Category Archives: Dan Baltic

Robert Stark interviews Lee Scrivner about Casinolabs

Topics:

Robert Stark and Matt Pegas speak with Lee Scriver about his novel Casinolabs, which is a psychological thriller set in Las Vegas. Casinolabs is published by Imperium Press and is also available on Amazon. Also, check out Robert’s review of Casinolabs. Lee is a former adjunct professor at UNLV,  is known for his satirical avant-garde arts manifestos, and is the author of Becoming Insomniac. Subscribe to Lee on substack and check out his Youtube channel.

Topics:

-How Lee found artistic success in London including performing at the Tate Britain
-Whether Americans are philistines about culture
-How Lee ended up sharing a dressing room with Yoko Ono in London
-How Lee’s upbringing in Vegas inspired Casinolabs
-Lee’s dad, who dealt with the darker underbelly of Vegas as a crisis counselor
-Why explicitly rightwing art fails
-How literary agents filter out people on identity issues
The Las Vegas Review Journal’s review that compared Casinolabs to the show Severance
-Contrasting GenX alienation in Casinolabs and Bret Easton Ellis’s work with the millennial/zoomer incel trope in Robert’s novel Vaporfornia and Matt’s novel Dragon Day
-How Casinolabs is fundamentally a critique of atomization, the breakdown of families, and a lack of meaning crisis
-The parallels between the Casinolabs casino design firm deconstructing Vegas history and the protagonist Morton getting his brain fried
-Why Casinolabs only partially veers into magical realism
-The labyrinths in Casinolabs and Vaporfornia as the backrooms
-Philosophical questions about fate vs random coincidences
-Lee’s early job at Caesars Palace
-Finding deeper meaning out of post modernist themed casinos in Vegas
-Minimalist renovations that erase Vegas’s limited cultural inheritance
-The symbolism of the Vegas Sphere as a giant phone screen that is malleable
-Contrasting today’s Vegas with the older stage of capitalism where every man was a king
-Is Vegas dying?
Woke inspired minimalist renovations
Vegas and Disneyland as Baudrillard’s simulacrum
-Planned suburbia as the counterpart to the Vegas strip
-Robert and Matt visiting Mount Charleston recently
-How the overstimulation of Vegas drove Lee to asceticism
-Lee’s paganism and thoughts on the pagan professor Wallingford in Matt’s Dragon Day

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Checkout Robert Stark’s Facebook pageTwitterInstagramStark Truth TV, novel Vaporfornia, and subscribe to his Substack.

Robert Stark talks to Dan Baltic about his debut novel Nutcrankr

Robert Stark and Matt Pegas talk to Dan Baltic about his debut novel Nutcrankr. Dan Baltic is the co-hosts of the literary podcast, New Write, with Matt Pegas. Nutcrankr is available in print and ebook at Terror House publishing.

Topics:
Intro to the protagonist Spencer Grunhauer and the plot
Spencer’s philosophy and his manifest
The psychological process of how one becomes more alienated, unstable, and unhinged
Psycho-sexual motives behind politics and moral panics
Social status, elite overproduction, and out of whack life expectations
Making your own way “pill”
Narratives about online grifters
Bullishness on the future of dissident arts
Terror House’s book reading in Brooklyn, NYC
Creating effecting satire
The literary genre of alienated loners
A homage or modern day reboot of Confederacy of Dunces
Comparisons to Robert’s novel Vaporfornia and Matt’s Dragon Day

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Checkout Robert Stark’s Facebook pageTwitterInstagramStark Truth TV, novel Vaporfornia, and subscribe to his Substack.

Robert Stark discusses his novel Vaporfornia

Robert Stark is joined with Matt Pegas and Dan Baltic to discuss his new novel, Vaporfornia. Vaporfornia is a surreal dark comedy, a coming of age story set in California, and is the sequel to Robert’s first novel, Journey to Vapor Island. This show is a simulcast with Matt and Dan’s dissident, counter-culture, literary podcast, New WriteVaporfornia is available for purchase on Lulu publishing. Also check out Matt’s review of Vaporfornia.

Topics:

Contrasting Vaporfornia with Journey to Vapor Island, and how both novels capture the zeitgeists of their respective eras
The niche genre of the satirical moving adventure story
Literary comparisons to a Confederacy of Dunces, William S. Burroughs’ Naked Lunch, Lucky Jim, Voltaire’s Candide, and Gulliver’s Travels
The situational humor and dramatic irony
Vaporfornia as a satire of the themes in Robert’s Substack that delve into California’s social, political, class, and demographic dynamics
Vaporfornia as a travelogue for California
Allegories and symbolism in the book
Saudade, a longing for what could have been or nostalgia for lost futures
Gio Pennacchietti’s video about how Robert’s literary fiction and visual art complement each other
The protagonist’s personal and political journey
The politics of the “Chad Centrist” presidential candidate Roger Blackstone
Whether Robert Stark will run for California Governor or have a Vaporfornia tour some day

Click Here to download!

Checkout Robert Stark’s Facebook pageTwitterInstagramStark Truth TV, novel Vaporfornia, and in production documentary The Gospel of Gibson, and subscribe to his Substack.