NUTCRANKR

by Dan Baltic, Gio Penn (Foreword)

"There would be no communion with the Allfather just yet, as Spencer’s Valkyrie had different plans. For Spencer, the road to Odin’s great hall passed through Human Resources." Life hasn't been easy for Spencer Grunhauer. Fired from his NYC nonprofit job for writing a "reactionary" manifesto during work hours, he drowns his sorrows with high-end liquor and online porn while raging against the "Davos Daddies" and their plans to crush Western civilization. But when he meets a young woman on a BDSM dating site, Spencer takes it upon himself to indoctrinate her in the tenets of "the Project," leading him down a rabbit hole of public humiliation and mental illness, culminating in a ill-conceived plot to take the "Davos Daddies" down once and for all. NUTCRANKR is a comic examination of fringe ideology, social atomization, and sexual dysfunction in modern America. Dan Baltic's debut novel is a sardonic look at a certain type of Extremely Online character we're all too familiar with and what happens when their delusions and flights of fancy come into contact with the real world. “Dan Baltic has written the Don Quixote of the digital era. Spencer Grunhauer is a man out of time, adhering to the martial values and lofty language of a bygone era. He can’t quite get the world around him to conform to the model of how he believes things should be. Maybe he needs to log off, go outside, and touch grass, but every time he does, he tilts at modern windmills (like pussy hats) and hilarity ensures, always with him as the punchline. He’s hardly fazed, however, for it’s all part of his “Project,” a Zarathustrean plan to transvaluate the depraved values of our world and usher in a new era of the Übermensch. The way Baltic pulls this off, by contrasting the ideals within Spencer’s head and the reality of the feminist world around him, is truly an impressive literary feat, and the fact that he keeps it consistently laugh-out-loud funny puts NUTCRANKR in very elite company with the likes of Pynchon and David Foster Wallace. If you think I’m being hyperbolic, read it and see for yourself. If you’re anything like me, you won’t stop laughing.” — Astral, host of Astral Flight Simulation “Dan weaves together a seamless narrative of self-imposed tragedy and ironic comedy. The online right will hate Spencer Grunhauer and at the same time worry that he represents them.” — T.R. Hudson, author of Automaton “Dan Baltic mogs the discourse with an uproarious gutshot for every self-important pseudo-intellectual. A relentless, hilarious book.” — Brad Kelly, author of House of Sleep, co-host of Art of Darkness “Dan Baltic's NUTCRANKR is both an unflinching presentation of a deeply deluded, yet pitiable narcissist, and a devastating critique of the ‘deradicalization’ racket. And just when you think you know exactly where it's headed, its twist ending leaves you stunned and bewildered.” — Andy Nowicki, author of The Columbine Pilgrim and Muze “Dan Baltic reincarnates Ignatius J. Reilly in 2010’s Brooklyn—in the perfect storm of elite overproduction, anti-whiteness, and the digitized sex economy—to riotous success. A glorious victory in the quest to reclaim the literary holy land from the heathen.” — Matthew Pegas, author of Dragon Day, co-host of New Write “Dan Baltic has well and truly written a novel for our time. Absurd and mundane, epic yet also very profane, NUTCRANKR captures perfectly, with great wit and humanity, the agony and the ecstasy of this strange moment we find ourselves thrown into. You will laugh and you will cry, and maybe—just maybe—you’ll recognise somebody you know, even yourself, in the pages of this book.” — Raw Egg Nationalist, author of The Eggs Benedict Option and Raw Egg Nationalism

Genres: Fiction

220 pages, Paperback

Published November 7, 2022

Reviews

[Hagar · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Though it pained Spencer to slightly mischaracterize the quality of Nietzsche’s thought, it appeared as though Crystal was regarding Spencer across the table with mounting dread and anger. And while ordinarily Spencer would have been happy to make bacon of this piglet in intellectual debate, he dutifully held his tongue, maintaining his commitment to the furtherance of the Project. His sole focus right now had to be having sex with Crystal to combat global Marxism." :D

[Paige Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Spencer is a “young goose” more into getting his rocks off solo than pickaxing them with a low-level chain-gang. He’s perplexed how his tax dollars went to separating the world from his seed. Don’t they know there’s a cherry-lipped professor out there that needs to leave her husband for him? Who else will pick up all her multi-layered secret philosophical come-ons and tickle her funny bone with ingratiating progressive jokes? Such are the fun delusions the narrative follows.

You know those memes about male writers wordsmithing away about milk cannons? We’ve got some satirizing here, spun through the head of the incorrigible “Cath-trad values” MC who only “cares” for Zelenial libs he hopes to convert by his mere presence, since he dare not utter disagreement and compromise his ability to get laid. It takes a ton of skill to write satire that doesn’t come off annoying or too obvious on the author’s opinions. It’s something I doubt I could do with years of training, so find it very commendable.

