Lys’s review of Is He Dead Yet?: Dispatches from an American Living Through Un-American Times > Likes and Comments

Thanks for pointing it out! I do too whenever I see them. Hate that GoodReads allows 😑

The photo is a selfie. I went to AI to replace the background with the Oval Office, per my concept. I guess I could have done it myself on Photoshop if I had anticipated the moral outrage that would follow. The final product was produced by a Pakistani designer I found on fiverr. A reminder: this is called Good READS, not Judge a Book by its Cover.

With my new book finally published and available, I’ve had time to reflect on its various stages. First, there was the living it out in real time stage, my year of virtual exile between November 6, 2024 and October 1, 2025, where I was doing my best to block out “the news of the day.” That was followed by the book’s alternate reality as a product for public consumption stage as I prepared it for publication against a background of renewed, if limited, news consumption. Now I’m at the reflective stage where I’ve gone back into it to see what it has to tell me about myself in broader, overarching strokes. I’ve been pleasantly surprised to find that my year of living dangerously unaware led to some genuine self-enlightenment. Despite allowing each day to unfold organically without blueprint or outline, consistent and revealing themes of my life clearly emerged. Among them:

I as Citizen. The book begins with my description of myself as a lifelong news junkie. But I was not just addicted to the compulsion to stay on top of things. I viewed news consumption as a moral imperative. News was how I became the ideal of the Informed Citizen. During my self-imposed news blackout, I encountered numerous well-intentioned people who viewed my behavior as a betrayal of that imperative. That charge simultaneously pricked my conscience and my sense of logic. Logic beat back Guilt, however. How, I asked, can intelligent people continue to equate news consumption with civic duty when our current definition of news is so indefinite, and the reliability of the news is so dubious? In time, I came to realize that my early immersion in the news helped inform and ground my virtual exile. Yet, in the end I concluded that I needed to find a new relationship with the news that operates somewhere between my gluttonous past and recent abstinence.

I as Humanist. NOMA (Non-Overlapping Magisteria) is a construct of Stephen J. Gould, one of the foremost intellects of our time. He wanted to allow space for secular thought and religious thought to co-exist. Throughout the book, I return repeatedly to my religious upbringing and training despite my conviction that we live in a godless universe. From the lasting influence of my boyhood encounter with the rebel Jesus to the intellectual impact of my seminary scholarship, I evolved a religious identity that suited my humanistic view. It is an identity that honors the place of mystery, myth, and metaphysics in human existence while rejecting the burdens of organized religion—literalism, moralism, and sectarianism. That identity allowed me to see the story of Genesis as a lesson in questioning authority rather than submission to it, and thus as the foundational myth of humanism.

I as Apostate. My exile was not just about blocking out the news. It was also about forsaking America as my home. I wasn’t driven into virtual exile by doomscrolling; I was driven to it by a democracy that freely voted for its own doom. Americanism was at least as powerful a force in my life as Catholicism had once been. My keen memory of breaking with the authoritarian institution that had dominated my youth gave me the strength and will to break with the authoritarian institution that threatened to dominate my later years.

I as Man Without a Country. Contrary to what the news media insists, the soul of America does not reside in the echo chamber of rural diners. It’s in our arts and literature where our collective myths are forged and unfold over spans of time that defy news cycles. Without the distraction of the news and all the superficial, transient, and hysterical issues it raises, I was able to assume a healthier mental diet consisting of philosophy, art, nature, science, and such. Nothing, however, was more nourishing than literature, especially American literature. I found myself returning again and again to works I’d read as a schoolboy and later as a graduate student and finding that they still had deep resonance for me. While I was desperate to escape late-breaking news and the America it described, I found sanctuary in the Americanism of Thoreau and Emerson, Whitman and Twain…Melville’s Bartleby channeling Adam in the garden by proclaiming, “I prefer not to.” In the end I realized, like Edward Everett Hale’s Man Without a Country, that there’s no such thing as a clean break with America.

I as Existentialist. Most revealing of all in rereading my own book is how much of an existentialist I project. I write a lot about being a Catholic, an American, a humanist, a budding Stoic. I never once use the word existentialist, but upon further review that is also me. Like Walt Whitman, I guess, I contain multitudes. The existentialism is manifest in my choosing at points in my life to break away from the various roles imposed upon me—communicant, patriot—to reinvent an identity more compatible with my mind and spirit. My decision to leave my comfortable exile behind and re-engage with the progressive struggle for a better society. My choice to recast Adam and Eve as refugees rather than delinquents and see their task of building a world outside of paradise as a more productive model for humankind. Even my title: Is He Dead Yet? suggests existentialism. Originally it was a political taunt. Then it became a branding statement. Now I see it as the essential question of existentialism—am I dead? Me. Not him. Have I given up? Has he murdered my soul? Or am I still the living, fighting, hopeful hero of my own existence?

After rereading these 244 precious pages, I believe I am.