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Speaker 2: Andy Edwards, Welcome back to the Jay Burdens Show. How
you doing man, good?
Speaker 3: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: I am genuinely stoked to have you back. On our
first conversation went super well, Like genuinely I had a
ton of fun talking to you, and so I was
already excited to read your book and then I read
it and genuinely, man, I've never read anything like this book.
Super special. This is going to spoil the review, but
just buy the book. It's really good. It seems to
be doing quite well because it is genuinely a piece
of art, Like there's a lot said in this and
to have one of our guys produce something that is
genuinely just awesome. It's really exciting. So I'm not trying
to fluff you up too much, man, but my listeners
will know I'm not normally this enthusiastic. But this thing's great.
So let's just jump into it. Man, if you could
just briefly, what is your book, Crowbar about?
Speaker 3: Well, at the level of kind of the topical level,
it's the action follows two Rhodesian mercenaries who are I
was talking to a guy the other day who characterized
them as sort of like your action buddy duo, you know,
Mel Gibson. I mean, it's not based on these, but
there is this quality to it. And essentially they get
they get you know, they come to the States and
they get roped quick into into something like off reservation,
you know, real dark, black ops. And it's it's set
in nineteen eighty two, so this is the era of cocaine.
You know, real serious financial shenanigans, not that they haven't
been ongoing at that point, but they get kind of
overt and then at a certain point, you know, the
twist comes where we'll say, like a supernatural sort of
element gets introduced and you know, it's off to the
races from there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's a pretty good summary of it.
In my mind. There are a couple of things about
this book that immediately left leap out to me. One
is your is your writing style? Both myself, murder made,
Darryl Cooper and others who have reviewed this book have
noted the similarities to one of my favorite authors, Cormac
McCarthy on the service level. You don't tend to use
your quotation marks, but generally speaking that the kind of
flow of it is very much influenced by his work.
Was that sort of a conscience influence on your.
Speaker 3: Writing, Yeah, it definitely was. When I very first got started,
this would have been back in like two thousand and two.
I was introduced to McCarthy in a like a Western class,
you know. I was an English major, and we read
all the Pretty Horses, and I was I remember very
very clearly, because I lived alone. I had this great
little apartment, and I had really nothing else to do.
I remember just staring at at the page and I immediately,
you know, grabbed his the other two books and the
Border trilogy and devoured them in like a week. And
I just remember feeling like I didn't know this was possible.
I remember thinking that, like, I didn't understand that somebody
could be this good, that you could and you know,
what I'm talking about here is really his his his pros,
the way that it flows, and it's it's been you know,
applauded for for decades now. There's there are these different
influences that I never am quite satisfied with. You know,
it's sort of biblical, it's quasi Faulknerian. It just seemed
like there was something else going on. And as I've
said before in other places, it also seemed to me
that if you were going to try and write a
novel that you were, you're going to have to confront
this guy, you know, in some way, you're going to
have to engage with him. I think it was it
might have been Faulkner I forget now, or it was
Hemingway who said, you know, you have to accept that
there's a sort of competition between you and you as
you know, the the up and coming novelist and the
old timers, and you have to And so I must
have gone through those books ten fifteen different times over
many years, and then I had to let it go,
you know, because there's a place where it's like when
you put enough, it's sort of satisfying to pull off
like a quasi imitation of McCarthy, like, huh, it's not
totally out out of the reach of possibility. Where it
did seem that way to me when I first confronted him.
It was just astonishing to me that somebody could be
that good. And then I got kind of close to
it and I realized, well, now I need to let
go because I don't want to just be a guy
who's aping McCarthy. So, you know, along the way, I've
had to reevaluate. But yeah, he's he's a you know,
like I say, I mean, he's a massive influence. And
I don't think that anybody can cannot confront him at
this point. Like I've seen people try to avoid the
the literal like literary elephant in the room and just oh,
I don't have to, you know, like, yeah, you do.
We all do.
Speaker 7: Well it.
Speaker 2: And there is an element to that that art is
in conversation or in dialogue. You see this in the
you know, the famous school of Athens painting, where your
culture is viewed as all of these great thinkers in
dialogue one to another, and you have all of the Greeks,
all of the Romans literally in one conversation. And okay, yeah,
sure that's painting in the Vatican. You can go see
it if you want. And okay, sure it's not literally true,
but there is in the sense that the except that
the dialectic is a real thing people have. They react
to one another. And when someone comes up with, you know,
in any form of art sort of a new technology,
a new way to express yourself, you can't simply avoid that.
You can't just start on your own as sort of
an autodidact. You are a part of that conversation, whether
you want to be or not. And your point about
sort of casting your like managing that relationship, I think
is a particularly apt one. I have, you know, made
fun of Hemingway a good bit for mostly you know,
personal reasons. But it is an interesting figure in the
sense that he is he sort of became a giant,
and McCarthy to a certain degree, is in dialogue with Hemingway.
Speaker 8: Right.
Speaker 2: There is a through line in their style of writing there,
but there are a million derivatives of Hemingway.
Speaker 9: Right.