A unique verbiage lies even in the minutia: “He resembled a refrigerator of 1970’s vintage.” “Alex had a bit of the Bart Simpson about him.” “Lord of the Flies for the Bravo set.” “Her muscular eating-hand.” “What next…would they say he was emitting an unlawful smell?” There are no shortage of euphemisms: flogging the pony, a tart filled with baker’s cream, erotic riches stored in her big silo, his totem breaching the seal of her desire, etc. There’s also the subtle alliteration of the rolling flow, the vague boasting refrain of having gone to “a more highly esteemed liberal arts college” like SpongeBob’s Plankton.

The prose is always self-assured (a la Invader Zim), classic, yet obvious in its “jocularity.” In that way, it can come across like one of Jim Norton’s Opie & Anthony characters. Or as melodramatic as Lemony Snicket/Daniel Handler’s flourish. I just wished for a clearer delineation on the allusion of the Davos Daddies. (I came in expecting them to be an actual set of characters, like smarmy bosses who profess too much about corporate social responsibility) I was not always familiar w/ the abundance of mythological or economic philosophers. Likewise, the constant mention of “global Marxism” felt like it’d kill me in a drinking game. I have the same quandaries with the podcast, or the book’s back summary, though all slight. I know it’s stylistic, but even w/ a former deep entrenchment in House politics and then e-fringe entertainment adjacent to Alex Jones, I was only 3/4ths in the know.

Speaking of such, I’m glad I listened to New Write pod and Dan Baltic’s doge-cute trolly Twitter before reading this, because I probably would’ve passed, assuming this book was another uneven, easy jab at anything not fitting in w/ faux-deep communist ideals by the ultra-homogenous/uncreative liberal lit scene. Fortunately, it’s able to satirize /all chronically online culture vultures without having to busk for any group. The incel lite and reactionary parts are more nuanced than expected (I don’t think the phrase alt right is even muttered, and barely Trump or anything racial): the MC giving credit to porn girls and Obama, being anti-Capitalist and a general flip-flopper as someone so coochie-conscious, inverting spectrums of autism and politics and their inevitable convergence.

The trolly comedy reminds me a bit of glory-day Milo Yiannopoulos, who’s since lost his spark for humor or controversy or blond hair dye. Or the internet-savvy and ire of a less gay Nick Fuentes. Though MC Spencer’s probably not as hot as either, or his ideology as easily pinnable like a lot of people. All in all, this book was more timeless than that.

I will say I was expecting the girl on the cover to have been a sexworker, not a simple campus roamer, given all the porn iconography and hints on the physical book covers. I was expecting there to be more than one girlfriend or any e-porn in-scene, a more traditional domme driving him to madness (the title will make more sense at the end). The sniveling screw-ball man is spot-on for what I imagined, aside from him invariably feigning others’ beliefs in such a performative rather than self-preserving way. So mighty is the call of the pussy(hat) though.

As for the end, it left me smiling and laughing for a while. It wasn’t what I anticipated in multiple facets but it makes sense and I could see it playing out that way IRL. Bonus fun fact dropped on the pod: The cover girl is Billie Eillish-inspired. A pussy hat as her “Crown” is fitting, timely w/ her cunnilingus crooning and all of Spencer’s the whole book.

[ulrich · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book made me laugh more than any book has for quite some time. A modern day confederacy of dunces, the trials of Spencer Grunhauer provide a window into the soul of so-called disaffected young men.

[Mason Masters · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF. 60%

I hated Confederacy of Dunces and this is a less literate, more egotistic version. Worse, its based on modern politics. Needed an editor. At least the characters and scenes were clear if cursed. Dialogue was horrendous, convoluted and painful. Too on the nose, no subtlety.

[Autumn Christian · Rating 5 out of 5]

I actually finished reading this before the Rolling Stone article and have been a quiet convert to The Project ever since. Nutcrankr is hilarious and unflinching, with a voice that's totally its own. There were lots of clever phrases that made me stop and reread them over and over . You can tell Dan had a lot of fun writing this.

[Geofrey Crow · Rating 4 out of 5]

NUTCRANKR is a better novel than its author's Twitter persona would lead you to expect.

It's funny, for one thing. It contends with the important questions of the day. And it's short, which always helps.

NUTCRANKR tells the story of one Spencer Grunhauer, a graduate of one of America's more prestigious liberal arts colleges. (A recurring line in the novel which, intentionally or not, called up memories of the time when Himself showed us all what water is.)

In the tradition of A Confederacy of Dunces (which I've never read) and Don Quixote (which is a book long enough to overstay its welcome), NUTCRANKR is a story of a strange, sad man who does really weird things. But to keep from being a downer about the whole thing, Dan Baltic adds in some jokes and some really top-notch descriptions of (female) breasts.

