In Grand Purple Robes of Madness

A diary of a man descending into madness. Written as a prelude to suicide, the tortured Narrator tells us he is attempting to write the bleakest book ever written. Fans of Pessoa, E.M. Cioran, Nietzsche, and Bataille may find this work intriguing. The prose is lush, yet always restrained and subtle. The anonymous Narrator tells us, "I want to forbid every adjective that is not urgently necessary. Photographers do this also, if you look closely--" Each entry serves as a meditation and a further descent. We are given the lyrical substitute for the narrator's anguish. Ego vanishes. Every mood is set down and recast in the molds of painful lyricism. A war of opposites is waged from within as if a dress rehearsal for "The magnum opus I'll never write..." We notice both affinity and disjunction; Poems are included seemingly for the sole purpose of thwarting the discipline of poetry. Everything is taken from a phenomenological attitude, as if it had been the Diary of Heidegger or Husserl.