Speaker 2: There are a million people who are just putting on
that mask and sort of speaking in a lesser version
of his voice. And I think the way that you
talk about, you know, managing your influence is a very
apt one. This is something you oftentimes see on the
right with political influences, which is this desire to to
sort of discard yesterday's thinker, a desire to say like, oh,
that's old hat, we don't talk about that anymore. That's embarrassing.
But that's not how people work. That's not how any
form of you know, whether politics or art works. These
people become. They sort of sink into your bones. You
can't avoid them. And you know, there's a religious element
to this as well. Right, there's no true atheists. There's
a Jewish atheist, there's a Christian atheist, Chinese atheist. These
sort of things, they do impact you and you are
in dialogue with them. I just wanted to bring that
up as kind of the first letterary note if I
wanted to get into some of the themes that you
poke at. So when I had this book pitched to
me by you or by the burb, I had an
image of what I was expecting. I was not prepared
for this supernatural element to your work. And it's done very,
very well. It's gripping, it's interesting and not in kind
of a you know, Ouiji board like spooky, scary skeleton
sort of way. But it's just kind of flowing through
this this world of intrigue. And so there's a couple
of figures I want to talk about. We'll kind of
go through different characters, but to me, perhaps one of
the most interesting characters in this book is the character
of Cohen, who is this sort of I guess you
would describe him as sort of a a spook, a spy,
you know, someone connected to various shadowy organizations, and arguable
that he is sort of the villain if we can
talk about it in such gross terms of the book.
But I'm curious, man, like, let's talk about Cohen because
he's fascinating.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, other people have liked him as well, And.
Speaker 2: I want to say you said like him. He's a
despicable person.
Speaker 3: But he's fascinating. That that's true, That's what That's exactly
what Another person I'm thinking of who read the book
book was like, this person is disgusting, this person is
absolutely foul. And yeah, Cohen, as in terms of when
I wrote the book, I like to go in not
knowing all the details, and he kind of emerged along
the way. And I think that in many ways, like
he in his oh the bombastic, the extreme levels that
he's like at the edge of reality and and whatever
non realities are happening in the book. He's out there,
whereas the other characters you know, are are situated differently
in terms of their relationships to work time and and uh,
of course this supernatural element, so he was. He wound
up just being fun to write, even though he is
just this just I mean, he's a you know, I
don't want to I don't want to characterize him too much,
but he uh will just stick with like disgusting and awful.
But he I liked the fact that he's also you know,
he's quite capable. He wouldn't be where he is if
he if he wasn't, and I you know, where else
would would you want to go with him? Because I
mean I like him now. I guess what I'm trying
to say is you start out with kind of like
a few touchstones or archetypes in in mind, like what
is this guy's identity, what is his nationality? What what
are his main beliefs? But you wind up just kind
of dealing with his behavior as well. And so while
his identity we could we could we could go through
that list like maybe he's Jewish, maybe he's not. Uh,
maybe he's a spook, maybe he's something else. And we
have you know, analogs for this in our in our
topical real uh sort of political reality right now in
you know, various forums like Epstein and whatnot. But in
the end, and this isn't this wasn't really my plan
or anything but his behaviors.
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Speaker 3: Always rebeliefless and his interiority, like the choices he's making
quietly to himself, wind up sort of being more important
if you will, to me anyway, And I hope that
it seems as if you know, when I hear comments
from you or and from others about coen it that
seems to be the case. Like this is a really,
really nasty it's and again I didn't intend this, but
now that I'm running my mouth on it, it's almost
kind of the idea of like loving your enemies. It's
not necessarily that I want to. I don't want to
crush them. I absolutely do, and I will, but really
taking a longer look at them does require, you know, something,
maybe not the love that we It may be one
of these various Greek forms. You know, there's like a
gape and arrows and what have you. Maybe there's one
that's just sort of like studying him.
Speaker 2: There's we'll come back to this, but I want to
explore another theme and then tie it back to Cohen,
which is that a lot of this book exists sort
of in a space between reality and the spiritual world
that simultaneously there are like real physical events happening and
then this sort of you know, drug fueled hate where
you encounter things that are of the supernatural kind of
layered on top of each other all at once. And
obviously it seems as if, you know, you drew a
lot of inspiration from, you know, the mk Ultra project
and other kind of things going on right during the
Cold War. Because, to be perfectly blunt, almost every character
is high for almost the entire book.
Speaker 3: On a verity.
Speaker 2: It's like just concoction of different substances. And what's interesting
is that there's the scene and I sort of want
to talk about it more where you know, we're introduced
to kind of a cast of different characters, different operatives.
Obviously you have Cohen, who's this sort of you know,
mastermind figure but there are there are others, right, There
is a you know, former you know, navy seal who
is much less I guess kind of thinking than others.
But also, uh, there is oh and what's the name?
I cannot let me pull it up exactly. Uh uh, DiAngelo,
who's this sort of interesting operative. And we sort of
realized that, you know, several characters were involved in these
sort of you know, government experimentations of you know, brainwashing
of sort of combining you know, supernatural forces with you know,
chemistry and with kind of psychology to create monsters basically.
And so I guess if I can ask you a
two pronged question, One, to what degree are you pulling
on you know, things like mk ultra on you know
kind of like the CD underblody of the intelligence agency.
