by Robert Stark
Dan Baltic’s debut novel, Nutcrankr, is published by Matt Forney’s Terror House Press, in paperback and e-book. Dan Baltic co-hosts the podcast, New Write, with Matt Pegas, who has been a regular on my podcast for several years. New Write is a dissident literature podcast, that is a play on the words, New Right, referencing a political scene, and write. Matt and Dan describe it as, “A Podcast for the Lost Arts. Reclaiming the Literary Holy Land from the Heathen.”
Nutcrankr’s protagonist, Spencer Grunhauer, is a man against time, or rather that time is against him. He is an archetypical alienated loner, a societal outcast, who is also fairly intelligent and perhaps on the spectrum. The prologue begins with Spencer incarcerated at Attica Correctional Facility in New York State. He is not having a good time, that is clear, but what is unclear is how he arrived there. Nutcankr, at least at the beginning, has the feel of a movie script, an observation that I have also gotten about my novels, which is not necessarily a bad thing. This is the case with a lot of younger authors. There is also a sense of delirium and fleeting shifts in parts, maybe not to the degree of William Burroughs’ Naked Lunch, but a sense that it is all in Spencer’s head.
After the prison sequence teaser, it goes onto Spencer’s college experience, and establishes him as a young weirdo, and how he came to be. The segment where Spencer is in college, takes place in the mid-2010s, with references to the Women’s March and SJW culture. Spencer is kind of a normie conservative in college, but feels under siege as a White male in the midst of the great awokening, on top of his status anxiety. After college, Spencer is living in New York City, working for a non-profit, the Center for Social Advancement. However, he gets fired from his job after the discovery of his manifesto, that he posts to 3chain, a site that is a parody of 4chan. Spencer’s manifesto, which he refers to as “The Project”, advocates for a eugenic breeding program of enforced monogamy, paring up young virgins with men of “good moral standing.”
After Spencer is fired from his job, he is adrift, and his life is in shambles. However, Spencer temporarily gets out of his rut by finding a girlfriend, Crystal, on a BDSM site. He tries to seduce and indoctrinate Crystal into the ways of patriarchy and traditionalism, but the indoctrination does not work, and she rejects him, causing him to go into another downwards spiral. After the break up, he starts using Nutcrankr, a fictional social media/porn site, hence the title, that is sort of a hybrid between Pornhub with Tumblr and Twitter. On Nutcrankr, Spencer comments on videos, building up followers, who are known as nut buddies, and he uses the site to further promote his manifesto. However, Spencer has another turning for the worse, when he is locked out of 3chain, and then from Nutcrankr, after posting some especially egregious material. The final straw is when his mom says that she is going to stop sending him money. With further humiliations and missteps, Spencer continues to spiral out of control, becoming darker, weirder and more unhinged. Nutcrankr is a case study of the psychological process of how someone might become more delusional and unhinged.
The thing is, Spencer is not abnormal. In fact, there are a lot of Spencer Grunhauers in modern society, and you might actually know this kind of person from the chans. While alienation is a perennial issues, as there are always people outside of society who have gifts that are not appreciated, the loner archetype is much more common today due to atomization. This is relevant to the rise in the literary and film genre of the alienated loner. For instance Andy Nowicki’s books such as The Columbine Pilgrim, my novel Vaporfornia, Matt Pegas’ book Dragon Day, as well as films such as Taxi Driver and Joker. Nutcrankr is also a homage to Confederacy of Dunces, with Spencer as a modern day Ignatius Reilly, reincarnated in 2010s Brooklyn. Confederacy of Dunces’ protagonist, Ignatius Reilly, is overeducated but under socialized, living in 1960s New Orleans, and infatuated with archaic medieval philosophy. It is a journey in Ignatius’ head, where he bumbles through life, and keeps losing jobs. While that literary archetype could date back to Don Quixote, there are a lot more Ignatius Reilley’s today than when Confederacy of Dunces was written. There have also been comparisons to Confederacy of Dunces, with both my books, Vaporfornia and Journey to Vapor Island.
