Released: The Voracious Ones

A new short novel about seething.

Today I release The Voracious Ones into the public ether. Available in paperback and kindle formats here and here. Scroll back a couple posts to find the introduction. Much gratitude to anyone who checks it out. Maybe mention it to someone else you know who likes to read?

What is it about? Themes include bibliophilia, Austrian vs. Keynesian economics, intellectual romance, Moloch and Molochism, and anarchist seething.

Here is a taste.

Excerpt #1:

I met him at a party—

—an orgy, I should call it, although I still don’t think of it that way, maybe if only because I still can’t believe I was invited to that kind of party. I can’t believe it because I am still, having accepted, not that kind of girl. What kind of girl aren’t I? The kind of girl that Jackie is. Licentious, ravenous, hospitable to precarious and even dangerous situations. It was absurd of Jackie to invite me. And yet exactly the kind of thing Jackie would do, just to delight as my eyes grew inflamed with the prudishness of my deep Catholic ancestry. (I assumed for the longest time that Jackie too had been raised Catholic, and that her ravenousness was a rebellion; I was wrong, but I digress.) Getting a rise out of me gives her an indecent thrill. As does watching me suppress the rise. It’s hilarious to her that we should be friends. I find it funny, too, although not illogical; everyone needs teachers, and all teachers need acolytes. Not that I intend to follow her example in any matters involving the Earthly plain; no more than she is ever likely to touch any of the books I’m always telling her about.

There is a lot that Jackie could teach me about the body, and a lot that I could teach her about the mind—we’ll leave the soul out of it for now—but the truth of the matter is that in superficial friendships such as ours, based not on shared experience but on renting rooms in the same house, opposites attract. (In other words: Novelty intoxicates.)

Excerpt #2:

He said words like “managerial elite” and “kakistocracy” and “neo-feudalism.”

I had taken a few coquettish steps toward him, my body still pressed against the wall at the shoulder, as if held there by some strong magnetic force. “And you,” I asked, “are not one of the managerial elite?”

A third laugh, this one derisory. No, he was nothing more or less than a “disused” college professor. He explained, without me having to prod, that he had been a professor of economics. They don’t allow you to teach Austrian economics at college anymore, he said with irony, but you can do it if you’re sneaky about it. Why wasn’t he allowed to teach Austrian economics (a term I had never herd)? Because, he said, Austrian economics is the truth of the human animal, and all that the universities are interested in are lies. This made me frown—because I did not believe it applied to my chosen field of study—and my frown made him grin. A wicked grin, quite devilish. It vanished quickly, and he pointed to my champagne glass, noting that it was empty. (A seductive move? No—a simple observation.) I asked what he was drinking. Armagnac. A hundred-year-old Armagnac, in fact. I asked if I could taste it. His eyes narrowed, expressing a wariness against seduction. I wasn’t trying to seduce him; I just sometimes forget that people have boundaries. (Which is strange, given that I have so many of my own.) This wariness in him succumbed to an idea; he went behind the big oaken desk, opened a drawer, and removed the bottle of Armagnac, as well as another delicate little glass. He emptied his glass down his throat, then filled both. I crept forward and took mine. He proposed a toast. To what? To dignity in the face of “gnashing temptation,” he said. And I said that if we were going to toast, we should at the very least learn each other’s names. This idea didn’t seem to sit well with him, judging by the barely audible harrumph that escaped him; nevertheless, he told me his name was Maurice Leclerc.