Who is Dan Baltic, by the way? Well, Dan Baltic, a talking dog with a pope hat who runs a podcast, is the author of NUTCRANKR. Like, he put all the words together in order, and everything. I'm not sure if he can hold a pen or work a keyboard with his doggy paws, so he might have had to use his pope hat to speak to the Holy Spirit so the HS could record his words. Sort of like the Prophet Muhammad, but in reverse.

Anyway, it's not time to write Mr Balto's hagiography yet. It's just time for me to tell you all about why you should put your filthy lucre into Dan's filthy hands. The lesson of NUTCRANKR, like the lesson of the Gospel of John, is after all that a man ought to pursue his own personal self-interest.

The Plot

Now, when I talk about the plot, I don't mean there's anything sneaky or nefarious going on. So put that out of your little head, sweet cakes. No, I just mean, like, what the book's about.

And what the book's about, is it's about Spencer Grunhauer. Which is why it's kind of a sad and deranged book in spite of the jokes. Because Spencer Grunhauer is a little bit of a sad and deranged man. But he's also relatable, because he's sad and deranged in a fictional way that just so happens to resemble the way a growing chunk of America's contemporary reading public is sad and deranged in real life.

He's just like you, for real. If you happen to be a weirdo of Spencer's ilk.

Sort of the running joke in the book is that Spencer's life is actually pretty pathetic and sad, but he doesn't see it because he has delusions of grandeur. He's always internally comparing himself to the likes of Achilles, the Übermensch, Immanuel Kant, Aeneas, and other names from books you probably didn't actually read in college. He's always internally reminding himself how everyone around him is beneath him–in his thoughts, Spencer repeatedly thinks of his long-term love interest as a "piglet" who is "below his station." And ultimately, Spencer's delusions of grandeur lead him to comically misinterpret everything around him in increasingly disastrous ways.

You can see here some of Spencer's kinship with the man of la Mancha. Don Quixote reads one too many books of adventure and derring-do. This radically warps his sense of reality and causes him to do things like charge the proverbial windmills. ("Don't you see they're giants?") But even though Don Quixote takes things too far now and then and is mostly played for laughs… there's ultimately a kind of nobility in his devotion to his misguided ideal. Don Quixote may be ridiculous, but his attempts to live nobly really do prove to be ennobling.

It might not be far wrong to read NUTCRANKR as a novel about whether or not ennobling devotion to an ideal is possible in 21st-century America. Because Spencer Grunhauer, like Don Quixote, tries to bring a certain ideal into reality. Whether he succeeds or not… well, I already told you he's like Don Quixote.

(Oh he's also like Goethe's Werther, by the way. Just in case I forget.)

The Project

So: what exactly is Spencer Grunhauer's ideal? That's kind of a difficult question for anyone to answer because Spencer's ideal is a confused thing and he does a really, really bad job at living up to it. You'll notice there's a real dissonance between Spencer's internal monologue and what he actually dares to say and do when there are real stakes on the table.

(He's all about saving the historic West and combatting degeneracy, but when his big tiddy goth GF wants to go to the 2016 Women's March he eagerly dons the pussy hat, kind of thing.)

At any rate, NUTCRANKR is an example of a kind of thing no one without a bomb squad certification should touch lightly–a political novel.

So I'll go ahead and spit it out–Spencer Grunhauer is a right-wing crank. He's mostly concerned with the looming threats of communism, feminism, the historic and cultural decline of Western civilization, Michel Foucault, and Davos Daddies. (I'm not sure what a Davos Daddy is, but given the fact that there's a major thread of sadomasochism in the novel I'm assuming it's a sexual fetish and I approve entirely.) And he's working on a Project to solve these ills.

Spencer's Project mostly appears on the message boards of 3Chain–a message board site that appears in the fictional world of the novel. This is where Spencer works tirelessly and consistently to frame his worldview and right the wrongs that threaten all of us. The novel is a little fuzzy on the actual details of the Project, but we are given more than a few tantalizing glimpses of what a world run by Spencer's lights would look like.

Most important to the novel's plot, we hear about the Spousal Distribution System. Spencer's basic idea is that suitable young men (such as Spencer) should have the government provide them with suitable young wives, for breeding purposes. As you'd imagine, this idea gets Spencer into some tense situations that drive the plot of the novel along and lead Spencer to his ultimate catastrophe or apotheosis.

I won't sugar coat this: Spencer is so out of touch that he doesn't realize how out of touch he is. His ideals are a confused mess of wish-fulfillment and rationalization. He lacks the courage of his convictions. He never seems quite sure whether he wants to restore Christendom, bring back the glory that was Rome, or institute some kind of futuristic eugenic caste system. He's an ungrateful little twerp who is constantly hiding from his own insignificance by coming up with a laundry list of reasons he's better than everybody around him.