And then also, you know, kind of coming from that,
let's talk about the character of DiAngelo, because he he
is sort of a fascinating foil to Cohen, they're both
you know, evil and despicable, but DiAngelo is sort of
a purely a creature of his passions, of his desires.
He is more almost he's beast, you you know, he's
a you know, prolific murderer, you know, a sexual criminal.
And while he is useful you know for those things
to to Cohen and others, there's a definite difference between
the two of them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, very keen observation and as well with with
Denny and so you're right, Cohen is is sort of
at another level and in terms of the two pronged aspect.
So there's a book. We may have mentioned this before,
but Dave McGowan's work, he's passed away now. He has
some books that I read long long ago, in like
two thousand and six, two thousand and eight, he had
Programmed to Kill and something from Laurel Canyon. This was
about the possibility that CIA or other groups had been
involved in the music scene, and that don't I don't
necessarily want to come down on and I don't know
who could really. You hear a lot of these sort
of very certain statements about the mk ultrs stuff, the
Mockingbird stuff, co Intel pro and maybe we know what
we know, but my attitude is like, I'm not sure
that we really know even what we don't know, if
that makes sense. I'm not sure that we we have
a full grasp on the scope of the thing, and
so part of the program to kill idea was that,
as you allude to, there may have been some efforts
to isolate sociopaths or psychopaths and then develop them in
some capacity. And you know, Son of Sam, your work
with with Thomas kind of touches on this area. And
so in fiction, the thing I really like about fiction
is I I can approach it, you know, almost any
way I want. And there's truth to be found from this,
you know, these different ways that you can juxtapose it.
So as just sort of mentioned like I'm not sure
you know what happened. I think just the fact that
we think, or you know, the general populace sort of
believes that these things happened is remarkable. And this gets
into like conspiracy as a culture or some sort of
folkloric element, which is also very fascinating. And if I
can jump over and then hopefully I can get back
to this, you know, that's sort of the crowbar imagery,
is this idea of like what if we could get
a crowbar underneath this veil, this little cap that seems
to be on well, maybe knowledge in general, you know,
in a philosophical sense, but absolutely in a like a
political journalistic sort of sense, like what actually happened, you know,
since my dad was born, say like nineteen forty six,
what has been going on? It's it's that mystery aspect
to me is fascinating. And so jumping back to DiAngelo,
my supposition is that there if you were going to
do something like break a man and then isolate certain
components like it doesn't it doesn't seem entirely out of
the realm of possibility to me, I'm not sure how
it would be done or if it could totally be done.
And so that's this sense that Angelou is sort of
being contained, he's barely under control, and you know, some
of the action and the plot sort of well a
good bit of the Maybe the underlying logic is about
the the constantly on the edge efforts to contain what
is you know, really uncontainable. Can they control D'Angelo or not?
And when you know, in the world of espionage or
or spooks, it's no big deal, or at least we
think it's no big deal. I presume it's no big
deal to just erase people, you know, a delete assets
and things like this as necessary as sort of a
corporate type of logic that it would certainly apply. And Denny,
who you refer to is is a little bit different
in it. Well, I'll just let the reader sort of
sort of explore that the go ahead.
Speaker 2: He in my mind, uh, because there's a scene where Denny,
who is this he is a you know, a former
military man. I think it's a former seal, much different
both physically and kind of in effect than D'Angelo. He's
very professional and he's in very good shape. He is
not this kind of insane, meth fueled, potentially demon possessed lunatic.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Not a good guy, right, but a different sort of thing.
And there's a moment, and we haven't really gotten into
the driving force of the plot deliberately, so I'm saying
a thousand times read this book. But there's a moment
because close to the end where Denny inadvertently crosses over
from being you know, fully kind of material physical only
existing in that kind of professional aspect of being you know,
an amoral contract killer and he sort of peers beyond
the veil and is completely and totally shattered by it.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I don't want to put words in your mouth, but
your book plays with time in sort of an interesting way,
and the gap between the altered perception of time, whether
due to drugs or sort of you slipping below the veil.
And there's this great moment where Denny is on another hit, right,
He's basically going out to you know, eliminate two people,
you know, a man and a woman, and there's this
recurring item, these sort of you know, black cubes, and
Cohen is basically carry this with you. Don't press the button.
Whatever you do, don't press the button. And Denny does
and he's sort of cast out of time, right. He is,
you know, moving around, he doesn't know where he is,
and it's this sort of interesting thing where we see
someone who is you know, displayed an extraordinary amount of
willpower mastery over himself. Is something that comes up multiple
times as Denny and he's completely floored. He goes from
you know, being this kind of ultra professional to basically
frantically stumbling around just trying to get away from it.
And I think that's an interesting moment because you see
someone who exists kind of not purely but largely in
you know, as a materialist, forced into another realm and
they're floored by It's a very interesting scene.
Speaker 3: Well, thank you. I'm so glad that you talked about it.
I really now that you talk about it. I like
that scene a lot as well. And you can kind
of see this sometimes in the world. You know, we
talk about normies and you know, not necessarily so much
the veil, but if you have these conversations and you
just bring something up, like your opinions about once again
Epstein or you know, people will just stare at you, like,
what are you talking about? You know, you and I
share like probably a lot of overlap in our worldview,
and you know, if we went to seven to eleven
and just you know, just struck up a conversation with
some random person, I mean, who knows, they might be
way more far up than we are. But there's like
a disconnect, you know, a sort of fracturing or dissociation
that we kind of have to take for granted at
this point where much has been made about you know
that the alienation and isolation of Americans and families and
all this is absolutely real, and so to the extent
of a book like this or a really extreme story
can connect with readers, you know, that's sort of one
of those levels where.
