I often feel that the world should be annihilated so that I don’t have to go to work anymore.

TESS POLLOK: You’re a self-published novelist, some–me–would call you a cult classic. You sell all of your books through Amazon and keep people updated on your writerly lifestyle with regular blog posts that I often find intriguing/amusing. We’re here today to talk about my favorite of your novels: Finally, Some Good News. How do you feel about the term “late capitalist” being applied to your work? I’m specifically thinking of the passages that relate advertising to identity politics and the dark, dry workplace humor that frames the novel.

DELICIOUS TACOS: Hatred of work is where the energy of the book comes from. I used to have a job where every day I would go and I would think, “I hope a meteor crashes into Earth today.” There was an earthquake once at that job, files full of horseshit falling off the shelves. I got excited thinking it was the big one and we’d all finally die. Late capitalist? That’s interesting, I mean, it sounds like some Marxist thing that inevitably leads to the communist revolution. I don’t know, I don’t long for a communist revolution but I often feel that the world should be annihilated so that I don’t have to go to work anymore.

There’s a lot of advertising terminology in the book. There’s a part about transgender teens in advertising where I was specifically responding to when Jazz Jennings became the face of Johnson & Johnson Clean & Clear® when she was 14. However you feel about transgender teens–the right wing perspective being that these are a bunch of fucked up gender goblins and the left wing perspective being that it’s empowering for them to embrace their true identities–it’s just, like, look at this system where a 14-year-old is being channeled into Cronenberg-tier surgeries and used as a mascot to sell industrial solvent that you put on your face, which is basically what Clean & Clear is. It’s a commentary on identity politics being corralled, exploited, and domesticated by Coca-Cola and Bud Light. If things like that are happening, it means your movement is dead. If you can sell soap off transgender rights, you’re not scaring anyone.

POLLOK: You’re reminding me of Adam Lehrer’s takedown of Amanda Gorman on Safety Propaganda. He was highly critical of her inclusion at the inauguration for similar reasons–that it’s a complete joke, it’s the most crass form of virtue signalling to do nothing and then do a sort of limp-wristed gesture at solidarity that’s entirely about profit.

DELICIOUS TACOS: Amanda Gorman, is that the girl who read her poem at the inauguration?

POLLOK: Yeah.

DELICIOUS TACOS: I remember that. Her poem was hack.

POLLOK: I know. I thought Adam Lehrer went too far, though, because he went into the territory of criticizing Amanda Gorman herself, but I think it’s obvious that it’s not her fault. Your critique felt more authentic to me because it was accurately naming who’s responsible.

DELICIOUS TACOS: It’s a critique from the left in a way. However you feel about the left identity stuff, it became an advertising vehicle to make money, which is a right wing activity.

POLLOK: Do you consider yourself a leftist?

DELICIOUS TACOS: Leftists are such assholes that I could never emotionally identify with them. But I hold some left beliefs.

POLLOK: Same. I think they’re a bunch of back-stabbing careerists and I hate them. But I hold left-wing principles sacred in my soul.

DELICIOUS TACOS: I think we should take rich people’s money and give it to poor people. I don’t support communism, but welfare capitalism sounds alright to me. Welfare capitalism with civil liberties and you can say fag and retard.

POLLOK: Does your critique of the workplace include its sterility? I’m thinking about how the narrator is horny all the time, but his sexuality can’t be expressed in the office environment–it’s too bloodless and alienating. Was that intentional?

DELICIOUS TACOS: Yes. Having to be fake for most of your day wears on you. Even a job that’s considered good involves unnatural and dehumanizing things, like having to read the same document on a computer 15 times and having to go to 15 different meetings about it. I’m an aristocrat of the spirit. I should be paid to write a few paragraphs a day.

POLLOK: I had a middle management marketing job at a museum back in New York City and I just could not do it. I mean, I was crying every day. Everyone was. They set up private pods in the hallways, ostensibly for COVID-19 social distancing reasons, and they were used almost exclusively for people to have crying jags in private.