Nutcrankr’s humor comes from the disjunction between reality, and how Spencer views the world, and how he thinks people see him. Spencer is not trolling, but he is rather earnest and literally believes his words and actions are justified. He just lacks the social nuances, and is oblivious to, and does not respond well to social cues and social repercussions, such as in how his employer responds to his manifesto. Effective satire needs empathy for the subject matter, though should not put the character on a pedestal either. Spencer is sympathetic, though Dan Baltic has pointed out that the right might hate what they see about themselves in Spencer, and the left might hate the amount of sympathy granted to Spencer. Obviously, both the left and right attack each other’s social status, such as the rightwing incel vs. the cucked soyboy memes. A lot of satire can come across as too brittle because it lacks that nuance and empathy. For instance, SNL skits are not funny because they are not actually satire, and most overtly political fiction fails, including most mainstream conservative political fiction. Even though Dan and the protagonist Spencer, are both of the right, the author is not pushing any rightwing agenda, and anyone with a sense of humor, regardless of their politics, can enjoy the book. With Nutcrankr, like my book Vaporfornia, the humor comes from the dramatic irony.
Nutcrankr is especially relevant to ongoing moral hysterias in politics. For instance Spencer rants against pizza-gate type conspiracies, as a moral crusader, but then has his own sexual proclivities that transgress against societal norms. With Spencer, the issue isn’t so much about moral hypocrisy, but rather the psychologic process of alienation causing one to become more unhinged. However, Spencer does have strong principles but he rejects the values of modern liberal society. Both political sides look to call out their opponent’s moral failings, which especially applies to the rightwing groomer meme about trans issues. In response, liberals will claim that rightwingers are the real groomers, such as bringing up Matt Gaetz’s scandal, or the meme of a rightwing culture warrior raging about trans people on social media, but then having the other tab open to hardcore pornography. Even if it is anti-intellectual, and just annoying, to scream groomer 24/7, it is a way for the dissident right to signal and emphasize some semblance of shared morality with normies, as the dissident right is generally at odds with society and normative values. Though mainstream conservatives have adopted the groomer meme, due to Fox News promoting Libs of TikTok.
10 years ago there was still some semblance of a mainstream, but society at large has no shared values, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I don’t lament the loss of the mainstream, and for many, it is better to find one’s own niche than conform to the mases. With the breakdown in mass society and polarization with online echo chambers, one may find themselves navigating the Overton windows of various sub-groups. For instance, woke culture is becoming more extreme and White identity politics is starting to become normalized on the mainstream right, which was unfathomably just five years ago.
When one becomes alienated from society, thus divorced from shared values, one tends to either become totally nihilistic or form their own moral framework, separate from that of society’s. This explains the two elements of the dissident right, the transgressive or “Queer” right, that seeks to agitate and transgress against normie social norms, and the Trad right that seeks to preserve normative values against the degeneracy of the left. However, both extreme traditionalism and extreme degeneracy, can be ways to rebel against society’s values, and go outside the Overton window. While the left has similar issues of both nihilism and hyper-moralism, the right generally underestimates how puritanical the left has become. For instance, the age gap hysteria among liberal women, and even Glenn Greenwald getting called out by the woke, for having a much younger husband. Morality should be evolutionarily adaptive and linked to biology, and while the Left is hyper moralistic, their morality is divorced from healthy biological imperatives. Despite major flaws with the Right, their moral framework is more geared towards evolutionary instincts, such as family and reproduction.
