DOUBLE SPACED ANACHRONISTIC PROPAGANDA IN TIMES NEW ROMAN

a novel

by Ethan Hunter

Ash Riot is standing on the edge of the George Washington Bridge, waiting for sunrise. This is where his story will end. But before it ends, he will testify. He will tell you how it all begins. He will tell you what brings the most famous voice in the world up to a bridge like this.

He’ll tell you how he just graduated from college after wandering lost among the chosen ones his entire life. And how he may have just been charged with a righteous task by God Himself. Or he may have just been dead of an overdose and hallucinating. Either way, he’ll tell you he is on a mission. He’ll tell you that it is righteous because we are all righteous.

He will tell you the story of his rise to fame as a media-messiah through his platform of hate and rage. He’ll tell you about shepherding his flock through a modern Babylon and about trying to fashion a better world. About shopping cart bowling and how there are too many decisions to be made when buying milk and about girls and friendship and about a cattle drive in an Audi A-8.

He will tell you to kill yourselves. He will tell you it is the only answer. But, if you’re really listening, you’ll prove him wrong.

Written while in college, Ethan Hunter’s Double Spaced Anachronistic Propaganda In Times New Roman is an insightful, witty, sometimes-hilarious debut novel about searching for your place in the world and finding you don’t have one. It is offensive and brutal and it swings for the fences every time it’s at the plate. And those are just three of the reasons you should read it.

Buy the paperback here, please.

KINDLE EDITION

Propaganda is available on kindle right here.  It is silly-cheap on the kindle, only $2.99.  It is DRM free and text-to-speech enabled.  If you have a kindle (or a kindle app on your phone or computer) you can also get, like, thirty pages for free as a sample, so give that a shot.  You’ve got very little to lose.

The first couple of pages from the book:

zero

            This is how it starts.

I’m not a magician.  Or maybe I am.  But if I am, I’m the worst one you will ever see perform because I’m going to tell you all my secrets before the tricks even begin.  I’m going to tell you all exactly what I’m going to do, and how I plan to do it.  I’m going to tell you stories you already know, because they’re all about you.  And I’m going to make some way-clever language work for me.  I’m going to turn phrases like you won’t believe and create truth from the ashes of clichés, politics, entertainment, the vox populi and whatever the hell else comes to mind as I bleed hate over the keys of a laptop computer.  And all of it for you.  All of this so that, maybe, one day, you too-cool-for-school, diamond-hard fucks will feel something.  So maybe you’ll see yourselves differently.  As a generation of fuck-ups, poseurs, charlatans, apathetic assholes who could remake the world in any image you choose, move mountains of hypocrisy and build an honest empire on the ruins of lies that we have all been feeding ourselves since George Washington never cut down a cherry tree.  Since masturbation didn’t make you go blind and honest Abe became a liar and since Pluto isn’t even a planet. 

I’m going to show you all that you are failures. 

That you could walk on water if you weren’t so comfortable being comfortable.  Too busy sipping colored beverages and watching Meg Ryan movies to notice the bodies you step over on the way to the video store. 

And I’m going to leave you all with something before I go. 

A weapon or two that you can use to fight the world our fathers have left us.  And a tool or two to rebuild.  Some of you might even get your souls back in the process, if you pay enough attention.

            Pay attention.

            I’m going to scream at you.  Tell you how much I hate every single one of you.  I’m going to assault you.  I have a weapon in my hands and, indeed, it is mightier than the sword.  My pen is my boomstick.  My keyboard: a cannon.  My voice can split atoms.

I’m going to blow off your fingers with nouns and salt the stumps with verbs.  But, if you’re really listening, I’ll clean the wounds with adjectives and bandage them with nominative clauses.  All I’ve got are words, friends.  But, if you listen, if you stop talking long enough to learn something, they’ll be enough.

            And at the end of each column I will tell you all that you’re hopeless.  I will tell you how much you’ve fucked up, and shout obscenities at you, and I will tell you all to kill yourselves.  I’ll tell you that it’s the only answer.  But, if you’re really listening, you’ll prove me wrong.