DELICIOUS TACOS: Work is evil. Money is Satan. The drive for status is Satanic. It’s all terrible. My girlfriend [Susannah] and I both quit our jobs at the same time last year and we had nine months where neither one of us was working–it was heaven. But then I got sucked back in. I feel like I need to find the courage to permanently get out of that world. Fear is the only motivator keeping me in it. I’m scared that if I have a kid they’ll grow up poor. But, no matter what I do he’s going to grow up poor. Like, if you have less than 4 million dollars, you’re poor.

POLLOK: It’s crazy they haven’t adjusted minimum wage for inflation since 2009. Working and middle class families understand that even if you’re being shrewd with your money it’s not going to do much in the long run. Is class what motivated you to write a post-apocalyptic novel?

DELICIOUS TACOS: I was a blogger and a short story writer for a long time before I wrote novels. Novels need a bigger feeling than short stories. Behind a novel there needs to be a big, persistent enough feeling. It has to be big enough to sustain the main story, and big enough that you can attach your smaller ideas and feelings to it, too. Wanting the world to end was a huge feeling for me. I wanted the world to end every single day just so I could stop going to work. I kept having that thought and experiencing that feeling so strongly that it could power the whole novel. Work, loneliness, “inceldom,” all connected to the same thanatotic feeling. Destroy it all.

I’ve written blog posts about this topic in the past, but I consider post-apocalyptic films and literature to be wish fulfillment for men. Men wish that a lawless, violent, and primitive society would emerge, basically so that women would finally have to do our bidding. I also think men long for a post-apocalyptic world because of its simplicity: the simplicity of the struggle to eat, fuck, not get murdered, and go to sleep, versus the complexity of modern struggles.

POLLOK: Remember when they used to talk about how they wished they were disabled on Cumtown?

DELICIOUS TACOS: Completely. It depends on your definition of a meaningful life. I’d rather be working in a restaurant and fucking my colleagues in the walk-in freezer than making $300,000 a year and never getting laid as a junior associate at a law firm.

POLLOK: [Laughs] A meaningful life! Oh my god. I mean, what is a meaningful life? Do you think Hunter Biden has a meaningful life?

DELICIOUS TACOS: No. If you look in Hunter Biden’s eyes when he’s high, you can see how freakish and fucked up he is. He’s humming with junkie energy. Hunter Biden is a great example of a tortured soul who has everything he could possibly want–he’s handsome, he’s rich, he had a fancy job distributing aid for the UN–but he stays high off his ass, he can get hard on coke and he’s impregnating strippers, he’s fucking his brother’s wife, using his cousin as a pussy farm, Doordashing hookers, God knows what’s going on with the at-risk teens in his family. Everything you want in your most degenerate fantasies, Hunter Biden is doing. Yet he’s obviously unhappy. He needs to escape himself.

A meaningful life to me is to serve God and a higher purpose. When I’m doing that, my life feels meaningful. When I’m not doing that and I start just trying to fulfill my own desires, that’s when my life feels meaningless, like I’m living in fear. For instance, I’ve got my girlfriend. And she’s got this great dog. And I’ve got a great life with my girlfriend and her dog. And when we drive around together and we go on a little road trip, that’s my little family unit and I’m in heaven. If I’m not actively experiencing those things, and I’m not right with God, then I’m constantly afraid of losing them. I’m afraid she’s going to realize I’m a loser and leave me and I’ll never see her or the dog again. Then I’ll just be dried up and alone in my house. You try to stay close with God and it helps you realize even if your fear occurs, it’s okay.

I’m in Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous now, but I used to be an active sex addict. My life plan used to be that if I turned 50 and I still didn’t have a wife or kids, I was going to go to the Philippines and just swim with sea turtles and fuck 22-year-olds. I could live on the beach and just call it a life. But now that I’ve joined SLAA, I just tell myself that if she leaves me I can always go birdwatching there instead of exploiting women.

POLLOK: Birdwatching plays a pivotal role in the novel.

DELICIOUS TACOS: Birdwatching is a spiritual activity. Any communion with nature reminds me of my own insignificance. Birdwatching reminds me that my own desires are no more significant than those of a paramecium. I’m just an organism. I’m just a large mammal walking around, trying to be the best large mammal that I can be to my other large mammal friends. Seeing birds in nature is one of the most beautiful and soothing experiences. I like how birds are everywhere you go, too. You can’t see lions everywhere you go. But basically everywhere you go there are interesting birds to look at, which is why I recommend birdwatching to everybody. If you’re reading this interview and you’re feeling down, I’m telling you: go outside and look at a bird.

