Paperback, 168 pages
Published June 2020, Amphetamine Sulphate
Artwork: Michael Salerno
ISBN: 9781734316025
“Thomas Moore is one of the best writers the world has in stock, and I always expect a ton from what he writes, but, even so, Alone is beyond the pale – immaculate, febrile, deadly. A complete stunner.” – Dennis Cooper
Introduction
Alone is my third novel. I’m indebted to Philip Best and Sarah Ruth Best at Amphetamine Sulphate for publishing the book, to Michael Salerno for the beautiful artwork that he has bestowed upon it, to Dennis Cooper for his generous praise and support, and to anyone out there who decides to give Alone their time.
You can buy Alone from Amphetamine Sulphate: https://amphetaminesulphate.bigcartel.com
It’s hard to know how to sum a book up. The book is the sum itself. There are a lot of things that go into it. Alone took a couple of years. I write very slowly. Well, that’s wrong – I write a lot, fast. Most of it then needs to be brushed away. I end up with a fog that I need to feel my way through to find out what’s inside. I have to feel out the shape in the dark – the actual thing that’s buried in the mess that I’ve written – scrape away a ton of shit to find out what’s buried in there – the actual ideas that are wanting to be found.
I can never explain my writing and I never really want to. I feel compelled to write and so I do. I have no idea where this compulsion comes from and that’s fine. I’m glad that it does. I can’t imagine what it would be like without having writing. When I write, it doesn’t always make things better, but I know that things feel a lot worse when I don’t.
For whatever reason, Alone has a lot of themes and motifs and internal operations going on. Rather than try and explain the book itself, I thought it might be interesting to lay out some of those themes for you today. Maybe it might be an idea to think of the following as bunch of clues, that might help unlock or accompany the core and soul of Alone. Maybe they won’t. Maybe I’m talking shit. Maybe we are all just alone and that is that.
Being alone
A number of teen stars are referenced in the book for various reasons. I’m not going to go into it. You’ll see what I mean if you read the book.
Jonathan Brandis pops up in the book and plays a kind of important part. Here are some pictures of him.
This is him as a young kid:
Here he is probably at the height of his fame:
These photos of Jonathan Brandis in the TV movie version of Steven King’s IT are particularly important to the novel:
And so is this one – it’s Jonathan Brandis as a grown up. Not long before he committed suicide:
Also, I think I should probably post this video of another teen idol, who has also sadly died, Corey Haim. Corey Haim released this documentary himself. He made it straight after leaving rehab:
I also have to mention Edward Furlong, specifically his role in Terminator 2:
If I wanted to start getting all deep about things I might suggest that this photo kind of hints at part of the novel in a way, but it really depends how you think about stuff, so I won’t dwell too much:
This gif of River Phoenix and Will Wheaton is very important:
What else? OK … this 1980s advertisement about AIDS:
Sometimes I listen to music when I write. I’ve always found huge inspiration from music. I’m more interested in tone and mood when it comes to getting ideas from music. Here is a bunch of stuff that I remember listening to and getting inspired by while I was writing Alone.
I also thought a lot about Attachment Theory:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attachment_theory
Grindr:
Darja Bajagić:
Sarah Kane:
Jean Claracq:
The way that The Malady of Death by Marguerite Duras makes me feel:
The last three episodes of The Sopranos:
Cult members:
Dark rooms in gay clubs:
Jordan Wolfson:
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EXCERPT FROM ALONE
You can buy Alone from Amphetamine Sulphate: https://amphetaminesulphate.bigcartel.com
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p.s. Hey. Please join the blog in celebrating the birth of Thomas Moore’s extraordinary new novel! ** Scunnard, Truer words hath ne’er been typed. I’m pretty good. Life is almost normal with some exceptions. How is stuff in and around you? ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. Very happy to accidentally and coincidentally help! Unfortunately, I can not enter the NYT, but I guess excepts will end up somewhere. ** Misanthrope, Some days it feels that way. Dry ice. Now that’s a flashback. Or maybe it’s still employed on occasions? It has a 1950s vibe to it to me. I think I tried to use dry ice to mystery-ify a haunted house I built in my family basement as a kid, and I think I remember it being woefully inadequate. You have a good weekend too! ** Armando, Hi. I’m good. I just woke up so my day is going hazily so far. You do seem to like insulting things that others really like, it’s true. