More than a century has passed since the collapse and extinction of the American Nation, the massive and unprecedented catastrophe brought about equally by arsonists’ flames and by massive, long-term, internal cultural and political decay. As everyone knows, the full history of that once-great nation’s doom was first gathered in the 2110 CE multi-volume work of scholarship, The Decline and Fall of the American Nation. Subsequently, in 2147 CE, under the auspices of the Universities of Asia Press, Beijing, there was to arrive a new and updated edition.
As it happens, volume sixteen of that great work, in both editions, consists of the collected writings of Eric Larsen, a figure unknown to history except through these extraordinarily rare surviving papers that include, most importantly, the internationally famous “Diary.”
Guided by abundant scholarly commentary, the reader of Volume Sixteen is offered “innumerable windows” [Ting, Yanmei, Darkness Visible: The Lost Novels of Eric Larsen (Taipei, 2110)] through which to witness “a ghostly past” and otherwise lost scenes of “a daily life that has become [by the time of the Late Ante-Penultimate], in almost equal degrees, villainous, pathetic, and risible” [Poindeft, Archer L., Notes on Emptiness: Implied Meanings in the Lost Larsen Volumes (Calcutta and Londinium, 2134).
A chronology of the collapse may prove useful to the reader:
Late Preliminary (1971-1983)
Early Ante-Penultimate (1983-1996)
Middle Ante-Penultimate (1996-2000)
Late Ante-Penultimate (2000-2006)
Early Penultimate (2006-2012)
Middle Penultimate (2013-2019)
Late Penultimate (2020-2024)
Early Ultimate (2025-2031)
Middle Ultimate (2032-2037)
Late Ultimate (2037-2041)
The Collapse (2042-?)
Click here to read a review from the US Book Review
Click Here to read excerpts from The Decline and Fall of the American Nation
Click these colored words to hear and see President Penguin-Duck on the subject of lies.
Praise for An American Memory (1988): “As close to poetry as fiction can get”—Robert Taylor, Jr.
Praise for I Am Zoë Handke (1992): “If you love literature, writing so wonderful it makes you catch your breath, read Zoë Handke”—Ruth Moose
Praise for The End of the 19th Century (2011): “An important, if apocalyptic, work, its writer gifted with genius”—Jane Vandenburgh
