In this season-ending episode of Wake Island, guest co-host BR Yeager—author of Negative Space and Burn You the Fuck Alive—joins us for a hall of mirrors conversation. Together, we get into David Leo Rice’s latest book, The Berlin Wall, using it as a lens to examine violent cusp figures like Anders Behring Breivik, Timothy McVeigh, and the Columbine shooters.

We take a gut check for 2024, exploring the height of disenchantment that drives us to embrace disharmony in a world where consensus feels out of reach and history feels at once stuck in place and spiraling out of control. Along the way, we nosedive through historical inflection portals and terroristic moments that warp our perception of reality and linear time.

Europe, 2020. Some claim that the Berlin Wall, once a living entity, is coming back together, its scattered pieces seeking reunion on the far side of history. The European continent trembles on the edge of total war, either in reality or deep in its own feverish imagination. Part present-tense apocalyptic satire and part neo-medieval phantasmagoria, David Leo Rice’s new novel presents an alternate history of the present where the Internet has become a territory unto itself and unstable factions obsessed with nationalism, liberalism, and romanticism drive one another toward a clash that could turn the very notions of refuge and culture into the ravings of a lunatic.

With The Berlin Wall, David Leo Rice has produced a text that feels totally sui generis: he has achieved the rarest of writerly feats and become his own genre. No other writer I know embodies simultaneity so cleanly or marries the aesthetics of gnosticism, decadence and pop-culture with a clarity of prose. If The New House was a bildungsroman from alternative dimensions, The Berlin Wall is an allegorical history of the present. It is as if Rice presents an archaeology of time, dusting off human chronology to reveal the multiplicative source of life in all its writhing self-contained logic beneath. He charts how forms form and the way the gross larval simplicity of fascism invades and reproduces in bodies.

— Thomas Kendall, author of The Autodidacts and How I Killed the Universal Man

Daddy’s back.

ROOM TEMPERATURE, haunted houses, video games, childhood memories, publishing with an indie press, supportive teachers, Flunker, and more

Dennis Cooper's Blog.

FLUNKER, six fictions, 124 pp., c/o Amphetamine Sulphate: orders open. UK/Europe: orders open.

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In this episode with Steve Finbow, we tease out the point at which a body ceases to be considered a person and chart the development of trauma over time, tracing the fine line between disgust and desire. We get into the motivations behind necrophilia and corpse desecration, examining the boundaries of how taboos can become normalized. We discuss the role of the soul or consciousness in elevating necrophilia to a mythic realm and the pursuit of the death drive in objects of beauty. We also consider art as both a method and a way of life, and whether societal breakdowns due to acceleration will increase instances of necrophilia in the future.

Necrophilia has shadowed humanity throughout its existence, from ancient Egypt, to the Moche culture of Peru, the exploits of the renowned Vampire of Montparnasse, the sexual murders of the Weimar Republic, through to serial killers such as Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer. This new edition of Grave Desire – with artworks by Karolina Urbaniak – delves unflinchingly into the myths, art and practices surrounding this taboo subject. Finding Juliet’s catatonic body and believing she had poisoned herself, it could have crossed Romeo’s mind to act out the unthinkable. Maybe Juliet, seeing Romeo’s corpse, considered a little sexual frottage before she stabbed herself with the phallic dagger. Repulsive yet real, disgusting and disturbing, this is an erotic book of the dead.

Buy Grave Desire from Infinity Land Press.

Steve Finbow’s non-fiction includes Allen Ginsberg: Critical Lives (Reaktion), Notes from the Sick Room (Repeater), Death Mort Tod (Infinity Land Press), The Mindshaft (Amphetamine Sulphate), Polaroid Haiku – with Jukka Siikala (Infinity Land Press), The Life of the Artist Niccolò di Mescolano (Alberegno Press). Sanbashi – a biography of the postwar Japanese photographer Toru Nakagami – will be published in 2024.

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From the critically acclaimed author dubbed “one of today’s finest practitioners of nonfiction” (The New York Times Book Review), a breathless true crime tale of sex, religion, and murder in the deep South.