            And that’s it.  That’s all I’m going to do. 

            I am trying to make you look. 

            I am trying to make you listen. 

            I am trying to make you think.

            Move.

            Change. 

            I am trying to make you better.

            Stronger.

            Gentler

            I am trying to make you laugh. 

            I am trying to make you a community.

            I am trying to make you care.

            But, mostly, I am trying to break your heart.

            And this is how it starts.

½

False starts are the story of my life.  From half a dozen universities to hundreds of books and screenplays that remain unfinished on my desktop to countless girlfriends and one-night stands to beers drunk only halfway down the neck and cigarettes abandoned before the band.

            False starts.

            I was born dead only to be resurrected.

            My parent’s once told me after this happened they thought about naming me Lazarus, but decided against it fearing a rise in anti-Semitism.  So they gave me a girls name apparently unconcerned with a rise in misogyny. 

            False starts.

            The story of my life.

            Deal with it.  Or don’t.  I don’t really care.

one

Where you are is the edge.  Take that in whatever literal or metaphorical way you want.  Any conclusions you draw will probably be pretty close.  If you want to be specific, though, and you’re a fan of geography, it’s the edge of a bridge.  A big bridge.  The George Washington Bridge.

            And it’s late.

            I’m not sure when exactly, but it’s late.  The sun has gone to bed and the moon is I-don’t-know-where.  And it should be dark.   Truly, truly dark.  Dark like the opposite side of something.  But it isn’t.  It isn’t dark because we wouldn’t want a plane to hit the bridge.  We wouldn’t want that.  And we wouldn’t want anyone to get lost around here.  Even though everyone is lost around here.  And people have to be able to see whom they’re screwing. 

Take that whatever way you want as well. 

And where you are is the edge.  And we’re alone up here.  You should know that it’s just you and me and a few thousand tons of twisted, fashioned steel that sways a little in the early morning wind.  We’re alone.  And this is one of those moments when you want to experience something great.  You want to look out and see something and know that it is God.  Know that it is good.  Something that was created back in those six days when God was really working.  Back when He was for-sure alive. You want to see something not like this bridge.  Something not made of steel and built on the deaths of a hundred men.  Something amazing.  Something death-affirming.  Something touched by Him. 

I’d like to think that I’m not asking a lot.

            And where you are is the edge.  And it won’t be long now.  Now all you want is to point to something and know that a greater force is behind it.  But the sun has gone to bed, and the moon is I-don’t-know-where.  And you can’t see the stars for all the artificiality.  The ambient light. 

            So you wait.

            Even up here all you can do is wait.

And where you are is the edge.  And we’re all alone.  And if you’re here, you’ve come for a show.  Or maybe you’re just here.  I don’t know.  If you even want to be here, I don’t know.  But if you’re here, you have your reasons.  You can keep them to yourself.  But as long as you’re here, pay attention.  This stuff might come in handy some day.  And if you’re paying attention, what this is, is the story of everything that went wrong.  The story of what happened. 

A fall story.

And why am I telling you this?  So maybe you won’t make the same mistakes I made.  And maybe you’ll take something important away from the cluttered mess of my life.  Maybe it will make you feel a little something.  Maybe it will validate some things.  And maybe it’ll give you something to do in the bathroom other than read the ingredients on the back of a bottle of herbal essence shampoo.

            Ooooh, rosemary!

            But understand that this is the story the way that I see things.  This is my story.  It isn’t yours.  And it isn’t a history lesson.  Some names may be changed to protect the guilty.  Some things I tell you might not make perfect sense, or this or that, but don’t concern yourself with that.  This isn’t your story, it’s mine.  And sometimes I see things through what you would call a filter.  Sometimes that filter is pop-culture.  But this isn’t their story either.  It’s mine.

            And despite some cosmetic surgery everything I’m going to say is true. 

