Home: Blog: 2006-02-05 Positive Thinking

My doctors have advised me to counter growing feelings of despair and futility by engaging in some positive and creative activity, so today I finally began work on my new book.

I'm calling it The Unrelenting Agony of Existence.

An analysis of the inevitable pointlessness of all human life, I believe it will represent a refreshing alternative to the majority of titles in the the existing under-five's pop-up/washable vinyl books market: a sector which I need not explain has hitherto lacked real philosophical rigour. (I except from this the exceptional "Mr. Fluffy's Balloon", a fierce satire on the possibility of true moral choice.)

Inflated waterproof pages will make bathtime fun, as infants read of the cynical emptiness at the heart of all social forms from colourful black pages bearing large friendly letters in slightly blacker ink.

Simple pop-ups will represent the charade of personality, the death of god, and the story's hero, John Paul Satre the Squirrel: nauseated by childrens' adoration of his own cuteness, and ravaged by secret heroin addiction.

Publishers to whom I have floated this idea have proved predictably crass in the rigid, formulaic commercialism of their commissioning policies. Most have simply had me forcibly thrown out of their offices, but not all have been this friendly - I really feel a restraining order is an inappropriate response to an artistic proposition of such integrity.

However, I am not downhearted, because I'll probably never finish it anyway, and in any event impending social collapse will probably render the whole enterprise irrelevant just as, ironically, the earth's climate collapses, extinguishing all human life for eternity - so, as you can see, I'm already learning to look on the bright side.

You're now a minute closer to death.

Manny