If you’ve been following along, you’re familiar with the story. But here it is very briefly anyway:
2012: I started writing a novel in the fall. Unfortunately, my brain decided to get inspired to write the novel at the same time school started in September. I got distracted by having to keep track of both school writing assignments, and my own stuff.
Additionally, I started getting very disorganized. At that time Staples was still making ribbons for the Olympia typewriter (which they have sadly since discontinued), so half the book was written on the typewriter. When I was at school, I’d write a lot by hand in a notebook. Other times I’d write on the laptop whenever I got good ideas. As a result of all this haphazard writing, some papers got lost in the constant varying of the writing style. I eventually shelved the project, and sort of forgot about it for awhile.
2014: I started working at a call centre. It was my first experience working in such an awful environment, and I couldn’t believe it was that bad. The people were terrible, the office felt like hell…everything about it was horrendous. The place was so hilariously unbelievably shitty it was the source of a bunch of ideas.
2015: In the summer I decided to pick up the story of the scrapped novel once again. I thought, with the 3 years that had passed since starting to write it, I could approach the material a little wiser. I decided to start over: even though it was the same story, I basically wrote a whole new book and incorporated some of the various pages I still had access to from my first attempt. That fall I finally published the book; on Halloween of that year to be precise. October 31, 2015 the book was finally made available on Amazon.
I didn’t do marketing or anything, I just quietly posted it for the world to see what would happen.
Nothing…..
More nothing…..
No one cares……….
Over time….A handful of people read the book. Periodically one of these people will send an e-mail (I put my e-mail address on the back cover of the book for that purpose) telling me they enjoyed it, asking me about the condition of anhedonia, etc. I don’t expect much from the book, so it’s pretty cool when I receive any type of feedback.
2017: 2 years after I publish the book, the praise and audience for the thing has pretty much gone back completely down to nothing&nobody at all. Which is completely understandable: in the self-publishing world, if you’re not constantly promoting your stuff you’re pretty much fucked. Especially if you have no following whatsoever, no marketing strategy or anything of that nature, etc.
Randomly, one day that fall I decided to check out the book on Amazon. As an author it’s comforting to see a book you have personally written available for sale on the website pretty much everyone uses now. It’s surreal. Even stranger: I noticed someone had reviewed my novel.
To this day, the review is probably my favourite review of anything I’ve ever written. I was 23 when the novel was published, and I’m 27 at the moment; I very rarely enjoy going back and revisiting past work, because I feel it’s important to keep moving forward. (In fact, last summer an offer was made to me to rewrite the novel in hopes of making it longer and a bit more marketable. I tried to do this, and ended up writing a second version of the book I’ve never really shared with anyone….. in the end I feel it makes little sense to go back to previous ideas unless you truly have something to say). But I enjoy reading this review because the person does a really great job at talking about what the book is going for. The criticism is fair, and the praise is appreciated. Even if it’s just a practical joke someone somewhere posted, I love this review. I don’t think I’ve ever posted it on this website before, so here it is.
ABSOLUTE ANHEDONIA, my first novel, is still available for sale here. I think my second novel, THE GREAT NORTH AMERICAN NOVEL, is a lot better, but AA still has some cool things in it!
************************************************************************************************************
In my humble view, "Absolute Anhedonoia" is one of the better books published thus far in the 21st century. It truly captures the essence of the times (as does the title itself). That this book is apparently self published takes away nothing from the story, which resonated with me unlike any piece of modern fiction I have come across.
The story follows a protagonist with a dead end job and uneventful life lacking meaning or even feeling who nonetheless goes through the motions. As things develop he comes to terms with the meaninglessness that confronts him and escapes to a place that first appears to be paradise but later turns into a sort of hell on earth. Struck by the absurdity of it all, he resolves to deal with it the best way he can without abandoning his consciousness. Not since Camus imagined Sisyphus's pleasure at rolling a rock up a hill for all of eternity has "making the most of it" seemed so respectable.
There are some moments where the author veers away from the philosophical concept of the absurd and into the patently absurd. For instance, when the protagonist boards an airplane without knowing where it is going, or, later, when a famous rapper (who happens also to be an absurdist) spills his guts to a complete and total stranger in a hotel lobby. Though if one is able to suspend disbelief for a short while they arrive at a conclusion that is incredibly fulfilling.
Ultimately Singleton suffers from the same problem as all existentialists and absurdists who have come before him. They have no other answer for life without inherent meaning except to fabricate meaning themselves. In a passage that borders on the moralizing, the author writes: "Immerse yourself in meaningful work only so you feel like you’re making a genuinely positive difference in the world."
Still the book is more than worth the time to read (and read again) for passages like this, that really get at the heart of the human condition today: "The main problem for a person that is aware that life has no ultimate meaning is the difficulty in figuring out, 'Okay, now what?' The cynicism, dissatisfaction, or emotional retreat of an intelligent person isn’t necessarily unfounded. No one prepared them as a child for the eventual realization that life is a lie, because it’s almost impossible to teach a person. They have to discover that themselves."
I spend quite a lot of time reading, though I am not a huge consumer or fan of fiction. While I can get a lot of out of non-fiction books, few fictional stories have had any real lasting effect on me. Absolute Anhedonia is different. This book left a deep impression of a kind I haven't felt since I read "A Gentle Creature" by Dostoyevsky. It's that good.
Perhaps if this book was better packaged or promoted, or turned into a feature film on Netflix, it would get the attention it deserves. That is the reality of the era we find ourselves in, and incidentally one of the reasons why this books reads so well! I hope Larry Singleton will write more.
