Ian Belknap, the brains behind Write Club and the newly-appointed Dean of Mean at Paper Machete, is 44 today. To celebrate, he wrote a manifesto that made us so happy it was almost like the computer screen started glowing.

We are reprinting it, excerpted and with permission, because it is genius. (To read it in full, you have to “be his friend” on The Facebook.)

Most importantly: if you see Ian today, please buy him a slice of cake. Good cake.

… This year will be huge. This is The Year. The Year of Through Fucking Around.

Here’s how it’ll go down:

My chrysalis has split. My oaken fists are the size of gas cans and wrapped in leather gauntlets studded with the broken teeth of those who doubt me. My egg carton knuckles are dusted with ground glass and rock salt and justice. Oh, and they are ablaze with cleansing, cleansing fire. Behold the Oaken Fists of Flame.

My eyes are embers big as ostrich eggs. If you are a liar, avert your gaze. If you prey upon the unsuspecting, run. If you have no honor or imagination, pray for mercy.

…

I Hulk-jump from school to school, rooftop to rooftop. The Cleated Boots of Retribution drive media centers and tutors and markers that aren’t dried out and trombones and and MacBooks for everybody (even Bill Gates can tell you PCs eat ass) and massive pay bumps to teachers – the Boots drive these things down deep into the bedrock below every school, where they can never be taken away. Each day in the lunchroom, gelatinous slop is off the menu. Schools become the coolest buildings in the neighborhood – they have rooftop gardens and murals and are round-the-clock Curiosity Centers open to all, where even childless citizens swing by for reading lists or gripping conversation.

At each school I land on, the impact shears off metal detectors, which is no biggie because anyplace my enchanted feet touch down, bullets die in midair. Frustrated thugs try to trade in their gats at police stations. The cops have a good laugh, since these are now dry-firing scrap. The ingenuity of the thugs, expressed as cunning all their lives, blossoms. They start recording studios and throw pottery and garden and open vest pocket shops crammed with things that are so cool that kids entering them say “You can do this for real?” and are fully and meaningfully mentored on the spot and for all time. The ingenuity and urge to serve in the cops, which they’ve poured into the illusion of control, now gets funneled into tossing a ball around with neighborhood kids and helping out in soup kitchens and generally pitching in.

On to the libraries. With a knuckle bump, each is stocked to bursting with the latest titles. All the VHS tapes split into DVDs. All the cherished documents are in humidors that will guard them for good. There are dignified and private bathing facilities for homeless folks.

…

And journalism is resuscitated as the tough job that it is – the ongoing attempt to make sense of crazy-complicated things even in the face of perpetually shifting circumstance. They will try to get it right and we will try to stay reasonably informed so we can all make course corrections as we go. And if there are blowhard asswads who insist on continuing to holler in the obscuring and unhelpful manner nobody needs, The Oaken Fists of Flame will find them and smash their throats. They will remain as they were, except the only sound they will be able to produce will be the squeaky “mee mee mee” of the Muppet Beaker, and they will exert a Beaker-level of influence over us. Sometimes we tune in to watch the colorful streamers that issue forth from their mouths, but otherwise they go roundly ignored. After a short time, they grow translucent for want of regard.

And advertising evaporates because my ember eyes have seared into every brain the certainty that we deserve better and the ability to push the plate away and ask politely but firmly: “Please. Stop serving me a slab of turd and telling me it’s meatloaf. I can see quite clearly that this is turd. Take it away, please. Right now.” And all the squandered intelligence that’s been poured into advertising gets redirected into writing novels that are maybe not so hot, but are better than turd-as-meatloaf claims any day, or forming klezmer bands or becoming kite designers or, hey, really just about anything would be preferable, to be honest.

And each of us in the whole wide world finds love. And if we’re among the lucky who already have it, we begin to notice and appreciate it. So men quit being skeevy weirdos or puffed-out rooster people and women can look in the mirror and go “Jeez, you know what? I am kind of knockout,” and mean it, but not get all full of themselves, either. The world gets way sexier, like how you can take a basically OK-looking person and sling a guitar on his back, put a beat-up cowboy hat on his head, add a look on his face like he’s thinking of a poem, and suddenly he looks great.

…

There are bikes leaning on just about every lamppost and when you need to get someplace, you can snag one and head off. You can even ring the bell if you feel like it.

A lot more of us begin sentences with phrases like “So check it out – I made this new thing,” or “I wrote this for you,” or “I skinned my knee a little bit when I was gathering these, but it was totally worth it,” or simply “Hey, stencils!”

The media and entertainment companies quit trying to out-stupid each other. Creative people of skill are allowed to try to devise new things that totally blow your mind. They work at the most extreme verge of their abilities and take the tough project of making quality creative work as far as their intelligence can carry them. They stop talking about their work being “like Happy Gilmore meets Apocalypse Now” because they’re trying really, really hard to make stuff that is unlike anything that has ever been ever before. And even if it ends up being stinky, it still winds up being an exciting attempt.

