A priest remakes himself from animal flesh. A land surveyor travels into the earth’s crust in search of a boulder. Hauled for centuries it forms a rut, the longest sentence in recorded history.
Black Vellum is a Nietzschean experiment. The priest symptomizes Nietzsche’s analysis and serves as an embodiment, a deviant incarnation, of the philosopher himself. Other figures are encountered in the content of their thought; Schopenhauer, Cioran, Freud, and Bataille enter as minor actors. None are named as such, and their intuitions are allowed to interanimate. Most readings and re-readings of established figures appear bound to the task of moderation, this book attends to their derangements.
