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Q&A
Which philosophy or philosopher most aligns with your own beliefs?
I attribute nearly everything I know and believe to Doctor Yakub. Without him, I wouldn’t be here. I gravitate toward Slavoj Žižek. That man is unfathomably based. As a leftist, it’s nice to hear a prominent neo-Marxist like Žižek state that the West should supply Ukraine with nukes as deterrence against Russian aggression. I take issue with Tankies.
If you aren’t familiar with them, Tankies are leftists who can see no wrong in anything Stalin or the USSR ever did. Every conversation with them is the same: Stalin never committed atrocities, but the atrocities he didn’t commit were justified.Look, respect to the dedication to being a Marxist, but why does that carryover to modern, hyper-capitalist and hyper-imperialist Russia? I think it boils down to these people viewing the US (and by extension, the West) as the epitome of evil (which is true), but Russia being antagonistic to the West doesn’t make them “good.” That’s kindergarten thinking. Russia sucks—hard. I’ve lived in both Russia and Ukraine, and at risk of being one of those guys who thinks you must have been to a place to have an opinion on it, I can confidently say Tankies don’t know what they are talking about. I won’t call Norm Finkelstein a Tankie, but he crosses over into that territory. I agree with him on basically 99% of issues. Watching him tear Zionist sycophants apart is joyous, but concerning the Russian invasion of Ukraine, he miraculously puts the blame on everyone and everything but Russia. It baffles me how Russia gets treated with kid gloves in these matters.
Science fiction often shapes my philosophy. It saddens me how even now, science fiction (especially in literature) is so often dismissed. Sure, let’s applaud the fiftieth piece of autofiction about some trust fund baby, who just happens to be a writer. Weneed more of those books. You ever hear about this Ben Lerner guy? All his books are about writers. Wow! You have centuries of storytelling at your disposal, and you get paid the write for a living, and the best you can come up with is a story about a writer struggling to write? That’s just wild to me. But I guess these books keep garnering awards because it’s one big circle jerk, and people”see themselves” in these stories. The point is, literature isn’t dead; you just aren’t going to find anything of substance in books written by Ben Lerner or Keith Gessen.
The Three-body Problem trilogy by Cixin Liu blew my mind.These books take up philosophical and existential questions about time, space, reality, and society, plant seeds early in the stories, and then explore each of these questions, pushing them to the furthest possible conclusion. It’s terrifying. Humanity is not going to meet a happy end, the question is: just how terrible will it be? It might sound strange, then, that I love Star Trek: The Next Generation so much, as it couldn’t be more different from Liu’s works. It presents an optimistic future for humanity, where things like poverty and petty differences have been pushed aside. I’d like to believe this future is possible, but it most certainly isn’t. I don’t see humanity surviving this century.
Then there’s John Waters and his philosophy of bad taste. He writes stories about characters nobody would ever want to be in a room with, but he never judges them. He loves them. Lastly, Turtle from Entourage says a lot of smart things.
Is there any standard publishing or writing advice that you disagree with? Or any standard advice that you feel is too often neglected?
All advice is mostly trite gobbledygook. Just write. If you’re good at it, you’ll have the wherewithal to know it’s good. If you have no self-awareness whatsoever, also keep writing, because you might produce some true, elevated schlock.
Is your process for writing philosophical fiction different from the way you approach other works?
I never come into a story with a philosophical question at its inception. As cheesy as it sounds, the story tends to write itself, and then sometimes what I thought the themes were either become stronger, or change entirely.
What is the greatest compliment you have received as a writer? The most stinging criticism?
I only remember insults. The frustrating thing is that people tend to insult me personally, rather than my books. People can be quite mean. After being called various names for years, I’m now more convinced than ever that all of these people are actually Paul Dano burner accounts.
I’ve been accused of being both right-wing and a libtard with “victim mentality.”
Which authors or books would you recommend to those who want to challenge their own thinking?
People should read more science fiction. I think people are put off by the genre because they assume it’s nothing but technobabble and nerd crap. That’s partially true, but it’s like saying that just because 90 percent of rap music is trash, you won’t even give the outliers a chance. I think 90 percent of any genre or medium is crap.
Read The Three-body Problem trilogy, read Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke, and please, please, PLEASE read Antkind by Charlie Kaufman (the funniest book I’ve ever read). Humor is hard to master, especially in literature. Books praised as funny always fall flat to me. You can always tell when someone is forcing it. Have you ever seen someone who took dancing classes and technically knows the moves and timing, but when you watch them dance, you can see them counting the steps in their head? It doesn’t look cool at all. It’s desperate and forced. That’s what people trying to be funny are like. Kaufman’s book is so unhinged and unafraid, which is the only way to be funny. If you hesitate or if you wink too much at your audience, like, “See, I’m in on the joke,” it removes accountability. I’ve recommended this book to anyone I can, but no one wants to read it.
Recommended Substacks:
Joe Nada (No Relation) , Chet Sandberg, and Moe Strausberg- he’s unhinged in a way I could only dream of being.
Author Bio:
David R. Low is the author of three novels (CoinciDATE, SCHLOCK featuring Russia Cop, The American Brain) and various publications. He is best known for his Substack post about Amazon Prime’s Ice Cube’s War of the Worlds. At various points, he has lived in Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Japan. At present, he is seeking revenge against Paul Dano.