Mike and Denise Williams had a tight knit, seemingly unbreakable bond with childhood friends, Brian and Kathy Winchester. The two couples were devout, hardworking Baptists who lived perfect, quintessentially Southern lives. Their friendship seemed ironclad. That is, until December 16, 2000, when Denise’s husband Mike disappeared while duck hunting on Lake Seminole.

After no body was found, everyone assumed that Mike had drowned in a tragic accident, his body eaten by alligators. But things took an unexpected turn when, within five years of Mike’s disappearance, Brian Winchester divorced his wife and married Denise. Their surprising romance set tongues talking. People began wondering how long they had been a couple, and whether they had anything to do with Mike’s death. It took another twelve years for the truth to come out—and when it did, it was unimaginable.

Now, the full, shocking story is revealed by Mikita Brottman, acclaimed true crime writer of the “enthralling” (San Francisco Book Review) An Unexplained Death. Through tenacious research and clear-eyed prose, she probes the psychology of a couple who killed and explores how it feels to live for eighteen years with murder on the soul.

A fascinating page-turner of modern noir, Guilty Creatures is destined to become an instant true crime classic.

Mikita Brottman is a writer and psychoanalyst living in Baltimore, Maryland. Her most recent book, An Unexplained Death, was shortlisted for the Gold Dagger Award for nonfiction by the Crime Writers Association of the UK. She has a DPhil from Oxford University and is a professor of literature at the Maryland Institute College of Art.

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Fear. Disgust. Pity. The cripple evokes our basest human emotions—as does the monster.

Told in lyric fragments, The Backwards Hand traces Matt Lee’s experience living in the United States for more than thirty years with a rare congenital defect. Weaving in historical research and pop culture references, Lee dissects how the disabled body has been conflated with impurity, worthlessness, and evil. His voice swirls amid those of artists, criminals, activists, and philosophers. With a particular focus on horror films, Lee juxtaposes portrayals of fictitious monsters with the real-life atrocities of the Nazi regime and the American eugenics movement. Through examining his struggles with physical and mental health, Lee confronts his own beliefs about monstrosity and searches for atonement as he awaits the birth of his son.

The Backwards Hand interrogates what it means to be a cripple in a predominantly ableist society, deconstructing how perceptions of disability are—and are not—reflected in art and media.

In this episode with ⁠Matt Lee⁠, we explore the destabilizing effects of an acid experience, delve into Goya’s creation of his most otherworldly works after becoming deaf, and Tennessee Williams’s deep fear of asylums. We discuss the concept of self-imposed exile within the disabled community and dissect what truly makes a monster. We examine the works of photographers like Diane Arbus and Robert Andy Coombs. We also reflect on the limits of empathy, consider if we are the greatest source of danger to others, and confront childhood terrors and the complexities of fatherhood.

MATT LEE is the author of Crisis Actor. His short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in numerous venues online and in print. He has also written and produced work for the stage, including an adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. He is a cofounder and editor of the magazine Ligeia. Matt lives in Maryland with his wife and son.

SOCIAL: Twitter: @WakeIslandPod  Instagram: @wakeislandpod David's Twitter: @raviddice

Christopher Zeischegg is a writer and filmmaker who spent eight years working in the adult industry as performer, Danny Wylde. He is the author of The Magician, Body to Job, The Wolves that Live in Skin and Space, and Come to My Brother. 

His latest book CREATION spans a decade’s worth of writing on art, violence, sex work, and friendship. Acclaimed author, Christopher Zeischegg, confronts his past narratives, cruelty in auto-fiction, pornographic ambivalence, and transformative relationship to artist, Luka Fisher.

"Creation is a stunning new collection by one of the most exciting living writers. Reading a Christopher Zeischegg book is like stepping into a dream in which anything can happen—his particular combination of sex, death, beauty, and horror often feels downright transcendent." —Chelsea Hodson, author of Tonight I'm Someone Else

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Last year, David Peak released "The World Below," a midwestern gothic tale intertwining two rival families whose animosity sparks amidst a ritualistic occult murder mystery, amplified by heroic doses of LSD.

