyday appearance is the sort of twisted ideologies that have corrupted the minds of countless young men who are chronically online. Themes of suicide, depression, racism, misogyny, violence, and sexism that one might typically find in a siliceous forum in a dingy corner of the internet do not necessarily make for a sympathetic main character, but I don’t think we were precisely meant to sympathize with anon. He’s the sort of person who really only inspires pity, even if that pity is spiced with contempt.

There are a slew of topics related to the complexities of the human psyche explored in INCEL; the academic ramblings can be a bit cumbersome and overbearing at times in terms of pacing, even to the point of feeling regurgitated, but they offer some interesting insights nonetheless that are obviously heavily influence by someone who spends too much time on internet forums like Reddit or 4chan. That said, it is anon’s attempts to apply his systematic algorithm that will result in sexual encounters in the real world instead of just keeping it in his own mind that is the star of the show. The results are fairly definitive, but the trials are where a lot of the awkward humour of INCEL comes from. anon learns quickly that there are too many variables in real life that his model can’t account for—Most of which are his own personality defects that make themselves well known through the veneer of whatever mask he dons for whichever girl he is currently chatting up. And what’s worse is he doesn’t fully understand why his academic approach isn’t working, nor does he understand why he doesn’t understand. This existentialism makes the humour short-lived as each subsequent rejection sends anon into spirals of shame and humiliation that remind us that this troubled young man is a suicidal ticking time bomb. Simultaneously, each failure only bolsters and reinforces his problematic internal rhetoric, which in turn leads to move failures. It’s a vicious cycle and not completely unrelatable.

Would I recommend INCEL? I think so, but it would have to be to the right person. It’s viscerally unapologetic as a deconstruction of radicalized individuals, overtly offensive as it needs to be to get the message across, but in a politically charged world I don’t know if everyone would be able to see past the increasingly unpleasant layers to get to the bitter, gooey center. I think it’s a noteworthy piece of fiction that stares into the abyss of modern masculinity in both a mocking sense and in a way that is somewhat profound. I realize that is somewhat polarizing and doesn’t actually offer any true recommendation or condemnation, so I guess you’ll just have to grab a copy and figure it out for yourself.

A solid 3.5 star read. For a full in-depth review, check out my Substack: The Word Dump!

[Secret Squirrel]

I think the best way to respond to a book in this forum isn't to review it (here's the review that turned me on to it: https://rosselliotbarkan.com/p/where-...) but to describe a vivid impression it leaves you with. Incel reminded me, perhaps oddly, of a very different book that got a lot more press, Lauren Oyler's Fake Accounts.

Oyler's book is a mixed bag, it has an amazing premise but I don't think she quite figured out what to do with the premise and the book is poorly organized. (Unlike Incel, which isn't very densely plotted but has real tonal unity.) What struck me about Fake Accounts and about Oyler's personality as a writer is that a certain internet voice we are all familiar with, internet feminism of the Buzzfeed / pre-Musk Twitter variety, was being used for ambitious literature. (I know there's plenty of other stuff like this, Patricia Lockwood? Honor Levy? But I haven't read them.) My reaction was: of course, this kind of internet writing has eaten all of our brains, you have to address it if you want to write about the present.

Incel deals with a darker kind of internet writing and internet personality, the weird and frightening things that isolated boys and young men come to believe when they spend so much time on the internet that they fail to develop the capacity to interact with other people and particularly with women. The main character is a sort of white-supremacist-incel-redditor-as-underground-man, which is a great idea. The novel gets the voices and the tone just right, so that the main character is a sort of live wire, like the original Underground Man must have been in the 1860s: a funny and very of-the-moment caricature but also something more. We are all somehow complicit in producing people like him, there's maybe a little bit of him in all of us, but it is part of our society and ourselves that we don't like to look at.

I hate writing this kind of review but evidently they are the only way books get sold nowadays, and I liked "Incel" enough to log in and support it. Buy this book!

[Patrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Honestly, the idea of spending hundreds of pages inside the head of a self-hating, sex-starved, scientific-materialist young man didn’t exactly fill me with excitement.

But I loved this book.

Yeah, there’s the simple aesthetic pleasure I get from ARX-Han’s exquisite, hyper-accurate, philosophy-saturated prose. And there’s the socially astute asides (“If you observe any interaction between two people, the person who is more relaxed is the person with greater power.”)

But it was the implicit humor that got me. I laughed hard, and often. It was a wholly unique kind of laughter, mappable somewhere between the territory of horror-cringe and aesthetic delight. I never felt I was laughing at the narrator, I never felt superior. I felt alarmed. But something about the tone encouraged me to metabolize the alarm through comedy.

Ultimately, Incel is an empathy generator. This is a book about a young man who regards himself and other humans as discardable gene-carrying husks in a vast, indifferent evolutionary process. Individuality, or more specifically individual interiority, is a spandrel, a kind of excess whose only purpose is pain. Doubling down on this nihilism, he seeks sexual experiences as the one possible fulfillment and justification for his existence. In short, he treats women as objects. Bad boy.