POLLOK: Birds are very special. I like how Marianne Williamson is always tweeting about them.

DELICIOUS TACOS: I went to a Marianne Williamson rally and spoke to her about this issue.

POLLOK: [Laughs] Actually?

DELICIOUS TACOS: Yes. I was a supporter of her candidacy. When I met her I told her I appreciated her bird posting and she agreed with me that she sees something of God in birds.

POLLOK: I thought I was having a random tangential thought but it turned out to be real. I love when that happens. For my next question: your novel also reminds me of Lolita, because, like Lolita, it’s all about sex, America, and going on a road trip. I specifically meditated on the phrase American garbage while I was reading. There are so many scenes of the post-apocalyptic detritus of America as the narrator and his companion rummage through everything. Thoughts?

DELICIOUS TACOS: I think one of the messages of the book is that if the world was destroyed it’d be no great loss. I don’t feel that way so much now but I was deep in that feeling at the time. What we’re losing is mostly shit, most of the time we spend is shit, and most of the things we’re working towards are shit. Most of what we build on this earth exists for no higher purpose beyond making money. I saw an actual billboard that went in the book, it said, “YOUR PARTNER MIGHT BE LYING ABOUT HIV” That’s what the institution is trying to put in your head: your boyfriend has HIV and isn’t telling you. Why? It makes them a buck somehow. I think billboards should be illegal. Generally, I think advertising should be illegal.

POLLOK: I felt that was another major theme in Finally, Some Good News–alienation brought on by advertising.

DELICIOUS TACOS: Advertising was my literal job back when I wrote the novel. I chose it in part for that reason, but also because it’s so stupid that it’s hilarious, and it’s everywhere. Everywhere there are bizarre products and agendas being pushed on you. Having that job, the preposterousness of a human being dedicating eight hours a day to trying to measure the effectiveness of Kraft barbecue sauce ads. It’s a classic complaint, I’m sure you’ve heard it: my ancestors were hunting a white stag or a, like, a yak with spears, and here I am, you know, an account executive for brand elevation. The only reason I’m working is because I want to have a family. The worst case for me was always: no family but I have to work like I have one anyway. That’s what a lot of guys are feeling out there.

POLLOK: Some reviewers of your novel have argued over whether this is a novel about sex or a masturbatory novel.

DELICIOUS TACOS: What’s a masturbatory novel? I want to say it’s a novel about sex.

POLLOK: I think they’re trying to delineate between a novel about sex and a novel about a man with sexual frustrations.

DELICIOUS TACOS: Have you ever read any of George R. R. Martin’s books?

POLLOK: The Game of Thrones books? The first one, yeah, at an airport.

DELICIOUS TACOS: George R. R. Martin gets a lot of criticism for always describing what characters are eating. Every feast scene goes on and on, like, “They supped on roast heron, sparrows in pastry, the maidens proffered simmered gooseberries with golden honey, etc. etc.”

He does that in part because he’s a fat guy, so that’s what he’s thinking about. But it’s also true that that’s probably what people actually were thinking about in medieval times, their meals and feasts, because they spent time hungry.

Men think about sex most of the time. Men are constantly feeling the need to fuck and jerk off. It’s just reality. So that’s the way I write my characters. Because that’s the way I think and that’s the way every other man who’s ever lived and ever will live will always think.

POLLOK: Do you believe in the male loneliness epidemic?

DELICIOUS TACOS: Yes. Have you read the Houellebecq book Whatever? It perfectly addressed this issue. It asked and answered every relevant question about male loneliness in the ‘90s.

POLLOK: I’ll check it out. Are you happy?

DELICIOUS TACOS: Yes. I’m happy because I have my girlfriend and her retarded dog and it’s sunny outside.

Delicious Tacos is a novelist and the author of four books, including Finally, Some Good News, available now on Amazon.

Tess Pollok is a writer and the editor of Animal Blood.