Published by Apocalypse Party, a rapidly acclaimed purveyor of top-tier horror, "The World Below" is a testament to their commitment to darkness.

This book seamlessly blends atmosphere and narrative, achieving the rare feat of being both immersive and a page-turner. David Peak's work aligns him with horror luminaries like Brian Evenson, Clive Barker, and Poppy Z Brite.

In this episode, we delve into reading as a psychedelic act, exploring how family feuds in small towns can evolve into an art form. We also dissect the drama and artistry of Jerry Springer, touch on the American mythology surrounding the West Memphis Three, and revel in the exhilaration of death metal and films like "Mandy."

"A brilliant and flayed slice of Midwest gothic. While one might find traces of Poppy Z. Brite or Michael McDowell here, The World Below is wholly its own beast. Peak laces the classic premise of feuding, cursed families with high-potency LSD, forming something fresh, potent, and filled with ache."

-B.R. Yeager, author of Negative Space

"Violent, noir-soaked horror infuses every page of David Peak's astonishing The World Below, coiling like a serpent around love: first and lost loves, love of family and the land, love of darkness and blood. Peak mixes the most primal of emotions like an alchemist, leaving every reader transformed."

-Livia Llewellyn, author of Furnace

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“The omnicidal will to constitute an infinite decision implies one of two things: either to kill the unfinished, or to let the unfinished kill.”

In the second part of our conversation with Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh, we delve deep into the realm of unreality. We explore topics such as the labor associated with maintaining the criminal enterprise of the dream, the suffering and expenditure associated with visionary figures like Joyce Monsuer, the allure of totalitarian seduction during times marked by the predatory and sadistic behavior of those in authority, the phenomenon of NPC culture and the detachment /neutrality it brings, the banality of repressed nerds and the enduring shittiness of the metaverse. 

Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh⁠ is a philosopher, literary theorist, and professor of comparative literature at Babson College. His work tracks currents of experimental thought across the so-called East and the West, with particular attention to concepts of chaos, violence, illusion, silence, extremism, mania, disappearance, night, evil, secrecy, and apocalyptic writing. He has published nine books to date, including: ⁠⁠⁠Night: A Philosophy of the After-Dark⁠⁠⁠ & ⁠⁠⁠Night: A Philosophy of the Last World⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠Omnicide: Mania, Fatality, and the Future-in-Delirium⁠⁠⁠ & ⁠⁠⁠Omnicide II: Mania, Doom, and the Future-in-Deception⁠⁠⁠, The Chaotic Imagination (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); Inflictions (Continuum, 2012); The Radical Unspoken (Routledge, 2013); Insurgent, Poet, Mystic, Sectarian (SUNY, 2015);

He is also the founding director of the Future Studies Program (www.futurestudiesprogram.com), Programmer of Transdisciplinary Studies for the New Centre for Research & Practice, and co-editor of the "Futures Theory" and "Suspensions" book series (Bloomsbury).

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"Every storyteller harbours a secret desire to be the one who tells the last story, just as every maniac wishes to inscribe the last fateful madness on earth."

In this episode with Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh we walk with vertigo to summon the authors who play at the borders of insanity and intoxication. We get into the territories of the night and mania, both of which are the premise of Jason's most recent books: Night: A Philosophy of the After-Dark & Night: A Philosophy of the Last World and Omnicide: Mania, Fatality, and the Future-in-Delirium & Omnicide II: Mania, Doom, and the Future-in-Deception.

Topics discussed include: exploring the dark poetics of the avant-garde, forbidden literature, and the final words of poets that lean into the dark and speak in apocalyptic tones, manic obsession, cosmic intoxication, opium dreams, mania redeeming nihilism, standing on the threshold of the abyss, embracing relentlessness as an aesthetic to achieve undeniability, and shunning sanity in favor of embracing madness.

Omnicide is “A captivating fractal of conceptual prisms in half-storytelling, half-theoretical prose, a rhythmic, poetic, insidious work that commands submission, Omnicide absorbs the reader into unfamiliar and estranging landscapes whose every subtle euphoric aspect threatens to become an irresistible invitation to the end of all things.”

Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh's Omnicide offers readers a view into a unique philosophy of delirium, mania, and vitalist annihilation: the startling revelation that everything that is, should not be. Omnicide is a singular kind of taxonomy, a teratology of thought-creatures that dovetails around his chosen writers, from the revelatory self-abnegation of Forugh Farrokhzad to Sadeq Hedayat, the poète maudite of modern Iran. These and other “poets of the lost cause” come together in a compelling book that is a strange hybrid of Aristotle's Categories, Borges's Book of Imaginary Beings, and the Necronomicon.

―Eugene Thacker, author of Infinite Resignation and In the Dust of This Planet

Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh is a philosopher, literary theorist, and professor of comparative literature at Babson College. His work tracks currents of experimental thought across the so-called East and the West, with particular attention to concepts of chaos, violence, illusion, silence, extremism, mania, disappearance, night, evil, secrecy, and apocalyptic writing. He has published nine books to date, including: The Chaotic Imagination (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); Inflictions (Continuum, 2012); The Radical Unspoken (Routledge, 2013); Insurgent, Poet, Mystic, Sectarian (SUNY, 2015); Omnicide: Mania, Fatality, and the Future-In-Delirium (MIT/ Urbanomic/ Sequence, 2019); and, Night: A Philosophy of the After-Dark (Zero Books, 2019); Omnicide II: Mania, Doom, and the Future-In-Deception (MIT/Urbanomic/Sequence, 2022); and Night II: A Philosophy of the Last World (Zero Books, 2022).

He is also the founding director of the Future Studies Program (www.futurestudiesprogram.com), Programmer of Transdisciplinary Studies for the New Centre for Research & Practice, and co-editor of the "Futures Theory" and "Suspensions" book series (Bloomsbury).

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Enter the Amity-verse with Wake Island.

In this episode we get into channeling dark energy from the media vortex surrounding America’s most infamous haunted house in Amityville, Long Island.

In addition we also talk about: Hauntings as a manifestation of trauma, the mythology-making behind the nearly 50-year Amityville horror house phenomenon, demonic media spectacles, the allure and menace of the suburbs, and the reality and fantasy of demonic possession.

Jack Riccobono’s new series, Amityville: An Origin Story, is now streaming on MGM+. Riccobono has written & directed a wide range of narrative, documentary and commercial work across the five boroughs of his native New York City and around the world, from Moscow to Shanghai to Freetown, often exploring hidden subcultures and the complexities of the human soul. His critically acclaimed feature documentary The Seventh Fire, from executive producers Terrence Malick, Natalie Portman and Chris Eyre, premiered at the Berlin Film Festival and received a New York Times Critic’s Pick. Theme music by Joseph E. Martinez of Junius SOCIAL:

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Jarett Kobek is a Turkish-American writer living in California. His novel I HATE THE INTERNET was an international bestseller, translated into nine languages, and published in twelve countries. His other books include: ATTA, Do Every Thing Wrong!: XXXTentacion Against the World, Only Americans Burn in Hell and The Future Won't Be Long.

Motor Spirit: The Long Hunt for the Zodiac

It’s 1969. Evil lurks in California.

From a Napa County hippie child murder to Haight Street gang bangs to methamphetamine psychosis to the killing of Sharon Tate.

Here and now, in this place and this time, it’s all gone wrong.

And there’s something else, too.

How to Find Zodiac

Dear Reader,

This is not the Zodiac speaking. The one thing that I ask of you is this, please read this book. It is called How to Find Zodiac. Being that this book is about the Zodiac, it offers a new suspect. The theory is probably correct. At the moment the theory is unproven. But the idea is a bomb waiting to go massive. Can you see the flaws in the hunting method or will you just agree and say case closed. Either way one thing is true. Zodiac can never look and seem the same after you read this book. 

"A scruffy masterpiece of criminology. It seems to me that either Kobek's painstaking deductions are correct, or we must urgently revise the laws of probability." -Alan Moore, author of From Hell

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James Pogue is a journalist and essayist. His first book is called Chosen Country: A Rebellion in the West. 

