Robert Stark talks to Andy Nowicki about his new novella, Muze, and Robert’s new surreal dark comedy novel, Vaporfornia. Andy Nowicki is a former English professor and the author of numerous books including The Columbine Pilgrim, Lost Violent Souls,
What is the point of allowing mentally ill people to have children? I am 35 years old and never worked in my life because of depression and anxiety. I dropped out of school at age 15, and survived a hanging attempt age 23. Had I not become a Christian some years ago, I would try to kill myself again.
While I like most of Nowicki's work, his stance on abortion and eugenics seems not too well thought out. Out of wedlock children should live, too? Grow up in a broken home? My father left and I grew up with a step father. My biological father took heroin! Imagine that! He is also a hunchback, which he passed on to me -- not to mention mental illness. Which, in my case, materialised in depression and anxiety; my father, on the other hand, is a psychopath.
I want out of this world, I have been waiting to die since I am sixteen or so. There is not even a Church I could attend without becoming upset.
I will end with some escolios by Catholic reactionary Nicolás Gómez Dávila and a journal entry by Kierkegaard, after whom Nowicki named his son:
--
Eugenics appals those who fear its judgment.
No beneficiary of slaves is supporter of birth control.
The individual who lies to himself, just like the society that does not lie to itself, soon rots and dies.
Depopulate and reforest – first civilizing rule.
Although it grieves the angelism of the democrat: one cannot build a civilisation with miserable biological
material.
The two most pressing problems of the contemporary world: demographic expansion and genetic deterioration are
unsolvable.
Liberal principles prevent the solution of the first, egalitarian ones that of the second.
Sex does not solve even sexual problems.
In the end, there is no area of the soul sex would not succeed in corrupting.
It is not worth talking about even one erotic topic with someone who does not feel the unalterable baseness of
erotism.
It is above all against what the crowd proclaims to be “natural” that the noble soul rebels.
Modern man’s life oscillates between two poles: business and sex.
Modern society is abolishing prostitution through promiscuity.
Sensuality is a cultural legacy of the ancient world.
Societies where the Greco-Roman legacy is being wiped out, or where it does not exist, only know sentimentalism
and sexuality.
To liberate man is to subject him to greed and sex.
This century has succeeded in turning sex into a trivial activity and an odious topic.
When the modern consciousness suspends its economic routines, it only oscillates between political anguish and
sexual obsession.
Sexual promiscuity is the tip society pays in order to appease its slaves.
The problem is not sexual repression, nor sexual liberation, but sex.
Sex and violence do not replace transcendence after it has been banished.
Not even the devil remains for the man who loses God.
The 19th century did not live with more anguish because of its sexual repression than the 20th century with its
sexual liberation.
Identical obsession, even when the symptoms are the opposite.
--
Journal entry by Kierkegaard:
ANOTHER MENDACIOUS USE OF CHRISTIANITY
No doubt very many, and very different, things preoccupy people. But if one were to name just one thing of which one would say that it was the only thing people are preoccupied with, it would have to be relations between the sexes, sexual desire, propagation, etc. -- for human beings are, after all, mainly animal.
That is why everything, absolutely everything that human hypocrisy can invent comes together on this point, as on no other. If you really want to learn to recognize human hypocrisy, this is where to look. For it is precisely because here we are standing at the lowest level -- something they would be too ashamed simply to admit -- that here hypocrisy comes into its own. Hence the elevated talk of the profound seriousness of propagating the race, of the great benefaction of bestowing life upon another human being, etc., all of it calculated in addition to refine the voluptuousness of desire.
The great benefaction of bestowing life on another human being. Bless my soul! A tired lecher, an old man who hardly has the sensual power -- the truth is they were unable to control the flame of lust. But one puts it hypocritically by saying that they intended to perform the great benefaction of bestowing life upon another human being! Thanks! And what a life, this miserable, wretched, anguished existence which is usually the lot of such an offspring. Isn't it splendid? Suppose murder and pillage and theft were similarly made into the greatest, most priceless benefaction! And what is putting a man to death compared with bringing such a wretched creature into life? For even if it is commonly considered a melancholic thought (as, if I recall, one of my pseudonmys says somewhere, or is to be found somewhere in my journal, or in any case a remark I made loing, long ago) that there should be greater guilt in giving life than in taking it -- even if in general it may indeed be too melancholic, yet in the case of the offspring whose life is destined to be sickly it is not an exaggeration. Yet this hypocrisy about a great benefaction is upheld; the child is supposed never to be able to give thanks enough -- instead of the father never being able to expiate his guilt even if he went on his knees, in tears, before the child.
But to the hypocritical use of Christianity. This is making it look as though Christian parents -- and of course in Christian countries everyone is a Christian -- beget Christian children -- but then coming into existence is identical with receiving an eternal salvation. Aha! So the meaning of Christianity has become the refinement of the lust of the procreative act. One might perhaps otherwise just stop, see if one can control the urge, hesitate to give another person life merely to satisfy sexual desire -- ah, but when one begets eternal, eternally blessed creatures, isn't the best and most Christian thing not to do anything else all day long if that were possible?
