Wake in Fright (1961) is an Australian novel about a pushover Sydney city boy's experiences in Broken Hill-inspired Bundanyabba. Here, he loses all of his money gambling, is constantly drunk, knife fights kangaroos, tries to shoot himself, and much more. To help me gush over this sinister and very funny book, I enlisted the help of Matthew Sini and Matthew Fresta of the lovely Getting Lit podcast.
For the second part of this conversation, where we talk about the 1971 film adaptation of Wake in Fright, check out the Getting Lit podcast.

Getting Lit on X: @getting_lit_pod
Sini on X: @teo_ess

Fresta on X:@newfacenhell
Getting Lit Patreon: patreon.com/GettingLit
Coward Punch (Fresta's Rango Tango zino and some music): https://cowardpunchrecords.bandcamp.com/
Sini's various projects: https://linktr.ee/matthewsini

VERY IMPORTANT INFORMATION

Jack has published a novel called Tower!

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Tower-Jack-BC-ebook/dp/B0CM5P9N9M/ref=monarch_sidesheet

The first nine chapters of Tower are available for free here: jackbc.substack.com

Our Patreon: www.patreon.com/TheBookClubfromHell

Jack's Substack: jackbc.substack.com

Levi's website: www.levioutloud.com

www.thebookclubfromhell.com

Join our Discord (the best place to interact with us): discord.gg/ZMtDJ9Hscr

Watch us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0n7r1ZTpsUw5exoYxb4aKA/featured

X: @bookclubhell666

Jack on X: @supersquat1

Levi on X: @optimismlevi

Financed by her husband as a 10th wedding anniversary present and published in 1897, Irene Iddesleigh is a romance story featuring extremely mercurial characters, bizarre pacing, and the most insane purple prose in existence. Really, The Eye of Argon reads like a physics textbook in comparison.

VERY IMPORTANT INFORMATION

Jack has published a novel called Tower!

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Tower-Jack-BC-ebook/dp/B0CM5P9N9M/ref=monarch_sidesheet

The first nine chapters of Tower are available for free here: jackbc.substack.com

Our Patreon: www.patreon.com/TheBookClubfromHell

Jack's Substack: jackbc.substack.com

Levi's website: www.levioutloud.com

www.thebookclubfromhell.com

Join our Discord (the best place to interact with us): discord.gg/ZMtDJ9Hscr

Watch us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0n7r1ZTpsUw5exoYxb4aKA/featured

X: @bookclubhell666

Jack on X: @supersquat1

Levi on X: @optimismlevi

Transmaxxing is when natal males make themselves into women in order to live a materially better life. The Transmaxxing Manifesto lays out why men would (that is, should) want to become women, why an essential gender identity doesn't exist, how to 'girl-mode', why men are useless, and how to bring about a global authoritarian transmaxxing state in which 5% of the population are breeding males, 50% are natal females, and the 45% of men insufficiently masculine to breed are forced to take oestradiol and live as women.

Link to the manifesto: https://www.scribd.com/document/720824358/Transmaxxing14

The transmaxxing website: www.transmaxxing.eu

VERY IMPORTANT INFORMATION

Jack has published a novel called Tower!

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Tower-Jack-BC-ebook/dp/B0CM5P9N9M/ref=monarch_sidesheet

The first nine chapters of Tower are available for free here: jackbc.substack.com

Our Patreon: www.patreon.com/TheBookClubfromHell

Jack's Substack: jackbc.substack.com

Levi's website: www.levioutloud.com

www.thebookclubfromhell.com

Join our Discord (the best place to interact with us): discord.gg/ZMtDJ9Hscr

Watch us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0n7r1ZTpsUw5exoYxb4aKA/featured

X: @bookclubhell666

Jack on X: @supersquat1

Levi on X: @optimismlevi

On High at Red Tide is a rough, scruffy, lovely, unsettling, surf-noir novel written by Gabriel Hart, a novelist, poet, musician, and reporter (among many things). We got to talk about petrifying trazedone hallucinations, the parallels between alcoholism and possession, meth, why it's always wrong to kill someone, LA subcultures, and a whole lot more.

Get On High at Red Tide: https://pigroastpublishing.com/product/on-high-at-red-tide/
Get On High at Red Tide on Amazon, if that's your thing: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DCYZR5L9/
Jail Weddings: https://jailweddings.bandcamp.com/album/ego-jingles
The Starvations: https://thestarvations.bandcamp.com/album/get-well-soon
Hotel Mercy: https://hotelmercy.bandcamp.com/

Gabriel's Recommendations
Chandler Morrison - American Narcissus - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CTF7NF3N

Jillian Luft - Scumbag Summer - https://www.jillianluft.com/buy-scumbag-summer

Danielle Chelosky - https://www.daniellechelosky.com/

Omar King - https://newritualpress.com/books/

Lisa Carver - Lover of Leaving - https://pigroastpublishing.com/product/loverofleaving/

John Tottenham - Service - https://www.amazon.com/dp/1635902495/

David Kuhnlein - Bloodletter - https://amphetaminesulphate.bigcartel.com/product/bloodletter-david-kuhnlein (NB: I said 'Daniel Kuhnlein' in the episode, because I'm really smart. His name is actually 'David'. David, if you're reading this, I'm sorry and repent of my actions).

VERY IMPORTANT INFORMATION

Jack has published a novel called Tower!