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Speaker 3: I can imagine, and you know we don't need to
get into personal stuff unless you want to. I'm happy to.
But I can imagine a scenario where you take somebody
who's highly skilled and very athletic and very kind of ordered,
and then you expose them to something bigger and more expansive,
and like a bug, they'll just sort of shut down,
which is kind of what you're describing happens with Denny
when he makes a mistake. And the reason't I sort
of laughed when you brought up as, uh, you know,
Denny's told not to to fool with this little object,
and uh, I don't know, I just get a chuckle
out of the idea, like that's the first thing he does,
you know, like of course he's going to hit yeah, yeah,
but you know. And then the thing about DeAngelo, just
to maybe juxtapost him a little bit more, is even
though he's not as as you very stutely pick up,
you know, he's he's wild. He's more wild, he's more
extreme and just sort of yeah, maybe demonic, but he
knows maybe because of a greater exposure or something more
like living on the other side of that line between
darkness and the light. I sort of, I mean, I
I don't know that I communicated this in the in
the book, but I sort of imagine DiAngelo knowing, like, no, dude,
don't ever a hill hill straight, you know, mass murder
people and just rate people on the side of the
road or whatever. But he knows not to touch that
one thing. And it's like this, this kind of knowledge
of darkness, if you.
Speaker 2: Will, the just a teaser. I don't know if you
have time to address it.
Speaker 10: Uh.
Speaker 2: I'm glad you brought up the Epstein stuff, because there's
a moment. There's a scene where we see kind of
Cohen in his element, right, kind of interacting with you know,
the rich and powerful elite, which if you're at all perceptive,
you can pick up on some uh, some figures you
may recognize there. I mean Maxwell, right is you don't
even have to read between the lines to pick that
one up.
Speaker 10: Uh.
Speaker 2: But there's a there's a really great scene that takes
place with our our two Rhodesian mercenaries and Cohen. It
takes place at a Grateful Dead concert, and there's multiple
things going on at once. Right. They are there to
meet someone, and this is the kind of designated place.
But I thought it was interesting the way you talk
about the kind of blurring of reality that occurs at
a big concert like that. I'm not a deadhead. I've
never been to a Grateful Dead concert, but I have
been to jam band concerts before where you see that
sort of stuff happen, and as someone who has been
you know, relatively sober his entire life, it's always a
very weird thing to be sort of an island in
that you notice things going on. And I thought that
was particularly interesting in the way that you describe this
event in a religious context, right people are sort of praying,
either literally or adopting this kind of you know, I
guess we could say like spiritual relationship to the musicians
is super is really fascinating because I'm sure you and
my listeners will as well have sort of felt that
at some sort of mass event before, where you feel
like you're being sort of carried along and pulled into
something bigger than yourself. And so there's more to talk
about in that scene, particularly the introduction of the roadman,
who's a really fascinating uh character there. But uh, yeah, man,
I just want to say you you you quite accurately
described something there, and it was an interesting thing to
weave into, you know, this broader kind of theme of
you know, using a crowbar to crack the grate to hell,
you know, using the you know, kind of like science
and technique chemistry, right, because you know LSDE plays a
major role in this to blur the lines between the
physical and the and the spiritual world. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, great observations. My friend. I I too. You know,
I did go to some Grateful Dead shows.
Speaker 7: Uh.
Speaker 3: I think I went to maybe five or six all
here in Oregon. And this was right before Jerry Garcia died.
And but but my family we weren't, you know, dead heads,
we weren't really. Later on on the West Coast, I
ran into people who were who who This was like
a multi generational experience, and it was shocking. It was
it wasn't It wasn't like I didn't didn't participate. I mean,
I don't want to lie. I definitely, you know, took
my share of drugs. And but there's there was I
think the sheltering hand of God, frankly, you know, kind
of was there because there were things that I saw
that were so disturbing that it didn't have anything to
do with like, oh you don't get it or you know,
you're not quite you know, and this this kind of
like language has been around since the beginning of LSD
culture in the sixties and whatnot. You know, the squares
and the and the hippies and all that, so, you know,
to whatever extent that applies is sort of irrelevant to Yeah,
some of the just absolutely bizarre stuff that that I
saw during that time, and this does go back to
the history with CIA and Dave McGowan's sort of presumptions.
I again, I don't know there. I would encourage anybody
to check that stuff out. It's free online and there
are plenty of videos people who break it down, and
there's enough there where you kind of have to go.
It's circumstantial in large part, but there's enough there that
you have to at least take it seriously. You know,
all of these lines and relationships and connections, they start
to get so tight, the weave is so tight that
you it's really hard to say how much was intentional.
