NUTCRANKR

$8.99

by Dan Baltic
Foreword by Gio Penn

“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.”

NUTCRANKR is also available in paperback format. To purchase the paperback edition, click here.

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Description

“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.”

Life hasn’t been easy for Spencer Grunhauer. Fired from his NYC nonprofit job for writing a “reactionary” manifesto during work hours, he drowns his sorrows with high-end liquor and online porn while raging against the “Davos Daddies” and their plans to crush Western civilization. But when he meets a young woman on a BDSM dating site, Spencer takes it upon himself to indoctrinate her in the tenets of “the Project,” leading him down a rabbit hole of public humiliation and mental illness, culminating in a ill-conceived plot to take the “Davos Daddies” down once and for all.

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.

“Reading Dan Baltic’s NUTCRANKR was an experience of profound discomfort. My guts oscillated wildly between churning with perverse mirth and twisting with recognizable anguish. This novel is The Sorrows of Young Werther for the Internet age. Baltic’s protagonist Spencer Grunhauer is a deluded, conniving headcase, but one full of pathos given that he lives in a world where ‘normalcy’ is polycules, communist beatdown squads, and sadomasochism. A send-up of our hyper-political age, wherein the very online politics of the left and right are correctly derided, NUTCRANKR is a profound and I dare say lasting testament to the chaos of the interesting times that we find ourselves in.” — Arbogast, author of The Shanghai Horror

“Dan Baltic has written the Don Quixote of the digital era. Spencer Grunhauer is a man out of time, adhering to the martial values and lofty language of a bygone era. He can’t quite get the world around him to conform to the model of how he believes things should be. Maybe he needs to log off, go outside, and touch grass, but every time he does, he tilts at modern windmills (like pussy hats) and hilarity ensures, always with him as the punchline. He’s hardly fazed, however, for it’s all part of his “Project,” a Zarathustrean plan to transvaluate the depraved values of our world and usher in a new era of the Übermensch. The way Baltic pulls this off, by contrasting the ideals within Spencer’s head and the reality of the feminist world around him, is truly an impressive literary feat, and the fact that he keeps it consistently laugh-out-loud funny puts NUTCRANKR in very elite company with the likes of Pynchon and David Foster Wallace. If you think I’m being hyperbolic, read it and see for yourself. If you’re anything like me, you won’t stop laughing.” — Astral, host of Astral Flight Simulation

“Biting and funny. Finely wrought political satire.” — Caleb Caudell, author of The Neighbor

“As if Ignatius J. Reilly marched into the 21st century, and he’s horny! Baltic’s exuberant wit runs rampant in hilarious, thoughtful navigation of modern sexual politics, finding the comic hysteria of an age that has neuroticized even our most basic instincts.” — P.C.M. Christ, author of Growing Pains and Vide Cor Meum

“Dan weaves together a seamless narrative of self-imposed tragedy and ironic comedy. The online right will hate Spencer Grunhauer and at the same time worry that he represents them.” — T.R. Hudson, author of Automaton

“Baltic has delivered a very online, Confederacy of Dunces-style comic novel about the crisis of masculinity in our dunce world.” — Kevin Kautzman, co-host of Art of Darkness

“Dan Baltic mogs the discourse with an uproarious gutshot for every self-important pseudo-intellectual. A relentless, hilarious book.” — Brad Kelly, author of House of Sleep, co-host of Art of Darkness

“Picture Jean Genet if he were straight, based, and funny: there you have the addictive style of Dan Baltic.” — Last Things

“An irreverent romp through the mind of someone we all know online. If John Kennedy Toole were given a healthy dose of Spanish Fly, a copy of Bronze Age Mindset, and an anonymous Twitter account, you’d wind up with NUTCRANKR.” — Jay le Juif, host of Cognitive Dissidence

“Baltic has written a comedic and energetic novel that is wonderfully reminiscent of Joseph Heller and David Foster Wallace.” — J.L. Mackey, author of The Fall

“Shining the beauty back into The Sorrows of Young Werther. It’s that good.” — Joe “Pilleater” Nally, author of A Hole in the Wall

“Dan Baltic’s NUTCRANKR is both an unflinching presentation of a deeply deluded, yet pitiable narcissist, and a devastating critique of the ‘deradicalization’ racket. And just when you think you know exactly where it’s headed, its twist ending leaves you stunned and bewildered.” — Andy Nowicki, author of The Columbine Pilgrim and Muze

“Dan Baltic reincarnates Ignatius J. Reilly in 2010’s Brooklyn—in the perfect storm of elite overproduction, anti-whiteness, and the digitized sex economy—to riotous success. A glorious victory in the quest to reclaim the literary holy land from the heathen.” — Matthew Pegas, author of Dragon Day, co-host of New Write

“Dan Baltic takes us into a world of sex, politics, and insecurity all raised up for us to see the mirror of ourselves and the modern world we occupy. If Spencer Grunhauer’s political project is to change the world for the betterment of the West, then NUTCRANKR offers us a debilitating critique of what such a project can do to the worst and best of men.” — The Prudentialist

“Dan Baltic has well and truly written a novel for our time. Absurd and mundane, epic yet also very profane, NUTCRANKR captures perfectly, with great wit and humanity, the agony and the ecstasy of this strange moment we find ourselves thrown into. You will laugh and you will cry, and maybe—just maybe—you’ll recognise somebody you know, even yourself, in the pages of this book.” — Raw Egg Nationalist, author of The Eggs Benedict Option and Raw Egg Nationalism

“NUTCRANKR is a series of darkly comedic misadventures, each fully deserved by its despicably entertaining (and alarmingly sympathetic) antihero. A strong narrative voice and cracking wit carry the reader’s interest line by line. The story arc is tightly controlled and genuinely intriguing. It made me laugh more than any other story, but only because NUTCRANKR is, at heart, a deep character study to which we can all relate.” — Woland

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Reviews

NUTCRANKR is also available in paperback format. To purchase the paperback edition, click here.

Product Details

Publication Date: November 11, 2022
Pages: 220
ISBN-13: 978-1-951897-80-2
File Formats: ePub, MOBI, PDF
File Size: 5.28 MB