Obviously societal incentive structures are not geared towards healthy biological instincts, and these maladaptive, evolutionary mismatches, are causing people to go insane. For instance a failure to meet, what psychologist, Erik Erikson, described as psycho-social stages, in which certain traits and achievements must be acquired by a certain stage in life. Society’s prescribed life scripts are not working out for many, and people have out of whack life expectations. This is especially unique to American culture, where children are taught from an early age that they can become and accomplish anything. There are also many people who followed respectable paths of graduating with good degrees, yet life is still not working out for them as planned. An extreme example of mismatched life expectations, is encapsulated by the “virgin killer,” Elliot Rodger, who grew up around wealth and status, despite having very low social status. Elliot Rodger’s trauma and mental instability was exacerbated by his exposure to status and the high expectations he had about life. Recently a video of Elliot Rodger was released, due to the Freedom of Information Act, of him attending a Katie Perry concert, catered to ultra-wealthy private jet owners. Despite not even being a fan of Katie Perry, he attended because he wanted to feel special and high status, but he detested and felt extreme envy for the rich families attending the concert.
There is this dichotomy about situational vs. genuine losers, that is often overly politicized beyond psychology, sociology, and self-improvement advice. If one is an outsider in their society, they often speculate about whether they would have been better off in another place or time. Perhaps this is a cope, as it can be hard to get an accurate assessment, but the uncertainty is what drives one insane. The self-improvement community and various pill-based ideologies also have their own flaws, as they lack specialization and have become very cliché and cringe. I would advocate for a specialization-based, or “making your own way pill,” which could easily become grifty in its own right. Regardless, some people just have an instinct to find their own path, and not necessarily in a criminal sense. Once one realizes that their expectations don’t meet their reality, or that there is no clear path forward, one has to make their own way in the world, which is not easy.
The term grifter is not always well defined. For instance grifter could describe a scammer but could also just be someone trying to profit off of their online content. There is resentment about cliques of accounts on Twitter, that have around, say 20k to 50k followers. These accounts tend to promote each other, while gatekeeping outsiders, and often get accused of receiving Thiel-buxx. Another complaint is about cultural vampirism, from say “art hoes,” who sap the energy away from overlooked intellectuals, who have put in a lot more work. The most resentment online is not necessarily against the establishment media, but rather against those in dissident subcultures, who are the most successful at promoting their content. Unlike in corporate professional industries, or the institutional world, where it is clear what everyone’s role is, online, it is a free for all, where there is no clear hierarchy. You have all these camps, where everyone is out for themselves, and at each other’s throats, with no guard rails, trying to put forth their own content, agenda, or their tribe’s interests, and there is this manic energy.
Dan, Matt, and myself, are all very bullish on the future of dissident arts, and see this burgeoning scene taking off. Art outside of the mainstream is the future, even if there is good reason to be pessimistic about dissident politics. The New Write podcast, Matt Forney’s Terror House Press, along with my Substack and literature, seek to build the infrastructure to channel this dissident creative energy. Due to the overall decay in mainstream culture, woke capital, and elite overproduction, there are many talented and high status people, showing interest in dissident arts, who would have been in the mainstream just a decade ago. I have been following Matt Forney for over a decade, and recently he has been throwing these literary events for Terror House in Brooklyn. According to Dan, these event are drawing in real crowds, that even book readings for mainstream authors, get perhaps a tiny fraction of. Even if many people attend just for the cool scene, that is a sign of success and social proof.
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“There would be no communion with the Allfather just yet, as Spencer’s Valkyrie had different plans. For Spencer, the road to Odin’s great hall passed through Human Resources.”-Foreword by Gio Penn
“NUTCRANKR is a satirical novel examining social atomization, fringe ideology, and sexual dysfunction in the modern world.”
“NUTCRANKR is a comic examination of fringe ideology, social atomization, and sexual dysfunction in modern America. Dan Baltic's debut novel is a sardonic look at a certain type of Extremely Online character we're all too familiar with and what happens when their delusions and flights of fancy come into contact with the real world.”
Also published at Robert Stark's Substack
Nice article. There's certainly a big opportunity out there for good artists. Probably will only happen when there begin to appear self-conscious white galleries and museums.
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