Over the course of 2020, Brad Phillips and Gideon Jacobs wrote a 12-chapter "serial novella" for Autre. Click here to read Chapter 1: G and B.

text by Brad Phillips (and Gideon Jacobs)

Gideon did a great job above finishing his last chapter of this project. You can see that right? Don’t take it for granted that Gideon has talent.

He wrote about the beginning and the ending of things. When you exit a room, you end the experience of being within it, but of course when you exit a room you just enter another one. You are never not in a room.

This is the end for me. Everything has an ending, even an ending. This is the end of my ending. On Monday though, I’m starting Wellbutrin after almost a decade of not taking antidepressants, only mood stabilizers and Clonazepam. I am weaning myself off Clonazepam. Clonazepam, ironically, increases anxiety over time. I have been taking it for twenty-six years, never once having missed a day. Anything soothing will, after a span of time, become terrifying.

(For a while I had a literary agent who was an idiot and when I sent him the first draft of my first book he seriously thought I should replace the word CLONAZEPAM with the word KLONOPIN for American readers. And he also seriously thought that I should drop the U from words like colour and labour so as not to alienate American readers, and this is the utter stupidity you sometimes have to deal with in life, and I stopped working with him when I saw his high school yearbook photograph and he was wearing a bowtie, and then I saw his Instagram and he was STILL wearing the bowtie.)

I’m wondering about NXIVM. About Keith Raniere and what about the women in his house who died of cancer from rat poison, why is nobody talking about that? I want to know what’s happening to him in prison and I hope it’s rape and beatings. In Canada there’s an allergy pill called NEXIUM. I want to send it to Catherine & India Oxenberg for their allergy to poor people. I’m writing my first novel. I thought it would be out by now. My first book was published on my birthday in 2019. I turned 45. In February I turn 47. I basically just started a writing career. I’m worried a gap of more than two years between books will damage my possibly ascendant career. And I worry about the book itself. All the time. I’m writing about science-fiction and basically everything my first book wasn’t about, cause I don’t want to repeat myself. But I want to make money, and I don’t want all the ‘fans’ of my first book (who are numerous and loyal and generous and thank you) to be disappointed or feel alienated that this new one isn’t about BRAD AND DRUGS AND BLAH BLAHAHLAHA. I couldn’t be more boring as a subject—this should be apparent by the end of this paragraph. I wrote a detective novel that’s an irritatingly postmodern book within a book. I hate postmodernism. I’m trying to figure out how to incorporate it into the structure of the larger novel. It’s fifty-five thousand words, the detective book, which is already the word count of a short novel. If I insert it periodically in the structure of the main novel, I worry people will lose track of the larger novel, become frustrated by the interruptions, or only read the detective novel which is admittedly more gripping. The best solution I’ve come up with is to insert each chapter as an endnote at appropriate points throughout the novel proper, but as soon as you think about endnotes you think about David Foster Wallace and I really hate the idea of what would likely be ALL writing about the book to be about Infinite Jest and the endnotes. Cause Wallace himself got super bored of that and irritated (even though everything about Wallace is obnoxious and fake and performative and of course he loved the endnotes and the talking about them), but I’m not like him. I wouldn’t get bored, I’d get upset cause I don’t want to be compared to him or have people think I ripped him off. I’ve been painting a long time and nobody can say I ripped anyone off. But with your first novel if its got a lot of endnotes people can say you ripped of Wallace, especially someone like me: a soon to be 47 oooh 12 step meetings type wears a thing on his head all the time white asshole with a chip on his shoulder or a seeming or perceived chip on his shoulder and even now this sentence sounds like Wallace. I hate David Foster Wallace. He threw Elizabeth Wurtzel out of a moving car.

People say they like the ending, they savour the ending, they wait and they wait, and they postpone the ending cause it’s so bittersweet this ending, but ultimately they want it cause they have to move on. But death, everyone is scared of that ending. That’s why religion and Jesus and the virgins and reincarnation and all the lies people tell themselves about a new beginning which is really not a thing so much as a choice one makes every day.

I am supposed to be working on a novel and making paintings, but I ordered books, some suggested, some chosen by me, and they sit in front of me telling me, “Brad, fuck work come read” and these are the books
- The God Molecule by Brian Clegg (or Particle, some aren’t right in front of me)
- The Superrationals by Stephanie Lacava
- The Incest Diary by Anonymous
- Child of God by Cormac McCarthy who I never read and who everyone says you have to read
- Serotonin by Michel Houllebecq which I ordered an advance copy of the translation and thought it’d take a lot longer to come out then when it came the other day I was like, shit now the Houlellebecq book is here and I really want to read it but also it’s a bad idea to read it cause his writing style might somehow influence me and then I’d be ripping off yet another shitty white guy with bad hair.

(I feel worried and upset that by listing the books above people will think I’m attempting to appear smart, or well read, or intellectual, or that I’m posturing or showing off.)

My hair is also thinning and I bought Rogaine and am so ashamed and can’t believe I’m writing it down.

“2020 WAS A HARD YEAR EVERYONE LET’S PUT IT BEHIND US”

You don’t want an ending. I don’t want an ending. I want to be forever beginning, but I’m not an idiot child who shits his pants and leaves food on his face so I’m forced to face the facts.

You do not have to be forced to face anything. You can shit your pants and leave food on your face and be accountable to nobody so this is what I’m offering you at the end with very little energy left wearing a pair of red Nike sweatpants that people think are ‘cool’ but really were just cheap and I bought them at an outlet mall by my parent’s house and they’re actually the sort of sweatpants that high school jocks wear in the suburbs. I’m wearing a hat because I’m scared to see my hair and my wife Cristine’s shirt which has a big circle with a stripe through it spray painted on the front like a NO or CANCELLED sign cause I’m cancelling myself before anyone else can or demonstrating that I know I should’ve been or should be cancelled.

So it’s this:

Turn to Chapter 4 if you want Brad to quit painting and devote his time solely to writing.
Turn to Chapter 7 if you want Gideon to quit editorial writing and devote his time solely to writing fiction.
Turn to Chapter 1 if you want this to be published in some manner.
Turn to Chapter 6 if you secretly shoplift things like beef jerky from gas stations and nobody knows it.
Turn to Chapter 9 if you’re obsessed with Tao Lin but pretend like you’re not cause you’re frightened of judgment.
Turn to Chapter 2 if you don’t want this to be published.
Turn to Chapter 5 if you’re considering Christianity in spite of having seen dinosaur fossils in museums and can’t reconcile the creation story of Adam & Eve with what you know of science but still want to really give Christianity a shot.
Turn to Chapter 8 if you want Gideon and Brad to live long healthy lives.
Turn to Chapter 4 if you’ve ever been happy and the end of that happiness did NOT bring you suffering but somehow, illogically, did not hurt you.