Description
“When the fantasy is all that’s left, the impulse is to get lost in it. You want to forget that you’re an arm above the water and your legs are giving out.”
Modernity is Hell. It’s a sentiment shared by many people, even if they aren’t honest enough to admit it. But what is Hell? Hell is the impermanence of identity, the death of authenticity, the absence of love. It’s the unsettling nothing you feel as you amble to work and back, numbingly consuming pop culture pleasures, sleepwalking your way through dead-end sexual encounters. Hell is the void, the death of God, the blurring of reality and fantasy, your own consciousness lost in the stew.
Welcome to Hell is a clear-eyed, touching examination of the world we live in. Equal parts memoir, cultural critique, meditation, and lament, “Bad” Billy Pratt’s literary debut traces a poignant line through his failed relationships and other life experiences, painting a stark picture of the abyss that we’ve been condemned to.
“Billy Pratt wanders and wonders through the ruins of what is left of our civilization and provides poolside musings on the façade of what passes for human relationships in our atomized present day. With more than a helping of melancholy and longing for things which are now past, Pratt writes in the mold of Delicious Tacos midway through an existential crisis. Enjoy these Despairing Tacos.” — Mencius Moldbugman, contributor to Ending Bigly: The Many Fates of Donald Trump
“This collection is, as they say, a mood; an elegy for lost Americana, a memory of a place you’ve never been. If seduction is getting lost in the incomparable alienage of the other, and writing is teasing out the universal from the particular, then Billy tries to capture a universal sense of feeling lost. You will be able to see how much he cares.” — Zero HP Lovecraft, author of The Gig Economy and God-Shaped Hole
Reviews
- Caleb Caudell, The American Sun
- Sam Dexter, The American Sun
- Melissa Miles, Terror House Magazine
- Orwell and Goode, Terror House Magazine
- Nikolai Vladivostok, Soviet Men
Welcome to Hell is also available in e-book format. To purchase the e-book edition, click here.