There's always been this, not always, but you know, again,
since the origin of like the hippie countercultural sort of
as a controlled maybe lever against you know, traditional culture,
there's always been this this sense that there's more moving behind,
you know, behind the curtain or under the carpet. But
there what I saw on what I'm trying to kind
of drive towards, there's another element that again feels beyond
anyone's control. There's no way that CIA and LSD, no
matter how powerful it is, it could orchestrate some of
the like cultish sorts of aspects that emerged out of
that scene. And I have mixed feelings about the Grateful Dead.
That concert that that's depicted in Crowbar actually happened in
It's a throughout the book, you know. There I'm just
playing real fast and loose with history. But I'm trying
to touch, you know, find these touchstones to to again
kind of do this work of fiction, you know, to
make the the fanciful in my mind fictional so that you,
the reader, whoever can can have a sort of, you know,
at least an experience of delight, if not something maybe
more than that. And the the relationship with the Grateful
Dead and Oregon and Ken Keysy and Eugene Orgon in
particular is all is all very strong, you know, It's
it's different now. I I like a lot of them,
a lot of the aspects. Our our pal Sandbatch has
kind of come to and he and I have talked
about this, come to defend the Grateful Dead in many
ways because musically and I don't know how interesting this
would beat anyone, But it used to be the case
that everybody said, oh, the Grateful Dead music sucks, it's
just about the drugs, and you were like, well, yeah,
that's kind of true. But the music was at times
spectacular and there was there there.
Speaker 2: Garcia's uh, Garcia's bluegrass album is amazing, amazing, a fascinating album.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and he has a bunch of collaborations with I mean,
all sorts of people. So to say that he's just
some you know, guy that we can sort of dismiss
if we're being honest, it's it's not really possible. And
I'm not a huge I don't have like bootlegs or anything,
but I have enough exposure to this too to I
guess form some sort of opinion, and that opinion is
kind of like they deserve their place. There's some fantastic
music to find and maybe maybe a lot of the
cultural elements, you know, just needed a place to sort
of come to rest. A lot of it feels like uh,
fractured families, a lot of people that if you again,
I only went to like six shows, but you you
can ostmost this stuff on the West Coast at least
in in kind of in my in my youth, you
could there's a there's a huge element of just brokenness
to it all, an unnecessary kind of brokenness. So how
much of if we go back to the CIA, and
and I keep, I keep harping on the CIA, but
to me, that's just sort of a placeholder for for
whatever these forces are. The Cabal a lot. There was
a lot of damage that was done to individuals, to
you know, local communities for sure too. I don't I
sort of perceived Christianity as impenetrable. I don't see that
damage can really be done, but it can be done
to us as individuals, you know, so well, Christianity will prevail.
A lot of people wasted a lot of time and
whereas they might have been led different ways.
Speaker 2: There's given me a weird reference but huge influence of mine.
Morgth did a movie review of the Dirty Harry series
over the course of like six months, great series of
podcasts with Endeavor, another person who's been on the show,
really great and while they're obviously reviewing the movie, they're
also talking about it as a cultural artifact, as a
reaction to the decadence and decay of the basically the
hippie movement on the West Coast that you know, after
the party did, San Francisco became a shithole because it
was full of you know, people who were horribly addicted
to drugs, who had fled bad situations and were now
sort of getting subsumed into a really dark, dangerous criminal underworld.
Another mutual friend of ours, Dearrol Cooper, spoke about this
a lot in his series on Jim Jones. You have
these many of these lost people kind of cast to
the wind, you know, many of the indexing with you know,
psychedelic substances, who've just had their minds broken, you know,
whether that was pre existing or something that happened. And
so many of those people were ripe for you know,
initiation into cults. I mean, you live in the land
of cults, at least in a modern context, right.
Speaker 3: There are dozens of them.
Speaker 2: You know. Jones is obviously, you know, an infamous case.
But what's interesting is that you know many of those people.
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Speaker 2: Sensibly when you know, when the party kind of stopped
in California moving north right, they moved into northern California
into the Pacific northwest.
Speaker 7: Yea.
Speaker 2: And so it was you know, very much ripe for
these kind of bizarre, you know, alternative religious movements, these communes,
and look, I'm not trying to say all of them
devolved into you know, Satanic child sacrifice. It was a
dark thing. There's a lot of bad things going on,
and I think your point about you know, this sort
of being confluence of you know, broken people is apt.
I want to to sort of refocus back on the
narrative to talk about the character of I think he's
introduced as the roadman, right who they are two mercenaries
meet at this concert. Excuse me, I don't want to
just ask you an overly blunt question, but what's going
on with him?
Speaker 3: So you've given me the opportunity of my friend to
use the the David Lynch out out where you know,
notice that the famous meme where it's the interviewer asked him,
so do you believe in demons? And he says yes,
And the guy says, you know, will you elaborate? And
he just says no. I think that from a craft
point of view, we could kind of maybe approach it
from this if it's helpful. I also don't want to
be dismissive to the question. I'm I'm trying to kind
of deploy some levity, but if I if I give
away too much. There a book like Crowbar, So if
people are thinking about, you know, getting into it, they've
probably seen some people say like this is a mind
fuck or this is a I mean on the back
of the cover it says it's a psychogenic fugue.
Speaker 2: This is I think that is roughly what I sent
to you halfway through it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so for me, when I was
thinking about how to how to do this, how to
build it, I had it took some doing, you know,
some very fine brushstrokes, which I think maybe I don't
want to disrupt those. Maybe maybe we could revisit it
like in I don't know, a year or something, and
and it would be interesting because I'm not trying to
be coy with it.