Sleeves around the globe are rolled up. We apply ourselves with purpose and clarity and esprit de corps. There is so, so much to do.

But – BUT – everyplace we strive and struggle, everyplace we pit ourselves against the darkness and limitation, the heartache and unfairness, everyplace we Plug Away at the Great Buckling Down, we are willing and even eager to slide aside our blueprints and cookware and study materials, we are willing to Hold That Thought and to Leave This for Another Time, we will hang our aprons on the hook, and dog-ear the pages, we will snap shut the cases and let the monitors sleep. We will still the hammers and we will set down the wheelbarrows and lay our pencils on the workbench.

Because there is urgency in the voices out in the yard – they are beckoning us away from dinner and other projects. Every kid in the neighborhood is playing an epic game of tag. And we are invited. And we will by God play some motherfucking tag, man. And everyone is fleet and plays fair. And we laugh until the fulcrum of our jaw hurts.

And even though it’s unheard of that there would be fireflies this early in the season, there they are. And we have supper on the porch. And kids get piggybacks and wives get kisses. And the moon is huge and the cricket serenade just about knocks our socks off. Hey, an owl!

And we sleep and feel safe under the dome of stars like a blanket fort as big as the world. And we know plenty. And we are unafraid.

And by year’s end, I can retire The Oaken Fists of Flame. And The Boots of Retribution. And pop out the ember eyes like contacts. And lay on a grassy hill. And watch the sky. And listen to the clover.

Essay Fiesta time! A new series built entirely around Essays. This third Monday of November don’t pass up the literary stylings of essays back to back! Come to the Book Cellar (4736-38 N. Lincoln Ave.) by 7pm to hear readings by Alyson Lyon, Beth Stelling, Keith Ecker, Zach Dodson, Jenny Macbeard, and Jenna Sobel. Zach will read his infamous essay on Al Bundy and existentialism. It’s opinionated! Winners of the event’s raffle will be announced and proceeds go to benefit Howard Brown. Also, The Book Cellar is awesome.

[ED NOTE: The following is the first in what we hope will be a series of general essays on not-necessarily-Chicago literature.-Gretchen]

Keep Yourself Alive: The Solitary in Survivalist Lit

By: Scott Stealey

The hallmark of the literature of survival is the removal from society. But within this assumption lies a nasty little undercurrent of belief: it is society that keeps you alive. You can eat because society established the Whole Foods or the Jewel on the corner near where you live. You don’t get a cold from being out in the rain because society provided the condo developments or low-rent shingleboard duplexes to cover your head. You don’t even get a little sick, but if you somehow happen to, there’s CVS. Or Walgreens.

When we think of survival stories, we think of the solitary castoff or castaway, like Robinson Crusoe, or we think of the stranded group, like the pubescent savages in Lord of the Flies. However there is another important division to consider when looking at this genre’s “lost” characters: their choice. The survivor’s choice of getting away is not present enough in the literature of survival, for too often our survivors have no say in their removal from society. Catastrophic circumstances drop them out, expelling them via shipwreck, plane crash, natural disaster.

Those survivors in the “stranded group” side of Survivalist Lit still have each other, and so a microcosm results, society in miniature, but a society just the same. These stories shape a smaller (and often by default, satirical) representation of what we already know. The group is still isolated, but the characters themselves don’t face utter isolation; in conflict terms, it’s still man vs. nature, but man vs. man definitely works its way in as well (think Jack vs Locke in Lost…wouldn’t they still be at odds off-island?). All of which is still interesting, but to me, the “stranded group” doesn’t get to the real heart of the escape from society, the gist of Survivalist Lit. I am thinking more about the freedom that results, about one solitary survivor’s conflict, man vs. himself. The one completely alone. When faced with only your free will, how do you live as a society of one? And more importantly, what does isolation do for the hermit? Can the hermit feel truly free and not share that with anyone? Which leads down a slope into the solitary: why must freedom tie itself so closely to being alone? Just what is the literature of survival trying to tell us about facing life alone?

