Daily Afflictions
by Andrew Boyd
W. W. Norton

What would happen if you wrote a thought-a-day, philosophical, easily digestible self-help book based on the thoughts of Soren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche and Franz Kafka? You'd get suicidally depressed in a hurry, that's what would happen. But in more practical terms, you'd be left with "Daily Afflictions," a keen little volume of thoughtfully negative essays and meditations by Andrew "Brother Void" Boyd.

Boyd describes his dark thought morsels as "sacred poems that elevate and educate the spirit," saying that the volume is "not unlike a book of psalms." What pretentious crap! Oh, but wait — he was merely putting us on! Or ... was he? The beauty of "Daily Afflictions" is that its content is sharp and varied enough in topic and scope that the author's true intent is not readily apparent. And that's how you get lost in his cultivated garden of gloom-based insight.

"Daily Afflictions" is every bit as tightly written and light as any garden-variety self-help book, but it has a dark soul. It's the literary equivalent of an angel foodcake accidentally baked with pure human sorrow instead of one teaspoon of cream of tartar.

Titles of his essays include "The Uses of Obsession," "The Suburb Within," "The Tragedy of Commitment," and "Fucked by Love." They're all about 100 words long. And some of them are whip-smart, relating well to ordinary emotional hurdles faced by many readers, and picking out ways negative thinking can be used to forge forward, ever forward, toward the final mysterious release known as death.

Over the course of the book, Boyd's tone and impact changes radically. At first, the book feels like an ironic assault on the very concept of spiritual self-improvement. By the middle of the book, you're shaking your head with wonder at some of the genuinely clever and occasionally moving ideas that Boyd conveys with seemingly effortless skill. And by the end, you wonder if he's bought his own hype — the syrup so perfectly extracted and mocked in the book's earlier sections has seeped back in, and it's as thick as ever. Sure, it's flavored like human pain. But it's still pretty sweet and rich.

While Boyd has moments of weakness, most of the afflictions are pretty strong — many are genuinely thought-provoking and/or entertaining. Just as importantly, Boyd is not interested in wasting the reader's time. His crisp little book can be banged out of the way in a few days of commuting — his neat little afflictions pack a good wallop.

The Web presence for "Daily Afflictions" includes sample afflictions, an "online church," and crisp, cool web design — Brother Void is a monk of the Cyber Age. And thank goodness he is. For only the Internet could adequately transmit and amplify the ironic clamoring of Void's increasing legion of followers. The new era is upon us, and it will distract us from our pain with the only true remedy — deeper, stronger, and more profound pain! All hail.

— James Norton (jrnorton@flakmag.com)