Speaker 2: But no, I respect that answer immensely.
Speaker 3: Thank you. I appreciate that. You know, from a craft
point of view, there's precedent in the so called hero's
journey for these figures, these helper like figures, and usually
this is some sort of Merlin or Gandalf, sort of
wizard sort of character. And so you know, I don't
think it's giving too much way to say that that's
certainly on my mind. I'm really steeped in the in
the structure side of writing. I took a bunch of
screenwriting classes when I first got started, and which was
probably you know, one of the most useful things I
ever did, and really saturating myself in this uh you,
I came to realize it isn't that something like the
hero's journey is absolutely necessary to every story, But it's
it's providing you a bunch of tools as the writer
that you can deploy as you see fit. And so
if we go back to the roadman and Gandolf and Merlin,
you know these guys in in take Tolkien. I I
always thought that it would, or at least I think
now that if we had some sort of offshoot series
where you did like what Star Wars does, where you
have all the backstory on Merlin and you hear like,
I mean, I don't, I mean I would read it.
I would be fascinated because it would be Tolkien. But
I wonder too if there's something really great about having
to make a whole bunch of presumptions about the mystery
of Gandalf the Wizard's sort of character, like what was he?
How old is he?
Speaker 10: Like?
Speaker 3: Where did he learn all this? Is he timeless? Does
he have? Is he outside of time? Is he inside
of time? Why does he seem to have premonition? What's
with like that that Council of Wizards? You know where
there and I know that there are some answers to this,
but the roadman too, it might be useful or interesting
to know. Hunter S. Thompson is a big has always been,
you know, kind of like a guiding light. I read
him when I was very young, and he spoke of
himself as he has this quote where he's something like,
I am merely a roadman on the wheel of time
as something something like that. He's speaking about himself. Sorry,
that's my dog at you know, and his work and
his place as he views it in the world. And
that always struck me as an interesting thing. And when
you go into the there's a whole lore about this
idea of the roadman, and he's he's a mythological character.
And I'm, i'm this is outside of our tradition, it's
outside of European history, though we probably have an analog.
But the roadman will be this quasi trickster sort of
figure who seems to be inserted into lives and narratives
as if to like stitch certain points up, to make
to maybe adjust things within time. And I it's it's
definitely in the Native American lore, and I think it's
in maybe some Australian Aboriginal stuff. They two have them
this idea which kind of comes into play with Crowbar
of them. They have dream time and then they have
what did they call it, like a song line or
something like that, which which is a pretty interesting you know,
I don't want to go into it here. I'm not
sure that I even could. But that's the Roadman, you know.
The Roadman seems to be this figure who may or
may not be real, who is inserted by supernatural forces
relating to like a higher teleological sort of scheme that
maybe we don't even recognize or partaken on a conscious level.
But he has limitations. That's what I like about the
Roadman is he's not a god, you know, he can't
come down and just he's not even Gandalf. He can't
like wave his wand and change things. But he has
some power. So I really like the constraints on this.
I like the idea of a world where there's an
ecology of sort of creatures with various powers. I say creatures,
but I mean people essentially. And in some ways maybe
that mirrors you know, a lot of the narrative that's
being pressed down on us as moderns, where you know,
there many people have pointed out that it may be
the case that what's called the eloy and the Morlock,
where we have this an emergent division with humanity, where
some of us are just going to be pressed into
this kind of like sixty five IQ kind of meaty hand,
animalistic slave level, and this will be like the ninety
nine percent just basically animals, you know, and then at
the top would be this elite, ultra wealthy ruling class
that would be maybe as many as you know, a
few hundred thousand people. Not not really an outcome that
I think I want to be a part of. Not
I think part of the Christian vision hucks. This comes
from Huxley, and I think HP Lovecraft maybe the originator
of this. But the kind of classic overarching conspiracy narrative
that you get from William Cooper, Alex Jones and many
others will relate to this end goal of reducing the
masses into this again kind of sweaty, just hovele do
welling shit cast. And and we're when they'd apply us
with drugs and enough sex that we would never even
really complain about it and probably eliminate us at some point,
I guess if the robots come around. But how I
got off on this Now I don't remember, but I apologize,
but this is no just.
Speaker 2: Talking about the character of the roadman. I believe was
the jumping off point.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, so I guess I was.
Speaker 2: We were talking about I believe if I can sort
of jumpstart you, this sort of ecology of different entities,
different beings, each with different powers. Sorry, I'll throw it
back to you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, Thank you very much. So this is just suggestion,
if you will, kind of like I look at it
like atmospherics. You know, it's there. We don't necessarily have
to be explicit in a in a short novel like this,
but it's part of conspiracy culture, and and the idea
that there are these competing and invisible agendas is something
you know, we talk about this all the time, just
in in in our culture, our shared our thing, and
it's been there's a historical precedent, you know, for for
having this suspicion of of elites or what have you.
But I think that's very reductive in the end. I
think I like the idea that the mystery is much bigger,
and that while the elites maybe they certainly have more
time and money, but there to me, they are in
no way in communion with with like, uh, the real deal.
