Rhyme Henry Davis, EIC
Unreal has never been spoiled for choice; as a publishing company we’ve always been pretty strapped for ‘creative assets’. Of our three projects to gain traction, two (the Podcast and the Unreal Anthology) were stretched far beyond their natural life expectancies and have since been subjected to endless half-assed revival efforts. Tales of the Unreal has become a passionless potboiler, a bop, passed from editor to editor until landing finally with betabucks Ogden Nesmer who shined it up into a quarterly magazine of some repute. But that has nothing to do with Unrealies at this point, an Unrealie hasn’t seen the inside of a Tales in three years. Started in 2019, Unreal Press was rapidly developing that seven-year itch; the love had gone. We needed something new to shill, new fuel for mania.
Therefore, I could not have been happier to receive a proposal from Daniel Gavilovski. This guy is always good for attention grabbing works of fiction and nonfiction, and also the only member of the press who can be considered productive 1.
I was also pleased because this would be Unreal’s second standalone prose release. The first was Silkworm, a novella which has yet to reach the audience I dreamed for it, and whose release I feel I bungled. To be trusted with another author’s work is always an honor. The Carbon Pages proposed by Daniel suggested a return to the original Unreal mission; avante garde literature that rejects easy interpretation and consumption, what the Unreal Magazines were before I “ruined everything” by starting Tales of the Unreal. Also, I know Daniel better than I knew Ogden during Silkworm’s production, so I thought the awkwardness of that production2 was sure to be avoided. Obviously, I was wrong.
Daniel Gavilovski is not a serious person. I don’t know what he wants out of things. It’s easy to look at a modern young man and think; this is a person who wears irony like a safety blanket, he is unserious because it hurts less when his ambitions shrivel up and die. That makes things like the Unreal Black Party sensible.
Yes, it seems obvious that Daniel had no serious hope of a random summer party in Dagvupolis, Latvia being well attended. But he did buy party supplies, and he did decorate his apartment, and he did buy hundreds of dollars worth of booze, and he was actually blind drunk during that twitter meltdown at 4am his time. Still, he’s insulated. Imagine how much more it would have hurt if instead he did a book signing in Ireland, like a normal person, and nobody showed.
So is the man what, a joke? A norwooded little jester? Is he simply another internet manchild whose only skill is stealing your time? Well, no, because he’s outside. He’s really doing this dumb shit to his real life. He really dropped out of college because he read Tropic of Cancer and wanted to be a Parisian cook(and whoremonger). Then he abandoned that to dig up graves in Germany. He’s in Daugwopalis right now because the man has run out of road. Turns out things cost money, and he’s spent it all. Once you hit triple zeros in that bank account, all of this Adventure LARPing has to come to an end, that is, unless you can find a benefactor. A sugar daddy. A sucker. There am I, waving at you, standing on my mark.
Modern writers have a linked consciousness. This is a secret I wasn’t supposed to tell you. Modern writers have a linked consciousness, that’s why nobody does things like this anymore. That’s why we all say things like “real writers write before they go to work, they find time for their art around and within their daily routine” and,“if you’re really meant to be a writer, you’ll find a way(a way that involves being a wagie and a wifeguy and an all around normgroid)”, we say this stuff because when the collective experience of all writers is piled together we realize that this ain’t real life. Unless you consciously make your life out of this writing stuff it’s hardly there. There are so many lame quotes about writing (how much metaphorical gore can the practice of tip tapping into a word processor sustain) but it’s evident how minor all this is even to the people making it. Nothing would happen to you or anybody else if you just gave up.
So, I don’t know, Daniel Gavilovski coming to me with this huge vision for his collection of plays, a vision that involved buying adspace on porn bookshelves, faking his death, flying multiple people out to Spain; it was novel to see such naive ambition. Empowering, even. Here is a man who, if he is not always stimulated by some kind of writerly key jangling, will demolish himself. Me the only, yes, the ONLY thing stopping Daniel Gavilovski from locking himself out of his Dogwopolis apartment, throwing the keys down the drain, and living off rats and melted snow. Me and my life savings. It’s like bumfights. He’ll do whatever for this dollar.
But then came his list of demands, no longer cute ideas, but expectations an author has of his publisher. These demands were ultimately reasonable, but costly. Really costly. Illustrations? For an adult stage play collection (I’m sorry ‘closet play’). I tell him, politely, that classic authors such as Charles Dickens did their own sketches and while they weren’t professional quality they were charming and revealed a lot about how the author saw their characters. Wasted breath. He didn’t even respond, ghosted me for a week. He never compromised on a single one of his desires. That’s fine for him, he gets to play the role of punk rocker, unflinching, unwilling to have his artistic vision herded by the stiff collared, unartistic manager whose money he needs.
But I’m not a wealthy man. Until very recently my checking account was more likely to have zero dollars in it than any other amount. But this has had the inverse effect of the cliche of poverty; I am a spendthrift (I’m using it correctly) money don’t mean a thing. I literally cannot conceptualize anything meaningful resulting from either a surplus or total lack of money. There’s always mom’s house, there’s always the backseat of my car (it folds down). So, here’s 1500 for your illustrations. Yeah, let’s sell bookshelf fillers for porn sets, let’s do that. Here’s a tip to your favorite tiktokker who’s hardly wearing clothes, enough of these and sure she’ll hold Carbon Pages all coquettish over her breasts.
Unfortunately, this was letting Hitler have the Sudetenland. He was emboldened to ask for all kinds of ridiculous things. ‘There’s a woman I like at the theatre, make me a website so I can convince her I’m a big stage director in Ireland’ ‘I have a great idea for getting engagement, by the way I will insult everybody in the scene and they’ll stop responding to your emails’. I’m saying it’s his fault, but what am I, hostage to nothing? I had everything except his book, and yet I let him this coercive power, letting go of thousands in expenses, letting go of our dignity, letting go of my time. Why? Is the book that good?
The first couple of drafts were good, but if I’m going to blow what I used to make in 2 months on the production of a work, I want it to be stellar, unforgettable stuff. The center piece of the book, and what Daniel himself would describe as his crowning achievement, is No Weapon Formed Against You. An unauthorized history of Alexander Dugin, Eduard Limonov, Igor Letov, and The Nazbol Party. A sketch of Soviet Collapse. This is a great work. Once I read the first draft of this I no longer cared. The money was never a concern, but after this I no longer cared about the book. I did not care about getting Daniel on podcast interviews, I did not care about Goodreads reviews, I did not care about missed emails from other substackers. Who could care about the tinny content mill that erstwhile comprised contemporary fiction, when we’re in the making of art. Here’s a food analogy; you make crazy fall off the bone ribs, you’ve worked magic on the smoker, transmuted meat into silk, and now after achieving that some marketing expert is browbeating you about menu design. Be serious. Who could care.
Ah, you would do anything for these people. I’m half like to die anytime, my body is always failing, who cares right? Spend my last hundred on some dynamite, wrap the sticks like an Indian headdress around my enormous skull, blow me to the moon… I mean seriously what else was I gonna do with it?
Carbon Pages is coming soon.
We’re not in possession of content cannons like Cairo Smith, writing 2 stories a year puts you in the top 3 of productivity
“I think you should remove every instance of ‘saw’”
“I think you should kill yourself”
Fascinating piece on the economics of caring too much. The Sudetenland analogy cuts deap - that moment when investment becomes sunk cost fallacy becomes irrational devotion to someones else's vision. The paradox is dunno if it's actually irrational when something like the Dugin/Limonov piece lands right. Once the work transcends the grind, menu design really does become absurd. Most publishing stories skip over that inflection point where bankroll shifts from business expense to fuel for actualart.