But for all that… Spencer Grunhauer is no stranger. Anybody who is even the tiniest bit like Spencer will find moments in this novel that are like looking into a mirror under harsh light. We're talking like, gas station bathroom at 2 AM harsh light here, folks. It's not pretty and everyone can see all of your pores.

NUTCRANKR

By now you're probably wondering where this punchy little novel gets its title from. Well, I'm not telling you.

… all right, I'll tell you a little, teensy bit. It's pretty much exactly what you're thinking. Only it doesn't explicitly come into the novel till near the end, and it's wonderfully horrible. Anyone who has ever had an issue with a social media company will understand Spencer's frustration.

And speaking of the end of the novel… it's mesmerizing. One of those finales that casts everything that came before in a new, ambiguous haze. It's a thinker, all right, is all I'm saying.

Hauntings

So: is Spencer Grunhauer a hero? Well… no. Absolutely not. In no way. Not even the tiniest bit of one.

Except… he is trying. He might be blind to his own faults, but he clearly sees some of the problems of our post-industrial civilization we've willfully blinded ourselves to. There's an implication in the novel that Spencer Grunhauer is haunted by the specters of the past. It may be that some of these hauntings continue, regardless of our conscious attitude toward them.

In Spencer Grunhauer and in NUTCRANKR as a whole, Dan Baltic has wittily (if not exactly sympathetically) brought to life one of the major symptoms of our time. Spencer may not be a hero, but his spirit is alive and among us. In every message board and every social media site, in every gentrifying neighborhood and every prestigious liberal arts college, he lives, he breathes, and he poasts. He might lurk behind the next anon account you come across today.

I think I've said enough here to make it clear that NUTCRANKR is not a novel for the thin-skinned, whatever their politics may be. Although, let's be real, its title alone should warn the unprepared away. That being said, NUTCRANKR is a tight, firm little confection that does credit to its author as an artist, if not as a human being. Absolutely worth reading and Dan Baltic is one to watch.

[Adem Luz · Rating 5 out of 5]

I nutted

[Corporate Clarke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nutcrankr is a very good book. Despite its intentional and humoursly infuriating repetition, it reads very smoothly and quickly, pulling you through each act towards an unexpected but very credible and satisfying crescendo. It's also a nice length at under 300 pages.

Spencer is a man whose sex life is so misaligned from his values that he is still spiritually an incel. The novel starts as a seemingly simple but uncomfortable satire of the too online guy. I saw a least a tiny glimmer of a scary reflection in Spencer's thoughts. This is what keeps the satire engaging rather than seeming like it was bullying an easy target.

Baltic's masterstroke is the 3rd act. Spencer's world comes crashing down. But this is handled in a heartbreakingly sensitive way and is genuinely moving. He leaves us wondering if there is something more fundamental wrong with Spencer, and reframes him from caricature to human.

[Christopher · Rating 3 out of 5]

I guess I just don't get it.

I'm not sure who this book is for really? The main protagonist is a pretty unsympathetic incel who basically finds himself hanging out with modern ugly, weird lefist people who are just as unsympathetic.

Like I'm honestly not sure who the butt of the joke is supposed to be for this book. I've seen others describe it as the modern Don Quixote, with Spencer tilting at the windmills of his imagination, but what he's imagining isn't exactly wrong. Maybe he's too 'online', but so is everyone now? I'm also extremely confused by the ending and what it's point was.

I'll have to think on this book a little bit, but not too hard, because I don't think it's as deep as the author wishes it was.

It needed another once over on editing too. Quick read, but not the best piece of alternative fiction in my opinion.

[Kevin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hands down one of the funniest, most relevant, entertaining and thought-provoking contemporary novels to hit the stacks. When is the last time you read a comic novel that really speaks to our benighted, way-too-online epoch? Nutcrankr does that and more.

Baltic has delivered a novel in the spirit of A Confederacy of Dunces without being derivative, ripped straight from the ugly bowels of the Internet and all-too-astroturfed "culture wars."

You'll laugh. You'll cry. You'll nut.

[Collin B · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's a lot of pitfalls when writing about a niche type of person set in a very current time. The danger is that the subjects and topics of the novel could become dated. I really think this book navigates those pitfalls expertly. It will be just as hilarious and thought provoking 50 years from now.

[Ben Andrus · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF. I got memed into reading incredibly trashy novel. It started out as a funny send up of incel and woke culture but got increasingly disgusting. If this book is the vanguard of a new dissident culture we are doomed. AVOID.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hilarious, sobering. An honest look into the inner machinations of the disaffected young “dissident rw” male whose mental life is utterly divorced from reality. We all in this thing of ours have a little Spencer Grunhauer in us. “Sorrows of Young Werther” for zoomers.

[H ello · Rating 4 out of 5]

so funny!

opposite of houllebecq dan baltic is a humanist

Confederacy of dunces for the twitter age

They found him.. the joe Rogan of the left..