Jarett Kobek

When Adeline, a wealthy art student, chances upon a young man from the Midwest known only as Baby in a shady East Village squat, the two begin a fiery friendship that propels them through a decade of New York life. In the apartments and bars of downtown Manhattan, Adeline is Baby's guardian angel. She brings him home with her to Los Angeles, where Baby relishes ketamine-fueled clubbing nights and acid days, and he falls deep into the Club Kid twilight zone of sexual excess. As Adeline develops into the artist she never really expected to become, Baby faces his own desire for artistic expression and recognition.

A Novel

The Future Won't be Long

Nathan Johnson

—It'll be tasteful, I said. Don't worry. No one will take offense. 

—This is America, you dopey fuck, said Parker. People take offense at a paper bag.

No one is in charge. There is no central authority. There are people who can kill you, people who can put you in prison, people who can ruin you. That's a marked difference from someone who is in charge. It's a wide distance from a person being in control. You have spent your whole life believing in the myth of human competence, of parents, teachers, politicians, accepting the idea that there is a hierarchy of individuals who have worked hard, done the right things, made the proper choices, and been rewarded for such efforts. You think that there is a natural order in which we are each compensated on the basis of our individual merits, that the truly talented and intelligent reside at the top. This is complete fucking horseshit. The people at the top are as moronic, as base and inept as those at the bottom. The ruling class is simply meaner and more ruthless than us troglodytes. If I were you, I'd stop wasting my time with minor novels about experimental syphilis and start paying attention to the way things really work. I'd abandon any hope of a Great White Father who will save you from yourself. I'd stop pretending like your government and your society possess the capacity to handle any of their ongoing existential challenges. They don't. Nobody saves anybody. Everyone flails around. Nothing works. All of life is a horror show. Even the people you love will reveal themselves as little more than bags of shit. The whole world is fucked.

Colton Ray

This seemed like it would be right up my alley - an episodic tale told across a decade, hitting on 90s pop culture and the New York scene - but I never really cared for the two main characters or the dozens of minor characters that radiated out from them. I guess I just couldn't quite relate to the constant drug abuse and sex and self-destruction the characters sought to heap upon themselves, though I guess I can understand how someone searching to find themselves and discovering it the hard way would make those choices. In the end, they do seem to claw their way out of druggy obscurity, but I just didn't couldn't bring myself to care very much about any of their predicaments.

The Future Won't be Long A Novel

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