And I think that conceptions of the spiritual world that
again we have in Christianity. I don't know that there
are exactly nine types of angels, but there may be.
But right now, you know, the prevailing kind of consensus
is just, well, there's angels or there's not. Well, how
about the idea that there's this whole world of it?
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Speaker 3: Societies of Angels and all sorts of all the behaviors
and activities that we might partake in are going down
with them as well. And so the roadman, to me
is is just a sort of figure who who may
be suggestive of a broader reality, much more elaborate and
detailed than how I think we've kind of been used.
And I think in our in our efforts to sort
of discern the mystery, it's it's been so diminished. And
you hear guys like James Polos talk about this all
the time, that the medieval viewpoint was again way more
colorful and detailed and elaborate than what most of us
now consider spirituality. And I think this is actually a
really important point that he makes and a much much
bigger deal than it than it would certainly then it
would seem like I have to make I have to
pay the bills. We all do. And you can see
how as that pressure builds and a form of psychic
control is in place already is kind of my supposition here,
and that once again, you know, the Roadman and various
other of these characters who show up in Crowbar are
merely suggestions or allusions to this idea that there could
be if maybe this is a solid way to put it,
a collision of of like rivers of narrative that are
they're actually colliding and mixing. And because we don't necessarily
really prioritize spiritual discernment, that ship's just gone right past.
Whereas maybe if you were at a Grateful Dead show
and these people were a little wild, and you've been
exiled recently and had a little trauma, you're you're my Rhodesians.
Maybe the uh, the the seemingly firm boundaries of reality
have been jarred enough that a character like this could enter.
Speaker 2: So one more character study, Okay, what what what am
I to make of the the character of of Satya
s A t y A ah, because seemingly this is
a and I might be reading this wrong, but this
is a character with two names or two identities. Yeah,
and there's this really fascinating as you could consider almost
like exorcism scene, sort of three quarters of the way
through the book. So what were you pulling on for
that character? What what were you trying to get across
with her?
Speaker 3: Well, good question. One. We can say this. I think
that the female of our of our species, has a
higher propensity for mimesis than most of most of us males.
It seems to be almost part of the package. Like
God put this into her and he has a reason.
And I'm not, you know, really making judgments on it.
I'm not a big fan of of mimesis, you know,
most most of us with agency. I like, I like
your opinion, you know, I don't want to and hopefully
people find something interesting. In mind, I like individuals, and
I don't want to see these. It agitates me. Let's say,
when I see these pictures of well we just call
him NPC's and normies, you know, it's like they're just
kind of going along with the herd. This is a
this is a real thing. I mean, if you go
to the mall or whatever. People will be wearing the
exact same thing, thinking the exact same thing, doing almost
the exact same same thing. And this at a like
a visceral level, this disturbs me. It makes me uncomfortable.
And what happens with with Satya is that you're right,
there's like there's a form of exorcism that takes place.
But we also sort of find out in that scene
that she doesn't know herself, and she doesn't even know
that she doesn't know herself. It's completely outside of her
purview that maybe something happened to her along the way
to divorce what I think of as the true self,
you know, the soul, the spark that cannot be destroyed
from whatever pressures and force and influences, uh, you know,
at the norm or sort of standard level, are influencing people.
And then in the case of Sodya, we've we've made
this more extreme and it suggested that she's a sort
of Manchurion, sort of honey pot mk ultra subproject. And
so this is an element of the the whole kind
of palette of conspiracy that strikes me as pretty plausible
that you can you can take people or the propensities
that maybe certain classes or types of people have already,
and you can incentivize them in such a way that
it's just sort of like they're they're good to go.
They're going to go, and whether it's you know, being
a sort of honeypot, sex spy, you know, basically a
whrror or a murderer or something else becomes their identity.
So I'm not sure if this helps, But you know,
Sadya in I guess it's Sanskrit is truth, that's what
that word means. And in Crowbar, I'm sort of using
her again as a sort of our archetype to stand
in for this mystery that is female nature. And so
if the reader, if the reader wants to go into
that and sort of dissect maybe what her assumptions about
what the roadman is, what her assumptions about herself are,
and then how she proceeds through the rest of the book.
I hope, I hope you know that there's there's a lot.
I think there's a lot to take away. I mean,
I've injected it there and I hope that people can
can get something from that. But yeah, it's and we
go back to for a second to like The Grateful
Dead and the sixties thing. I mean feminism is, you know,
in Blood Meridian, there's this famous line where the hermit
says to the kid, there's four ways that the world
can end, and he lists up these four ways, and
it's a completely bizarre, classic Blood Meridian moment. I love it.
But women are included among the four and it's it's
kind of my opinion that that is the angle that's
being taken. Whether it's forces of evil or some entirely
human cabal, it's this very particular kind of pivot point
of our existence that I think was attacked. And then
I think that basically white men sort of you know,
we're incentivized to look other ways. And so that's Satya
stands for a lot in my conception of the thing.
