Cowan Weirdo

She read it cover to cover without so much as a wince, and closed the book and set it on the tall narrow bookcase that faces the entrance. This same book made me almost sick with dread. Was Ivan, like Caius to Ivan, so strange that she could not see her own death in his? Was "posterity" such an antiquated idea that she could not see the parallels between it and our generation's narcissism, its self-branding? I didn't know; never found out. That evening we watched Afro Samurai in silent rapture.

But that was the beginning of this book. I started working on it as a study. Somewhat akin to how Hunter S. Thompson would type out The Great Gatsby, I thought I might modernize The Death of Ivan Ilyich and so doing learn a little about writing.

This is the resulting work.

Major influences read or reread during the creation of this book: The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy; Hunger by Knut Hamsun; Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman; Chaos by James Gleick; As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner; Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon; The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick by Peter Handke; A History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell; The Evolution of God by Robert Wright; Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity by David Foster Wallace; Araby by James Joyce; Omensetter's Luck by William H. Gass; On Sublimity by Longinus; I Want to Live! by Thom Jones; Newton: The Making of Genius by Patricia Fara; The Poet and his Book by Edna St. Vincent Millay.

May those fine brands shine a little light on this bumbler.