James recently wrote an article for Vanity Fair called Inside the New Right and it’s not only a great piece of journalism but it struck a cultural nerve. Not only did it go viral but it even got a shout out on Twitter from the likes of Jeff Bezos and Glenn Greenwald. 

In this conversation we discuss everything from MMA’s connection to the right, to diagnosing what is happening at the margins of our flailing empire.

We also get into: the Dillon Danis controversy, bro science/Rogan’s appeal, being skeptical of liberalism, how the left loses dynamic & questioning men, constantly beating back the devils at the gate, alienation leading to chaos, the system spinning out of control, reading the tea leaves of history and seeing techno fascism, Curtis Yarvin as a historian analyst of the left, social revolution, the aesthetics of the new right, and cool kids adopting a religious pose.

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Lindsay Lerman is a writer and translator. Her new novel, WHAT ARE YOU (CLASH Books) is out now. Her first book I'm From Nowhere was published in 2019. Her essays, short stories, and poetry have been published in The Los Angeles Review of Books, Entropy, Hobart, Southwest Review, and elsewhere. She is currently adapting her short story Real Love—which first appeared in NY Tyrant Magazine—for the screen. She is represented by Abby Walters at CAA.

In the intro David and I talk about Pascal Laugier's MARTYRS (2008). The interview with Lindsay starts at 27:42. 

In this conversation we get into: locating and living through the cusp of our time, the interconnection between nuance and chaos, dissolution, the unspoken rules of commodification, giving into the productivity of terror, giving yourself up to the universe, barfing into the void, celebrating the irrational, and the importance of play in the face of utility. We also talk about Bataille’s philosophy around expenditure and waste as a way to explore Lindsey’s outlook and work as an author.

WHAT ARE YOU:

Hypnotic, dreamlike, lyrical essays tell the story of a woman trapped in a destructive love affair with the universe. Her understanding of power, desire, and complicity must be transformed again and again. Addressed to an amorphous you, Lerman wrestles with the forces of birth and death, creation and destruction—going deep into the subterranean strata of consciousness and back. 

PRAISE: 

“An incantatory and hypnotic work of voice, What Are You exists at the apex of creation and destruction, desire and shame, innocence and experience, violence and tenderness, rapture and suffering, hunger and the denial of flesh. To read it is to feel the terror of falling from a great height—but wanting to; maybe even choosing to jump.” - SARAH GERARD, AUTHOR OF SUNSHINE STATE AND TRUE LOVE 

"Passionate, dispassionate, hypnotic, deadpan, ecstatic, Lindsay Lerman's What Are You, read it now. Now." - KATHE KOJA, AUTHOR OF THE CIPHER

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Adam Lehrer is a writer and an artist living in New York. He is the founder and co-host of the System of Systems podcast, and the founder and curator of the Safety Propaganda collaborative media platform. Communions is Adam's debut book - out now from Hyperidean Press.

Communions: Channeling hallucinated versions of dead artists and junkies, these fragments access the uncanny allure of shared experience. Elements of speculative fiction, criticism and encrypted auto-biography merge to form a disconcerting portrait of the artist as addict. Neither denunciation nor valorization, Communions is an attempt to probe the haunting singularity of opiate addiction and its ineradicable influence on art and culture.

As a writer, Lehrer covers topics such as contemporary art, horror fiction, noise and experimental music, cinema, and left politics.

David and I talk about the Truman Show in the intro. Interview starts at 19:25.

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Will American fantasies of purifying violence dissolve upon contact with reality or will the illusion break into civil war? 

Find out on this eps w/ ⁦Stephen Marche‬⁩ author of The Next Civil War: Dispatches from the American Future 

We also get into: American wildness, bloodlust, foment, genius, and the apocalyptic longing for an endless frontier. 

The United States is coming to an end. The only question is how. 

No matter your political leaning, most of us can sense that America is barreling toward catastrophe—of one kind or another. Relevant and revelatory, The Next Civil War plainly breaks down the looming threats to America and is a must-read for anyone concerned about the future of its people, its land, and its government. 

