More INCEL coverage on the stack
Novels have a long tail!
My novel, INCEL, was recently featured by
over at on Substack. Now, I might be slightly biased (having been featured there for a Tony Tulathimutte piece), but I have to say I’m consistently impressed by both the output and the quality over at TMR, which was founded by , and David Roberts.There’s just an enormous amount of energy over at the mag and it’s unusual to see this quantity of writing maintain such a high level of quality given the pace at which they’re releasing these articles (for example, the reviews are consistently excellent across the board). Their pace of commissioning and production is really quite unusual for a literary publication in this category—they typically have very widely spaced out release schedules. It’s also hugely impactful for them to elevate outsider artists who are doing interesting things but are situated on the institutional margin or niche alt-lit circles, etc. New blood injected from outside traditional prestige publishing institutions is sorely needed in the literary fiction space, and TMR has a great mix of established and outsider writers in that respect.
I felt that Daniel’s review was extremely dialed in to the philosophy of the book, and I’d encourage you to check it out—I really enjoy it when a reviewer incorporates a strong sense of their own voice and style into a piece like this.1
I also recently had a great conversation with the writer
, a fellow Substacker and novelist who similarly puts a great deal of effort into engaging with contemporary fiction and other writers on this platform, which you can find here.I don’t typically do written interviews since podcasts are typically the preferred interview medium in the world of decentralized fiction, but I felt that Adam’s questions were really very thoughtful and generative when I reflected back on the process of writing the novel.
I think the most interesting question he posed was about faith and theism, which is a topic I want to explore more in future fiction that I work on. Recently I’ve been thinking about Shusaku Endo’s Silence as a model for what good theistic fiction looks like (at least in the Christian sense), and I’ve felt quite inspired by it.
This year, I’m hoping to start (and finish) a first draft of a short novella—something like the punchy, accessible length of
’s Scenebux—a sweet spot for a time-restricted wagecuck like myself living the 4-hour-life (it’s more like 2-hours, actually, but who’s counting?), but Lord knows if I’ll actually find the time for it.
Thanks for the shout-out. That was a fun chat, and I hope people who read Incel will click through. But who is "Adam Contarini"? -- I suppose the complete pseudonym should be Contarini Fleming, after the Disraeli novel of the same name.
On the issue of potential future doxxing and cancellation, I am in a pessimistic minority. My guess is that the pendulum will swing and wokeness will come back worse than ever, even more angry, but also out for revenge and backed by government power. The historical case which is closest to ours is China, where people came out in the open during Mao Zedong's One Hundred Flowers Campaign and were then destroyed a few years later in the Great Cultural Revolution. That's where I think this is all going. The Woke Revolution isn't over, it hasn't even started. The generation that grew up woke will be further along in their careers, wealth, and influence after 2028. They have not changed their minds about anything. I hope I'm wrong.
Wagecuck solidarity ✊✊✊