What is the point of allowing mentally ill people to have children? I am 35 years old and never worked in my life because of depression and anxiety. I dropped out of school at age 15, and survived a hanging attempt age 23. Had I not become a Christian some years ago, I would try to kill myself again.
While I like most of Nowicki's work, his stance on abortion and eugenics seems not too well thought out. Out of wedlock children should live, too? Grow up in a broken home? My father left and I grew up with a step father. My biological father took heroin! Imagine that! He is also a hunchback, which he passed on to me -- not to mention mental illness. Which, in my case, materialised in depression and anxiety; my father, on the other hand, is a psychopath.
I want out of this world, I have been waiting to die since I am sixteen or so. There is not even a Church I could attend without becoming upset.
I will end with some escolios by Catholic reactionary Nicolás Gómez Dávila and a journal entry by Kierkegaard, after whom Nowicki named his son:
--
Eugenics appals those who fear its judgment.
No beneficiary of slaves is supporter of birth control.
The individual who lies to himself, just like the society that does not lie to itself, soon rots and dies.
Depopulate and reforest – first civilizing rule.
Although it grieves the angelism of the democrat: one cannot build a civilisation with miserable biological
material.
The two most pressing problems of the contemporary world: demographic expansion and genetic deterioration are
unsolvable.
Liberal principles prevent the solution of the first, egalitarian ones that of the second.
Sex does not solve even sexual problems.
In the end, there is no area of the soul sex would not succeed in corrupting.
It is not worth talking about even one erotic topic with someone who does not feel the unalterable baseness of
erotism.
It is above all against what the crowd proclaims to be “natural” that the noble soul rebels.
Modern man’s life oscillates between two poles: business and sex.
Modern society is abolishing prostitution through promiscuity.
Sensuality is a cultural legacy of the ancient world.
Societies where the Greco-Roman legacy is being wiped out, or where it does not exist, only know sentimentalism
and sexuality.
To liberate man is to subject him to greed and sex.
This century has succeeded in turning sex into a trivial activity and an odious topic.
When the modern consciousness suspends its economic routines, it only oscillates between political anguish and
sexual obsession.
Sexual promiscuity is the tip society pays in order to appease its slaves.
The problem is not sexual repression, nor sexual liberation, but sex.
Sex and violence do not replace transcendence after it has been banished.
Not even the devil remains for the man who loses God.
The 19th century did not live with more anguish because of its sexual repression than the 20th century with its
sexual liberation.
Identical obsession, even when the symptoms are the opposite.
--
Journal entry by Kierkegaard:
ANOTHER MENDACIOUS USE OF CHRISTIANITY
No doubt very many, and very different, things preoccupy people. But if one were to name just one thing of which one would say that it was the only thing people are preoccupied with, it would have to be relations between the sexes, sexual desire, propagation, etc. -- for human beings are, after all, mainly animal.
That is why everything, absolutely everything that human hypocrisy can invent comes together on this point, as on no other. If you really want to learn to recognize human hypocrisy, this is where to look. For it is precisely because here we are standing at the lowest level -- something they would be too ashamed simply to admit -- that here hypocrisy comes into its own. Hence the elevated talk of the profound seriousness of propagating the race, of the great benefaction of bestowing life upon another human being, etc., all of it calculated in addition to refine the voluptuousness of desire.
The great benefaction of bestowing life on another human being. Bless my soul! A tired lecher, an old man who hardly has the sensual power -- the truth is they were unable to control the flame of lust. But one puts it hypocritically by saying that they intended to perform the great benefaction of bestowing life upon another human being! Thanks! And what a life, this miserable, wretched, anguished existence which is usually the lot of such an offspring. Isn't it splendid? Suppose murder and pillage and theft were similarly made into the greatest, most priceless benefaction! And what is putting a man to death compared with bringing such a wretched creature into life? For even if it is commonly considered a melancholic thought (as, if I recall, one of my pseudonmys says somewhere, or is to be found somewhere in my journal, or in any case a remark I made loing, long ago) that there should be greater guilt in giving life than in taking it -- even if in general it may indeed be too melancholic, yet in the case of the offspring whose life is destined to be sickly it is not an exaggeration. Yet this hypocrisy about a great benefaction is upheld; the child is supposed never to be able to give thanks enough -- instead of the father never being able to expiate his guilt even if he went on his knees, in tears, before the child.
But to the hypocritical use of Christianity. This is making it look as though Christian parents -- and of course in Christian countries everyone is a Christian -- beget Christian children -- but then coming into existence is identical with receiving an eternal salvation. Aha! So the meaning of Christianity has become the refinement of the lust of the procreative act. One might perhaps otherwise just stop, see if one can control the urge, hesitate to give another person life merely to satisfy sexual desire -- ah, but when one begets eternal, eternally blessed creatures, isn't the best and most Christian thing not to do anything else all day long if that were possible?
(1854; XI I A 219)