“Should be required reading for anyone invested in preserving our 246-year experiment in self-government . . . The book alternates between fictional dispatches from a coming social breakdown and digressions that support its predictions with evidence from the present. The effect is twofold: The narrative delivers Cormac McCarthy-worthy drama; while the nonfictional asides imbue that drama with the authority of documentary.” —Ian Bassin, The New York Times Book Review 

Stephen Marche is a novelist, essayist and cultural commentator. He is the author of half a dozen books, including The Unmade Bed: The Messy Truth About Men and Women in the Twenty-First Century (2016) and The Hunger of the Wolf (2015). 

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We speak to Dr Dylan Mulvin, Assistant Professor in LSE Department of Media and Communications, about his book Proxies: The Cultural Work of Standing In, which examines the ways in which proxies shape our lives, the histories of their production and how we delegate power to represent our world. 

You can download a free copy of Proxies: The Cultural Work of Standing In at https://dylanmulvin.com/ 

In the intro David and I talk about Strange Days (1995) 

The interview with Dylan starts at 26:58 

Visuals referenced:  

29:01 -- NTSC color television test slides (Fink and NTSC 1955)

34:09 -- Vancouver as a non place (X-Files)

35:14 -- Indian-head test pattern

36:29 -- UK Test Signal 

38:58 -- Cleaning the Kilogram 

45:43 -- The Lena image 

51:53 -- Yodaville

53:28 -- Middletown 

1:08:44 Hito Steyerl, How Not to be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational .MOV File, 2013

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JUSTIN KEENAN is a writer and narrative designer on Disco Elysium which is a groundbreaking open world role playing game. In it, you’re a detective with a unique skill system at your disposal and a whole city block to carve your path across. Interrogate unforgettable characters, crack murders or take bribes. Become a hero or an absolute disaster of a human being.   

In this episode we excavate the inner world at the heart of Disco Elysium and get into: Dark City (1998), RPGs, paranoia vs dread, world detectors, the future of video games, the state of noir detectives, and more... 

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In this episode with Jonathan Greenaway (Theology, Horror and Fiction: A Reading of the Gothic Nineteenth Century & The Horror Vanguard podcast) we arrive at the New Flesh while peeling back the layers of a nightmarish society in stasis.  

We get into: necro-neoliberalism, depressive hedonia, unspent energy mutating into gothic maw, our struggle to be and remain human, nostalgia neutralizing hope/fear instead of bringing us closer to history, the internet as a profoundly haunted and haunting device, Paul tells a dumb story about seeing Beyond the Black Rainbow on acid and the glorious weirdness of "Titane" 

Jon Greenaway is an academic, writer and teacher based in the North of England. He’s currently working on a PhD that focuses on philosophy, theology and the gothic literature of the nineteenth century. 

He’s also behind @TheLitCritGuy, a social media project that aims to bring critical and cultural theory away from its academic enclave and to the widest possible audience. He writes for a variety of publications online and blogs at thelitcritguy.com. 

He tweets @thelitcritguy. 

Find Jon on Youtube at Jon the Lit Crit Guy Theology, Horror and Fiction: A Reading of the Gothic Nineteenth Century Surpassing scholarly discourse surrounding the emergent secularism of the 19th century, Theology, Horror and Fiction argues that the Victorian Gothic is a genre fascinated with the immaterial. Through close readings of popular Gothic novels across the 19th century – Frankenstein, Wuthering Heights, Dracula and The Picture of Dorian Gray, among others – Jonathan Greenaway demonstrates that to understand and read Gothic novels is to be drawn into the discourses of theology. Despite the differences in time, place and context that informed the writers of these stories, the Gothic novel is irreducibly fascinated with religious and theological ideas, and this angle has been often overlooked in broader scholarly investigations into the intersections between literature and religion. Combining historical theological awareness with interventions into contemporary theology, particularly around imaginative apologetics and theology and the arts, Jonathan Greenaway offers the beginnings of a modern theology of the Gothic. 

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