Speaker 2: Well, and that's she's a I honestly wish we'd brought
her up earlier, because she is one of the most
interesting characters for exactly that that reason. Right, there's a
literal plot role that she plays right to move the
story forward, which, by the way, I just want to
take a personal roundo applause. We are now an hour
in and have not described the plot in any way
which was deliberate, but also that sort of separate you'ld say,
almost like the on the level of like the iconic
or the symbolic is what makes her and the other
characters we've mentioned so interesting that gentle listener, if you
were primarily interested in an interesting book, right something you
can sit down and you know, sort of amuse yourself.
This book will do that. But what makes it interesting
is that there there's a multitude of layers to it,
and you know, with someone who similarly has a you know,
familiarity with I would call it conspiracy culture or whatever,
you'll pick things up you'd be like, oh, I see
what you're doing there, or oh, this is like something else,
and so it creates this sort of fascinating not to
use this term incorrectly, but this is sort of like
fascinating you know, alternative reality where it's this like, oh,
is this is like a view on sort of a
conspiracy made reel. You know, you get to sort of
peer into that and look at different you know, moments
at which this kind of shadow world has sort of
breached above the surface and in your mind connect the
dots and obviously there's a lot more going on there
but it's very engrossing, really really fun to read. I
we haven't really spoken about, you know, our heroes. I
guess we can use that term, but the two of
them have a really interesting dynamic, one to the other.
I won't spoil it too much obviously, the fact these
are sort of Rhodesian mercenaries. But there's a really fascinating
conversation and there are not how to say this gently,
there are multiple instances of potentially ritual murder in this book,
all of which are very striking in the way that
they are described. And there's one moment sort of after
you know, the Grateful Dead concert is finished, where our
two kind of heroes and Cohen are at this sort
of bachanalien after party, and one of them, I believe,
with Jay sees Cohen.
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Speaker 2: Love ritually murdering a woman. Yeah, And there's this sort
of bizarre, you know moment the next morning where he's
walking around looking for signs of it, and he introduces
it to his friends like I think this just happened.
And we see this kind of back and forth between
the two of them multiple times where they're basically saying like,
are you seeing this? Are you recounting this? And it's
this great repeated motif throughout the whole thing. There's another
one where we see I believe it's the other one.
I might have this backwards in my mind, recounting sort
of an inexplicable spiritual encounter with like a siren or
a sucubist or something, you know, some sort of like
a feminine spiritual force as a child. And I just
want to say, man, really like a fascinating motif there
over and over again, you know, to see them sort
of doing something very rational, which is checking one another,
like am I going crazy? Am I seeing this? Is
this real? And I don't know, man, it's really really
well done. Just something I wanted to point out there.
You know, as I sort of joked about earlier, we
have not talked about the plot at all. I've not
spoiled it really at all. There's a lot we didn't
get into. So buy this book. It's really good man.
Like I said, Andy, Uh, excellent work on this. I
had high expectations after our conversation and you exceeded them
and then some. So just a I guess kind of
a round of applause for me there.
Speaker 3: Well, thank you so much, man, I'm that's really gratifying
to hear.
Speaker 2: So as we come to time, obviously I will link
your sub stack your socials as well as uh where
someone can buy this book. But uh, yeah, man, it
seems that I'm not the only person who's a fan
of this book. It seems to be doing quite well. So,
in addition to everything else, support one of our guides.
It's it's going great, but you too can be a
part of it and get a decent book for your
trouble y man, What's what's next from you?
Speaker 7: Right?
Speaker 2: What's what's what should we what should we keep our
eyes on?
Speaker 3: Well, I'll say this like this morning. I think I
shared this with you already. We I don't know that
this has ever happened before that an independently published book
has cracked the top one hundred in the literary fiction category.
So this is the heavyweights. This is Fitzgerald, this is McCarthy.
Right now, King of Dogs is sitting at eighty six,
and I don't know. To me, this is unprecedented. So
I think I will continue to try and fan the flames.
You know, I've said this before, and other people have
done a better job saying it. If our guys on
our side doesn't commandeer the cultural apparatus that is movies, music, novels,
not just you know, print magazines. These are great, but
we have to get to film eventually. So the next
thing that I'm and this has been the goal the
whole time, is is to you know find I suppose
the right set of money guys and and art guys
who want to look at making these into films or
series or what have you. And so I'll be spending
some time on that, and I don't know. In the meantime,
you know, I'll be shilling heavily on X and probably
watching the Jay Burton Show.
Speaker 2: Well, thanks man, I will have to have you on
again already, have some things planned I want to talk about.
I'll give it a little bit of time before I
get to your earlier book, just to give people a
break from book reviews, because that a whole bunch right
in a row. But I'm really excited to read that.
And yeah, we'll have to have you on again potentially
to talk about someone else's book. Just tease that. But
as far as my stuff, Jay Burton Show, Apple, Spotify, YouTube,
anywhere you want to listen to podcasts, this is what
I do full time. So your support keeps the lights
on here. Lets me keep doing this. If you want
to support me through me a few bucks a month
on gum Road, Patreon or substack, get the episodes a
few days early with no annoying ads. You can also
support us more directly by just either giving me money,
which is you know, always nice, or you can add
over to our sponsor, Axios Remote Fitness and Coaching. I
got pinged on telegram by JB actually while recording this.
That's which I realize is it's poor form. But nonetheless
across my screen flashed image of JD making fun of
me for looking weird in my workout check in photo
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talking to you, man and everyone at home. Keep your
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