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Interesting. So is the new drug they’ll put you on an improvement and preferable in theory? Hoping so. And that your need to self-isolate will end soon but at, importantly, a perfectly safe time. I hope you have a really swell weekend. ** chris dankland, Hi, Chris. Yeah, a few of them were kind of actually magical even. I agree about fog/smoke moving. Even clouds, to get kind of corny for a second. I’m really happy you like the array. I’m going to my first post-quarantine amusement park tomorrow, so my weekend will be pretty ace, I think, and I hope yours ponies up with an equivalence. ** John Christopher, Hello, John Christopher! It’s a pleasure. I did see and read that roundtable thing. That was cool. Especially finding out that Sean Ford had read the book and related. (Ha ha, autocorrect wanted to change ‘related’ into ‘felated’.) That was trippy. I don’t reread my own stuff unless I have to a do reading from it or something, but it’s always educating and honoring to read what people write or say about my work. How interesting about the magazine! A print thing? Will you have it online in any form? Yes, I am indeed a Mark Morrisroe fan. I did get to see some of his films. I co-curated an exhibition ages ago at his gallery, Pat Hearn, and she showed me some of his films in the back room. Very heady and wonderful, as I remember. Someone needs to upload them. The original ‘Dracula’ or various versions? I haven’t watched any films in the most recent days for some reason other than some films by Daniel Schmidt because I was putting together a post about him. Nice to see you, sir, and have a fine weekend please. ** Bill, I had a little stinking suspicion you might be a fellow false fog fan. Outdoor dining makes such a difference. Since they reopened restaurants in outdoors form and cafes Paris has become recognisable again. I didn’t see that SF was arrested at a protest but ,based on my quick tour of his Twitter, I am not surprised. The Wonder Boy. ** Steve Erickson, Unfortunately the invisibility problem seems to be systemic. Never watched ‘Hannibal’, but I do know people who’ve found it to be a top notch guilty pleasure. Yes, I remember when ‘Black Panthers’ was basically Varda’s most obscure film. ** Corey Heiferman, Cool teacher. My high school physics teacher was a total bore. I always have had and still have thoughts of learning French, but I think it’s fairly safe to say that at this point I never fully will, or not formally at least. Terrible of me. I just have never been willing to give up the giant, central, all-consumed portion that learning French would require of my busy, scattered brain. I so wish I had learned from the outset. I obviously urge you to mind-embrace it. ** Okay. Let the Thomas Moore-based festivities begin or continue! Have a great weekends, one and all. See you on Monday.
‘A piston air pump (bought at the local surplus store for $5) squirts the juice onto an inverted, disassembled iron (bought at a garage sale for $1). The iron is on all the time. It’s held above the juice by long bolts from the bottom of the box. The wooden box is sealed and waterproofed inside with a kind of paint called C.R.A.E. (Corrosion-Resistant Acrylic Enamel.) Any thick, waterproof paint will work. If you build something like this, be certain to keep enough space between the wood and the iron, you don’t want to start a fire! Any device like this should be thoroughly tested before being used unattended. Heat it up without juice in it to be sure it won’t burst into flames when it runs out of juice.
‘The pump is mounted on the back of the box so it will be cooled by the flow of air. The fan and pump run on 12v, and the iron plugs in of course. A 15 foot control wire allows the operator to turn the fans on and off and the squirt the juice.
‘I built this out of a $15.00 Coleman cooler I got at Target the whole thing cost about $25.00. I started by marking the holes on the sides of the cooler to the size of the dryer duct and cutting them out. I first drilled holes around the line I marked then knocked out the plastic and foam core then smoothed up the edges until the dryer duct fit snug. I used silicone to seal the duct inside and out, it takes about 24 hours to cure. I then fitted netting around the inside of the dryer duct on both sides to prevent ice from falling out. I then put flexible dryer hose on one end and a set of 90 degree angle ducting pieces on the other. A reducing duct piece (4″ to 2″) will attach to the angle pieces. The 2″ end sits in front of the fogger nozzle and delivers the fog to the cooler and ice, then blows cool fog out of the dryer hose end creating a low lying fog.
‘I use regular ice from the corner liquor store and fill the cooler to the top with the ice sloping from the top to the bottom of the in/out ducts. This takes about three bags. The ice needs to be high enough to cause the fog to go through and around it, but not covering up the ducts. Some people may try dry ice in the cooler, I hear this works well. Enjoy.’
‘Fog machines consume “fog juice” to create smoke. That fog juice is made from a mixture of glycol and distilled water. Neither of those is difficult to obtain, but it’s easiest just to purchase the mixture from a local big box or Halloween store — both of which should have plenty of stock this time of year. That fog juice will evaporate and create smoky gas when it is heated up to a suitable temperature—around 200 degrees Celsius, so you just need a way to get it to that temperature.
‘For his build, GreatScott! used nichrome wire, which is used in a wide variety of devices that need to heat liquids. For example, you’ll find nichrome wire in an e-cigarette heater coil. It may also be possible to use other materials, like copper wire. That just needs to be connected to a suitable power supply to heat up. GreatScott! wrapped the nichrome wire around a wick, which pulls fog juice up out of a 3D-printed container. A fan blows the fog out of the enclosure, and an Arduino measures the fog juice level with a water level sensor and controls the wire and fan. GreatScott! does note that it may be possible for the vapor to be toxic, so be sure to investigate the safety requirements for the fog juice before building this fog machine.’
Now available in North America 