I spent five different decades writing novels not out of some noble artistic calling but out of sheer ego, self-aggrandizement, and the desperate hope of achieving wholeness. My faith wasn’t in literature—it was in the idea of a book, a symbol of permanence, a self-mythologizing gospel that would ensure my immortality. The writing demon that drove me wasn’t interested in craft or connection—it was fueled by compulsion, blind ambition, and existential terror. The kind of fear that makes a person scramble to ward off the specter of death by chasing a “Moment Fixed in Time”—to borrow therapist Phil Stutz’s phrase—is the kind of fear that guarantees bad writing. Too much desperation, not enough strategic detachment and self-critique.
The ego has a singular focus: obsession at the expense of reason. This can’t be emphasized enough. Every self-improvement book touting the virtues of discipline, daily writing habits, and relentless perseverance should include a bold disclaimer: If you don’t regularly stop to scrutinize, revise, and—when necessary—abandon ship, you’re not being disciplined; you’re being delusional. But here’s the problem: the ego does not like reality checks. The moment it invests time and energy into a project, it refuses to let go, clinging to the wreckage with all the grace of a drowning man hugging an anvil.
The most terrifying realization I’ve had in writing this book is that my ego craved something impossible—not just to create a book, but to create a book so earth-shattering it transcended art itself, becoming a kind of religion. A work so revelatory that it would stop people in their tracks and change their lives forever. And why did I believe such a thing was possible? Because I had seen it happen before.
When I was fifteen, I was a competitive Olympic weightlifter, fully convinced of my athletic destiny. And then, in 1977, I saw Arnold Schwarzenegger in Pumping Iron, and my resolve crumbled faster than a poorly made protein bar. I had seen Arnold before, but this was different. Watching him on screen was like witnessing the second coming of Hercules—except with a better tan and an Austrian accent. And I wasn’t alone. Arnold wasn’t just a bodybuilder; he was a messiah, and we were his disciples.
One afternoon, at Walt’s Gym, I worked out with a firefighter who had recently been a finalist in the Mr. California bodybuilding contest. He was a walking relic of 1970s masculinity—tall, tanned, blond, with a thick mustache that could have doubled as a broom, and black horn-rimmed glasses that made him look like a muscle-bound Clark Kent. After casually repping 300 pounds on the bench press, he stood up, flexed, and stared at himself in the mirror with the reverence of a man gazing upon a religious icon. “When I first saw Arnold,” he said, “I felt I was in the presence of the Lord. ‘There stands the Messiah,’ I said to myself. ‘There stands God Almighty come to bring good cheer to this world.’”
He wasn’t just speaking for himself—he was speaking for all of us. Arnold was our savior, our Pied Piper of Pecs, leading us to the promised land of biceps, triceps, and quads capable of crushing watermelons. Bodybuilding stopped being a hobby and became a movement, spreading through gyms like a protein-fueled religious awakening. The only cure? More reps, more protein shakes, more flexing, more relentless, never-ending pursuit of physical perfection.
But then I went to college, and something shifted. I read Kafka, Dostoevsky, and Nabokov, studied classical piano, and discovered that intellectualism had its own form of flexing. Suddenly, it wasn’t enough to be physically powerful—one had to be smart, profound, an artist. And then came A Confederacy of Dunces, right when David Letterman was ushering irony into the cultural bloodstream, and I realized that the ultimate flex wasn’t just intelligence—it was humor.
Reading Dunces was a punch to my pompous, self-regarding gut. I was Ignatius J. Reilly in my own way—socially awkward, excessively self-serious, painfully convinced of my own importance. And then, suddenly, a comic novel liberated me. It didn’t just make me laugh—it pointed me in a new direction. My life’s mission was clear: I would carry the torch of John Kennedy Toole, Philip Roth, David Letterman, and George Carlin, making people laugh their way to salvation.
I would write comedy as a religious experience.
It was a fool’s errand, and only someone with a pathological ego would embark on something so misguided.
Cinemorphosis 