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Tower-Jack-BC-ebook/dp/B0CM5P9N9M/ref=monarch_sidesheet

The first nine chapters of Tower are available for free here: jackbc.substack.com

Our Patreon: www.patreon.com/TheBookClubfromHell

Jack's Substack: jackbc.substack.com

Levi's website: www.levioutloud.com

www.thebookclubfromhell.com

Join our Discord (the best place to interact with us): discord.gg/ZMtDJ9Hscr

Watch us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0n7r1ZTpsUw5exoYxb4aKA/featured

X: @bookclubhell666

Jack on X: @supersquat1

Levi on X: @optimismlevi

Published in 1899, The Interpretation of Dreams is one of Sigmund Freud's most significant works and, by extension, one of the most significant works in psychoanalysis, psychology, and the Western conception of the mind. In it, Freud begins with a collection of questions: what are dreams? What can we learn from them? In trying to answer, he ends up describing a structure of energetic flows between the conscious, preconscious and unconscious portions of the psyche.

Turns out, there's more to Freud than penises, cocaine and wanting to have sex with your mum.

VERY IMPORTANT INFORMATION

Jack has published a novel called Tower!

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Tower-Jack-BC-ebook/dp/B0CM5P9N9M/ref=monarch_sidesheet

The first nine chapters of Tower are available for free here: jackbc.substack.com

Our Patreon: www.patreon.com/TheBookClubfromHell

Jack's Substack: jackbc.substack.com

Levi's website: www.levioutloud.com

www.thebookclubfromhell.com

Join our Discord (the best place to interact with us): discord.gg/ZMtDJ9Hscr

Watch us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0n7r1ZTpsUw5exoYxb4aKA/featured

X: @bookclubhell666

Jack on X: @supersquat1

Levi on X: @optimismlevi

Dustin Cole is a Canadian poet, novelist, essayist and short story writer, whose latest chapbook After Sunstone is a lovely examination of seeing, times and places. I actually ended up buying this book on the basis of its cover: it's a great edition, put out by Farthest Heaven. We talked about the link between poetry and time, poetry as a way to say the unsaid, why Dustin no longer writes novels, SE Hinton's novel Rumble Fish, Robin Blaser's essay The Fire, dissatisfaction, and much more.

Buy After Sunstone here
https://farthestheaven.com/products/after-sunstone

Farthest Heaven
https://farthestheaven.com

Dustin's interview with Brad Kelly
https://www.madmethodpod.com/podcast/melee4

Some current writers whom Dustin likes
Tom Will (https://many.bio/thomaswill)
Eric Racher (https://socratesonthebeach.com/eric-racher)
Hayden Church (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BLR73Z3J)
Wallace Barker (https://farthestheaven.com/products/gypsy-romance)
Adam Day (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Day)
Calvin Atwood (https://xraylitmag.com/contributor/calvin-atwood/)

VERY IMPORTANT INFORMATION

Jack has published a novel called Tower!

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Tower-Jack-BC-ebook/dp/B0CM5P9N9M/ref=monarch_sidesheet

The first nine chapters of Tower are available for free here: jackbc.substack.com

Our Patreon: www.patreon.com/TheBookClubfromHell

Jack's Substack: jackbc.substack.com

Levi's website: www.levioutloud.com

www.thebookclubfromhell.com

Join our Discord (the best place to interact with us): discord.gg/ZMtDJ9Hscr

Watch us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0n7r1ZTpsUw5exoYxb4aKA/featured

X: @bookclubhell666

Jack on X: @supersquat1

Levi on X: @optimismlevi

This article, published in 2015 in the International Feminist Journal of Politics, offers a description of how the experience of piloting hunter-killer UAVs could 'queer' the battlefield and offer possible lines of flight out of heteronormative hierarchies. Poststructuralism meets mainlining hours of war footage on the internet (not really) (yes really).

VERY IMPORTANT INFORMATION

Jack has published a novel called Tower!

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Tower-Jack-BC-ebook/dp/B0CM5P9N9M/ref=monarch_sidesheet

The first nine chapters of Tower are available for free here: jackbc.substack.com

Our Patreon: www.patreon.com/TheBookClubfromHell

Jack's Substack: jackbc.substack.com

Levi's website: www.levioutloud.com

www.thebookclubfromhell.com

Join our Discord (the best place to interact with us): discord.gg/ZMtDJ9Hscr

Watch us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0n7r1ZTpsUw5exoYxb4aKA/featured

X: @bookclubhell666

Jack on X: @supersquat1

Levi on X: @optimismlevi

Matthew Gasda is a director, novelist, playwright, essayist and Memphis horrorcore rapper, who has a novel, The Sleepers, coming out on the 6th of May, 2025. Tightly stage-managed and reading like a thickened play, The Sleepers explores millennial listlessness. This episode doubles as a New York soundscape, Matthew calling in from a cafe and crunching lemonade ice cubes tenderly into his microphone (your ear).

Buy The Sleepers here: https://www.amazon.com/Sleepers-Novel-Matthew-Gasda/dp/1648211259
Matthew's Substack: https://matthewgasda.substack.com/

VERY IMPORTANT INFORMATION

Jack has published a novel called Tower!

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Tower-Jack-BC-ebook/dp/B0CM5P9N9M/ref=monarch_sidesheet

The first nine chapters of Tower are available for free here: jackbc.substack.com

Our Patreon: www.patreon.com/TheBookClubfromHell

Jack's Substack: jackbc.substack.com

Levi's website: www.levioutloud.com

www.thebookclubfromhell.com

Join our Discord (the best place to interact with us): discord.gg/ZMtDJ9Hscr

Watch us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0n7r1ZTpsUw5exoYxb4aKA/featured

X: @bookclubhell666

Jack on X: @supersquat1

Levi on X: @optimismlevi