More Notes from the Autopsy of God: On Art

The role of art is to help us momentarily forget the absurdity of life.

My Influences

'Scepticism Inc. is a venomously intelligent and funny novel with a richly European combination of whimsy and seriousness... this book's rare pleasure is that, as well as numerous running gags, it boasts a wealth of conceptual and structural jokes.'

- The Guardian

My writing, I am sometimes told, is reminiscent of the late great Kurt Vonnegut. This should come as no shock since it was Vonnegut who inspired me to become a writer. I found a battered old copy of Slapstick, or Lonesome No More in my year off before college in a second hand book shop in the back streets of Katmandu…as you do.

Another important influence on my work is the also late and also great Richard Brautigan. Brautigan’s writing never ceases to amaze me; even though I have read his work many times, (and read him often to my students) his casual inventive turn of phrase - his sheer audacity with the written word still leaves me breathless.

A reviewer once said of some of my short stories that they were ‘brazenly inconsequential’ I loved the phrase because it reminded me of Brautigan’s work.

The ebook cover of Scepticism inc. is a homage to Brautigan (have a look at the cover of Revenge of the Lawn, The Abortion, So the Wind Wont Blow It All Away).

Philosophically I would describe myself as an optimistic nihilist or a jaded humanist. Nietzsche is my philosophical idol and my collection of Aphorisms, Notes From The Autopsy of God, which I have been tweeting recently, is very Nietzschian in style. (Even if I do say so myself.)

Nietzsche would have loved Twitter.

More Notes from the Autopsy of God

Monday, 17 May 2021

On Art

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