Ebook
Sartre and Camus held that existence is absurd, that consequently meaning is forged through the individual who must create it, a Promethean doctrine of reality which today has come to exercise a grip on us so firmly that we barely notice it, much less ever think to seriously question it. To be sure, the world is absurd. But existence as such? In this debut novel, Christian existentialist Steven DeLay tells the story of a knight of faith's quest for meaning. In his resulting voyage from the suburbs of Texas to the secret societies of Oxford, he encounters the ineluctable claim of eternity on the everyday. Part fairy tale, noir mystery, psychological thriller, and essay in existential philosophy, Everything's first volume, Anomie, explores the condition of nihilism in modern culture.
“Philosophy might be best described as the attempt to say
something about everything. Yet, the more abstract and systematic
one’s philosophy is, the less it says about anything real.
Recognizing that the only way to speak truth is to say something
about someone, DeLay has given us a book as profound as it is
engaging. Everything is that rare kind of work that shows us
what’s essential by showing us what’s personal. A tremendous
achievement, this work will be read for years to come.”
—Matthew Clemente, author of Eros Crucified
“There is no greater compliment one can give a work of
fiction than to say that its author has created a world one would
like to visit. DeLay has done something more than that. In
depicting an individual character’s search for meaning in the face
of a world that often appears cruel and chaotic, he has taken up
Camus’s challenge to present philosophy in images and expanded upon
it, showing us our world with all of its absurdity and
grace.”
—Jean-Luc Beauchard, author of The Mask of Memnon: Meaning and
the Novel