Troll - Dave Fitzgerald

Here you are, shopping for books online because honestly, who has the energy to go out anymore? There are so many people out there, all buying the same Oprah-stickered crap to take to the coffee shop and Instagram next to their PSLs and blueberry muffins with one perfect bite taken out (or pretend to read until their latest Tinder date shows up). It's insufferable - the performance of it all - and everyone knows small presses are where the real literary vanguard is happening these days anyway. Well, maybe not everyone. But that's kind of the point of your being here, isn't it?

You consider yourself something of a snob when it comes to your reading choices, though not in a pretentious way. You're discerning is all. A serious person of uniquely refined and sophisticated tastes. Perhaps you felt drawn to click on this particular novel due to its provocative, all-caps title, or the cheeky contrast between its memeified typeface and classical-realist cover art. Perhaps you were intrigued by the blurbs and social media chatter invoking transgressive iconoclasts like Michel Houellebecq, Bret Easton Ellis, and Chuck Palahniuk. Or perhaps you're already an acolyte of this particular indie press and its stated mission of "degeneracy and degradation." You are, after all, the kind of unflappable literary deviant who actively seeks to have your ethical buttons pushed and your moral boundaries tested. The kind who enjoys nothing quite so much as a vicarious tramp through such aberrantly foul and filthy lives as you could never dare live yourself. And the kind who, even while wallowing in narcissism and self-loathing at your own complicity in same, feels such a profoundly personal anguish at the ongoing commodification of all art beneath the endless crush of content culture that you probably think this book is about you, (don't you? Don't you?).

And quite frankly, if you've read this far, then maybe it is. Maybe you are exactly who this book is about. And by. And for. And as such, maybe you should give it a look, and let the world know exactly what you think. It's not like anyone reads anymore anyway. They're all too busy watching, and posting, and "liking" and "following" to notice a true original like you. So what's the difference? Why shouldn't you add your voice to the fray? After all, nothing matters these days quite so much as what you think about it. And as you've already mentioned, you do have excellent taste.