But of course, inside the experience of misogyny is a broken, alienated nub of consciousness burning for love and connection. What else would you expect? Evil only exists on the outside, not on the inside (only phenomenologically, not ontologically). As Charles Eisenstein puts it, “Evil is a response to the perception of separation.” The author is subtle about it, but to my mind, this is the truth that allows Incel to function aesthetically. The novel pulls no punches, fearlessly inhabiting the darkest corners of the desperate male psyche, and by going all the way, truly all the way (you’ve got to read it to believe it), it breaks through to something beautiful on the other side.

I met the author, anon (we called him Han), at a reading in Brooklyn. Not that it’s relevant to enjoying the book, but I found him kind, generous with his attention, and attuned to a moral dimension of modern literary fiction that seems rare to me.

Buy this book! Support indie artists doing cool things!

ARX-Han’s substack: https://substack.com/@arxhan

My substack: https://patrickdoerksen.substack.com/

[Downward · Rating 4 out of 5]

high quality book fully dedicated to voice, to the point where it lives in it beyond plot, dialogue or action - this is the densely worded thoughtscape of someone created in the crucible of the worst parts of the internet, believing themselves to be a victim, intellectualizing the world around them as the problem and outsourcing all difficulties to race science and incel pseudo neuroscience coping methods. it is frequently very difficult to read, and I wouldn't say that arx-han exists in complete objectivity to his protagonist, there is definitely a judgment threaded throughout although there is an attempt to humanize as well. the important moment here is our character, the titular incel who adheres to various racist and misogynist beliefs and arguments, when arguing with his sister says "you still haven't successfully refuted any of my points" and she replies, "your whole life is a refutation of your points."

[Jimmy Song · Rating 5 out of 5]

First, this is not my type of book. It's too dark, focuses too much on sex and flies too close to the sun in terms of suicide. I wouldn't have picked up this book in a million years, given the topic, tone and setting.

But I'm giving it 5 stars, because the whole thing is written so beautifully, charmingly, almost neurotically, that I couldn't help but enjoy it. There are long digressions into random studies, Millenial internet communities, academia and race relations that you would think are out of place, but somehow make sense when you read them. The author's command of the English language honestly made me ashamed of my relative lack, but also gave me an appreciation for clever and informative prose. It's the sort of book that makes you want to read more from the author, not because of the information presented, but because the way the story is told comes from an immense talent.

[Pete Bladel · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a fantastic book. The author does an incredible job of using language to showcase the narrator's interior life, from the rationalizations he hides behind to the sad, scared boy that’s underneath it all. Truly unique and inventive, would recommend to anyone looking for something different, challenging and moving.

[Deus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hilarious, poignant, and beautifully written. Not your average novel. An instant classic, and an amazing tour-de-force for an author's first book. Eagerly anticipating his next one. Whatever you think this book is about, you're almost definitely wrong. Give it a chance -- you won't regret it.

[F. Gardner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cool book with a strong message. I love the manga style cover too.

[Benjamin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely phenomenal.

[Chad K · Rating 4 out of 5]

Breaking down the science and nuances of the coming of age story of a man stuck between race, relationships and masculinity.

[T.Z. Barry · Rating 5 out of 5]

INCEL is a self-published novel by an anonymous writer, which may lead one to assume it is at best mid and more likely slop, but it is actually a modern literary masterpiece. Welcome to the state of literature in the 2020s: the absolute best stuff is being published independently. (Often not by choice but necessity.) I originally discovered ARX-Han through his Substack (Decentralized Fiction), in which he wrote about the process of independently publishing his book. Reading those posts, I could tell he was brilliant, which made me want to purchase and read his novel—which did not disappoint. In fact, it surpassed my already high expectations.

INCEL is an edgy book for sure, about a racist misogynist white male “incel”, but it doesn’t treat him as a caricature or unredemptive villain—which is why no mainstream publisher today would dare touch it. ARX-Han writes about incels in a way that is illuminating, educational, entertaining, humorous, and most of all, true. The book follows the narrator, who is unnamed and referred to as “Anon,” a graduate student studying evolutionary psychology while using his intellectual insights to try to lose his virginity. Anon is evidently on the spectrum, as his extremely detailed over-analysis of everything resembles an AI studying human behavior. He breaks down every social interaction through the lens of evo-psych, citing scientific papers and waxing philosophically about race, sex, and all the problematic things we’re not allowed to talk about. (Though the author does not condone Anon’s thoughts and actions.) Anon is also well-versed in internet culture and 4Chan memes. ARX-Han’s prose is top-notch, on the level of supreme maximalist wordsmiths like David Foster Wallace.

In a sane world this book would have been picked up by a mainstream publisher and the author proclaimed as the next Chuck Palahniuk or Bret Easton Ellis—the voice of a generation—someone who truly understands, empathizes with, and can explain the “incel” crisis facing young men worldwide. Instead the mainstream either ignores the incel problem or just chastises them, blaming incels for everything wrong with society. The New York Times publishes articles wondering why men don’t read fiction anymore… They would if you published books like this!