The Short Version
These are the posthumous writings of Eponymous Quatsch, a young man, stuck somewhere between madness and enlightenment, who died, alone, familyless and friendless, by suicide, while living in a homeless shelter near Boston, MA. I only knew him in the last months of his life, and was probably the closest person he had to a friend.
He called the first section of the writings An Investigation Into Social Class; this is a sort of rough, investigative sketch, ending mid-sentence. The second, Exile From Nowhere, is split up into three sub-sections: A Reckoning, An Interlude, and The Limitations. The second of these is perhaps the strangest of all the writings, focusing on a fictional tribe who experience existence in an eternal present. The Limitations is by far the longest, and contains the most consistently polished pieces, culminating in a sort of tour-de-force essay titled Relativism, the Absolute, ‘Self-Realization,’ and Happiness in America (or, Closer to the Path). The fourth section is a collection of thoughts and aphorisms compiled throughout the writing process. He titled the entirety of the work A Survey of America Within Myself (or, The Investigation).
Some of the writings are too rough, erratic, one-sided, and fragmentary for publication. Others, however unbalanced, are poignant in their uncanny reflections of contemporary society. A few come as close to describing Awareness as any I’ve read. He entrusted the manuscript to me several days before his death; I will be publishing portions at my discretion. Make of them what you will.
The Complete Version