I will do many, many things to you.  I will yell at you.  I’ll fuck with you.  I’ll blame you for things that aren’t your fault.  And this and that.  But I will not lie to you.

            And if you’re looking for a hero, then leave.  Go read a Daredevil comic or watch a James Bond movie.  This is not the place for you.  What this is, is the story of how I stumbled through almost a full year of my mostly worthless life and accomplished very little.  Or maybe it was a whole lot.  It really all depends on how you look at it. 

And I know what you’re thinking.  You’re thinking I’m going to jump.  Maybe I am.  Maybe I’m not.  And maybe you’re hoping I will.  And maybe you think that I shouldn’t.  And maybe by the time this is over I’ll have changed your mind.  I don’t really care, to be honest.  All you need to know is to listen. 

Don’t speak.

Don’t even nod your head.  Just listen.  And soon enough you’ll understand why I’m here.  And maybe you’ll climb over the rail, too.  You’ll have your reasons.

To catch me.

 To push me. 

To jump with me. 

To get a better view.

To be honest, I don’t really care.  Just as long as you listen. 

            I’d like to think I’m not asking a lot.

And if you get confused along the way; good.  That’s the only way you’ll really understand what I’ve been through this past year.  Not that it’s been that bad.  Or that good.  This isn’t an E True Hollywood Story.  Or a tell-all book.  I won’t be telling all.  It’s just been a confusing twelve months.  And you’ll understand that soon enough.

When you have all the truths.

            And where you are is the edge, but you came in too late.  So I’m going to catch you up.  I’d tell you to get comfortable, but you can’t.  And I’d tell you to enjoy, but you won’t.  You’ll just wait.  To see what happens.  To see what brings the most famous voice in the world up to a bridge like this.  To see if I live or die.  To see which one you want.

            You’ll wait.

            That makes two of us…waiting, I mean.

            You can call me Ash, by the way.  Enchanted, I’m sure.

Download the entire book as a free PDF.

Get the audiobook free.  It should download as one 183 meg zip file containing three mp3s.  The audiobook is read by the author, Ethan Hunter, and is a little more than six hours long.  It is free, as I said about two sentences ago.  But donations are gratefully accepted.

Ethan Hunter is the multi-award winning writer and director of the indie-darling For Catherine.  He also writes for the bi-weekly comic The Cutting Room, the daily episodic What I Learned Today and the when-he-gets-around-to-it serial Universal Monsters.  He has two feature films currently in development; he has some secret projects he doesn’t want to talk about yet in case he screws them up and sometimes he just likes to cuddle.

He used to be a Taurus but these days he’s not so sure.

He thinks writing about himself in the third-person is weird.

He loves you all just a little more than he hates you.

He may be contacted on email at ethan [at] 207pictures.com

His twitter is @ethanhunter

Very special thanks to Christopher Arbor, my editor and my friend.

Special thanks to Dr. Jeff Rackham who said, “Write a book.”

Special thanks to Pearl Doyle for the kickass picture of the GW bridge.

And many thanks to each of you who may read the book.  It was written by someone I used to be, and it means a lot to both of us that you might give it a chance.  And if you enjoy it and want to spread the gospel of the book of propaganda to a friend, that would be outstanding and greatly appreciated.

The hub of Ethan Hunter’s empire resides at www.207pictures.com.  There you may find all the information you could ever want about his movies, books, comics, read his personal blog and more.

Double Spaced Anachronistic Propaganda In Times New Roman is presented for free in audio and PDF formats.  It’s not free with caveats or strings or whatever.  It is free for realsies.  It was, however, a lot of work and if you feel like supporting that work, that would be greatly, hugely appreciated.  If you would like, you can donate whatever you feel like by going right over here.  Which is actually the “about” page because it’s a lot harder than you might think to put a paypal button on a tumblr site.

Sincerely, though, thank you for your time and considerations whether you donate or not.  Think of this, maybe, as a “pay what you like” situation where “zero” is a perfectly acceptable amount.