Category Archives: In the Sky

Robert Stark interviews Ann Sterzinger about In the Sky

80's music, Ann Sterzinger, Anti-Natalism, Art, Basic Income, Culture, David Bowie, Despair, France, Gender, humor, Immigration, In the Sky, Literature, Loserdom, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Michel Houellebecq, misanthropy, Octave Mirbeau, Science Fiction, Sexuality

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In the Sky(Dans le ciel) was written by Octave Mirbeau in France in the 1890’s. Ann Sterzinger translated the first English edition published by Hopeless Books. It’s available on Amazon.

Topics include:

How Ann discovered the book from Pierre Michel, a French literary scholar specializing in the writer Octave Mirbeau
How Mirbeau is best known for his book Diary of a chambermaid but In the Sky was little known outside of France
How Mirbeau was an anarchist and a Dreyfusard
How Mirbeau was a major influence on Louis-Ferdinand Céline who shared his misanthropic outlook
How Céline was marginalized for his support of the Vichy Regime however he influenced many writers such as Jack Kerouac, John Dolan, Charles Bukowski, and Michel Houellebecq
How the book reflects Mirbeau’s outlook towards life and society
The main character X who is a depressed, misanthropic, artist based on Vincent Van Gogh who Mirbeau knew
The Narrator who discovers X’s manifesto after his death
How X struggles to create his artistic vision
X’s mentor who looses his mind
The post Catholic concept of expressing spirituality through art
How X struggles with sexual and romantic frustration and when he finally meets a girl he dumps her because she did not live up to his romantic ideals
How the of meaning of the title In the Sky and both where X lives on top of a mountain where you can only see sky and  metaphor for being detached from society
Mirbeau’s view on the family and how neurosis is pasted down from parents to children
How the book combines tragedy and comedy
Matt Forney’s review Elliot Rodger Goes to Paris
The genre “Loser Lit”
Ann’s article Dead David Bowie, French Nationalists, Antinatalism, and the Meaning of Life
David Bowie’s art & legacy
Her article The Magical Bottomless Labor Pool which connects political themes to her book NVSQVAM
Why I’m Scared of Widows & Orphans
Applied Dysgenics
In Defense of Beta Females
Ann’s upcoming Science Fiction Dystopia novel Lyfe, which needs a publisher that specializes in Science Fiction


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