The distinction, perhaps, lies in humor and self-awareness. The great Nut Jobs Author usually retains a sliver of the trickster. They know, on some level, that they are performing madness. Burroughs was grimly funny. Pynchon hides from cameras. Even Pound, in his later years, recanted his fascism. The dangerous nut job has no humor. The great nut job is a court jester with a knife.
Why do we read these people? Why does a sane person spend a rainy Sunday annotating a book that claims the moon landing was faked by lizard people who are also the Rothschilds? nut jobs author
But without them, we’d only have books that make sense. And who wants to live in a world that makes sense? J. S. Latham is a critic and recovering literary journalist. He owns a first edition of “The Atrocity Exhibition” and is currently 400 pages into a self-published novel about time-traveling bees. The distinction, perhaps, lies in humor and self-awareness
By J. S. Latham