Into The Wild is one of the examples in Survivalist Lit that presents one character who opts out, a definitive solitary man, (allegedly) disenchanted enough with civilization’s foibles that he feels a Thoreau-urge to disappear away from the things of man. Being citizens of society we all know there are going to be contradictions. We all know that sometimes we are told lies by the trustworthy, we all know that the cogs spin backwards sometimes, we all know you cannot be a sane individual alive today and believe that this is indeed the best of all possible worlds. But we don’t opt out. We do our best. Because we want to live. Key word here being “we.” When Chris McCandless goes off to Alaska to be a hermit, he makes a choice that “we” don’t keep him alive. He wants to live without us, but more importantly, he still wants to live. His will to live is that much more enviable because he wants only his choices to keep him alive. Obstinate, sure, unloving, maybe, but enviable: we just don’t know if our creature comforts are really what’s keeping us comfortably living. What if we lost the internet or our mobile service, or both, depending on our carriers? If the Walgreens closed? If the HVAC person never came? So: looking at a list of canonical literary-fiction Survival Lit, let’s divide that “loner” side further into those tales of surviving alone not by choice, like Robinson Crusoe, Hatchet, the first act of The Black Stallion—and those of surviving alone by choice, by the character’s free will, like Walden, Into the Wild, Kerouac’s Desolation Angels, and recently, The Other (Knopf, $24.95) by David Guterson.

Guterson’s novel is a refreshing new entry into this “loner’s choice” slice of Survival Lit simply because it is fictional and not based on actual accounts like its predecessors. The Other is about a young man (John William Barry) wishing to be a hermit and survive in the woods alone and escape his dutiful society self, a trust-fund baby full of guilt who feels too hard and sees the contradictions and decides he “does not want to participate.”

However, Guterson does not tell the story from John William’s personal survivalist account, instead he cleverly narrates from the point of view of the hermit’s best friend, Neil Countryman, effectively giving us something that the nonfiction “loner choice” books don’t offer: a more expansive interpretation of the people who choose to leave “us.” Guterson doesn’t want the hermit to be seen objectively, as Krakauer wanted McCandless—something to point at and wonder about and draw your own conclusions over—he wants to celebrate the discipline and attention present in solitary survival. His narrator Countryman even remarks in the novel, when going over a newspaper report of John William’s self-isolation, that he cannot believe his friend to have ever been “deranged,” as the newspaper (and by extension, most of society) suggests of the hermit’s state of mind.

Reading the novel, John William becomes a sort of incredibly-believable McCandless, a character who is more than the results of his stubborn choices. He shines with developed flaws and relatable experiences that only a novel can provide, filling in those gaps of humanity with meaningful scenes of his will to live through social contact with his best friend. Once a hermit can have friends, his escapism is splintered. He does live, somewhat, because of the people around him. Sean Penn’s film version of Into The Wild also tried to widen these same voids within the myth of McCandless, effectively rendering the film historical fiction more than adaptation. Don’t get me wrong, I think Krakauer was sincerely fascinated with McCandless, and wanted to respect the man, but as an author recounting true events, he could only report on his research and on what McCandless scribbled in a journal. In short, he was never his subject’s friend. He couldn’t listen (like Countryman does) to his hermit wax on about something like Gnostic purity and get closer to his possible motivations. He couldn’t consider his hermit’s choices with the respect that friendship allows. That doesn’t take away from the merit of Krakauer’s book, it just leaves more for someone like Penn or Guterson to work with as they shape a more believable freedom-seeker.

Like Guterson’s story, Penn’s film had the hermit make friends, probably because that hermit likely did so, and like John William, McCandless wasn’t just some negative grouse or Luddite who felt wronged by the contradictions and changes society dished out. These men are complicated enough to care about how to live without others, but also, they know that they can’t get there alone. They have some of Thoreau’s same disenchantment with the way things are heading in the civilized world, but that isn’t what defines their isolation. They leave for freedom, not for spite. They don’t have a death wish, they have a life wish. Through narratives like theirs it is possible to glean that people are actually what keeps us living, and as such, the freedom these men seek is totally interior: they wish for comfort within themselves. They want to be free of distraction, sure, but their solitary nature is more about the ability to be comfortable when faced with only their thoughts. Which is admirable, when you consider the historical context: Guterson’s book and Penn’s film may have come at this time in civilization because of the coinciding boon of social networking.

While social networking might just be a distraction for some of us, a way to peep or to show off, the themes present in Guterson’s novel expose something a little sinister about our tweets and status updates—aren’t they a dissociative way of being connected with society? You’re alone at your computer or mobile device after all. But, you’re also constantly and immediately available to the network and its second-by-second update. Are we half-assing real human connection, or half-assing being a hermit? I submit that Guterson’s novel also works as a commentary on the contemporary inability to be comfortable alone. Having an online and offline brain should call for more attention to ourselves. For all that social networking can provide, can’t it also take away from our ability to just sit still?

Maybe all our lives have certain dissociative aspects to them, but not big problematic ones that send us off into the wilderness. Survivalist Lit often seeks to understand our most base desires, and with The Other, Guterson may have wanted us to appreciate the hard work it takes to be comfortable alone. Because when you get better at being alone, when you can be attentive and not distracted, when you find that feeling McCandless and John William were searching for, maybe then, remarkably, society gets all the more richer and meaningful.