Filed Under: Holy Hell, It’s Alive

On the anniversary of my Stack’s creation, without fail, I arrive at this ceremonial cliff in my best metaphorical robe to thank you all for one more month and then fling myself headfirst onto the absurdist rocks below. It has become a tradition, if seven months of unchecked emotional spelunking can be called tradition, to pause mid-freefall and whisper: thank you.

For reading. For responding.

For letting me write like a man possessed by a thesaurus and a minor Greek deity.

So here’s to month seven. I love you all. Now kindly stand back, I need a running start.

CONFIDENTIAL INTERNAL MEMORE Subject: Potential Representation of Subject: Joe Nichols Filed by: Joe Nichols, Literary Agent (also, regrettably, Joe Nichols) Addendum: Do Not Read Without Fire Insurance and an Open Will

I have undertaken the herculean task of interviewing myself to determine if I am, in fact, fit for representation. Spoiler : I am not. But like all great disasters. Chernobyl, Fyre Fest, your aunt’s third wedding, I must be seen to be believed.

Upon arrival, the subject had already begun without me. I found him seated, barefoot, reading his own marginalia aloud in a French accent. He offered me tea he did not make. He opened a window he did not close. He lit a candle that served no spiritual function and asked me a question he refused to repeat. I shook my own hand, nodded solemnly, and muttered “let’s never speak of this again.”

We already had.

Mission Statement (Which Also Serves as an Warning)

The subject claims to run a literary newsletter. This is a lie. What he operates is a 19th-century opium den disguised as a blog, run by a man who read Nietzsche too young and Thoreau too well. The writing vacillates between biblical fury and wounded tenderness, as if Moses came down from Sinai, saw the algorithm, and said, oh the hell with this, I’m going rogue.

There is no niche. No genre. No funnel. The reader is not guided so much as abducted. The homepage reads like an intelligence test written in sonnets by a fugitive. It is unclear if the goal is enlightenment, entrapment, or both. The archives may be haunted. There are footnotes with feelings. One issue ended with an unsourced apology to God.

Tone Assessment: Considered Armed

Tone, as deployed by the subject, does not shift as much as escaping containment. It leaps the fence. One moment you’re reading something that feels like a handwritten explanation for the chaos theory, and the next you’re neck-deep in metaphysical slapstick and a full monologue about regret being a form of tourism.

Tone arrives dressed for several occasions at once. One paragraph feels like a breakup text from a priest. The next is emotional knife-play narrated by a concierge. One reader said they felt hugged and slapped in alternating italics.

Tone doesn’t bend. It gets blackout drunk, steals your identity, and writes its own obituary in your handwriting.

Content Overview: Escape Room, But Feelings

Trying to categorize this work is like trying to staple fog to a moving goat while it's actively committing fraud. Essays begin with memory, careen through seven time zones, and collapse into revelations that feel like someone turned on the lights mid-confession.

There are meditations that read like legal documents filed against time itself. Paragraphs are stitched from contraband, philosophical side-eye, and pure literary contrition. One piece was an open letter to silence. Another referred to longing as "a currency that no longer prints," and then never brought it up again.

This isn’t a newsletter. It’s a controlled burn. Occasionally it goes completely off the rails. You don’t finish these pieces as much as you’re released from them.

Genre Compatibility: Physically Repelled

Genre means nothing to him. He treats form the way a tornado treats porch chairs. Structure is a dare. Tradition is a faint cough in the distance. Stories don’t really unfold as much as convulse.

He calls himself an essayist but writes like an exiled dramatist on a hunger strike. He borrows from poetry, memoir, liturgy, espionage, and orchestral rock. He does not outline. He incants. One post arrived in alphabetical disorder. Another was just a list of statements ending in semicolons and grief.

No piece ever ends where it began. If it ends at all.

Audience Analysis: Mostly Theoretical

This cannot be marketed. The writing emits a frequency that shorts out demographic software. Early attempts to categorize the audience resulted in nosebleeds, printer fires, and one intern who now speaks only in metaphor. Focus groups dissolved into interpretive dance. A marketing strategist tried to describe a typical reader and was last seen wandering a botanical garden muttering about event horizons. No data survives contact with the work. It is read by accident, devotion, or familial curse.

This isn’t for everyone. It’s for people who like to feel altered. Who click the link and come out… ahem …different. People who once wept during a book launch and have never trusted brunch again. The kind of reader who doesn’t just highlight, they annotate in pencil with trembling gratitude.

Client Behavior

He is unrepresentable in every known dimension, legal, emotional, metaphysical. Attempts to manage him result in several lawsuits and one ruptured Achilles tendon. He does not respond well to feedback. I once suggested a minor revision and he faxed me a drawing of a burning bridge labeled ‘ compromise’ .

He doesn’t revise. He interrogates. He believes editing is a form of self-betrayal and punctuation should be earned through combat. He once returned notes by mailing back a dictionary soaked in ink and a note that said, respectfully, find a better god.

You don’t edit him. You witness him.

He refers to deadlines as insults. He speaks in drafts. Collaboration feels like a séance conducted in a wind tunnel. I once sent him a friendly reminder email and he replied with a voice memo titled "We begin where the fire starts."

Influences

He does not have influences so much as ongoing psychological arguments with the dead. Baldwin arrives late. Rilke floats through the walls. Durrell was last seen leaving offended. He borrows, breaks, and rebirths whatever he encounters. He once claimed influence from a silence he experienced in Berlin.

Genre means nothing to him. Style is not studied. It is summoned. When asked about literary lineage, he said, I don’t follow in anyone’s footsteps, I trespass.

He has refused all interviews. He once declined a podcast by returning the mic inside a wooden box marked silence cannot be scheduled.

Final Recommendation

Do I, Joe Nichols (Agent), recommend representing Joe Nichols (Author)?

No. Absolutely not. This man is a logistical nightmare. A literary hex in a human outline. He is what happens when a philosophy degree runs out of funding and decides go make a living lap dancing.

He cannot be contained. He cannot be curated. He cannot be safely introduced to a general audience without at least one nervous breakdown and a tattoo.

But

He is also unignorable. A human molotov against mediocrity. A knife that quotes scripture. A sentence with a grudge.

He writes like the building is already on fire and the only thing worth saving is whatever truth fits in a paragraph. He writes for the feral, the faithful, and the freshly ruined.

So yes. I recommend him. Not because it’s smart. Because it’s already too late.

Signed while blinking slowly and whispering Latin, Joe Nichols (literary agent in name only) on behalf of Joe Nichols (who should never be left near a blank page without a sedative and an alibi)