'Lionel Lancet and the Right Vibe': a Short Interview

As a dweller of New York, Daniel Backer’s time is busy with long commutes to work, shops, his neighbours, and even mailbox, most of which are dominated by worn-out street musicians, queues of panhandlers, and hot updrafts of sewer gas coming from beneath his feet. This unfailing cinematic image of the casual New Yorker is all I could assume about the life of Daniel, who spends his off-work hours not commenting on the world he lives in, but in producing video essays on the textual worlds he prefers to inhabit. His channel, Off the Wall Novels, was my funnel to his second novel, Lionel Lancet and the Right Vibe, and a glimmer of hope for the future of BookTube.

 However, Daniel has not always walked the streets of the Big Apple. In his video How to be a Beautiful Genius Artist, he shares the woes and tribulations moving to L.A. brought him some time ago. Despite being marketed as a beacon of fame and creativity, in this interview Daniel reveals that, up close, L.A. is a place where brands, politics, and human identities merge. Together with Silicon Valley, this part of America glamorises facades and stock narratives of success, while it seldom questions the legitimacy and political backing of rising entrepreneurs, spokespeople, and influencers. It is obvious that his L.A. experiences give shape to Lionel Lancet; a slim book that is, in hindsight, a contemporary of one of Silicon Valley’s eminent tech spectacles - Theranos. 

 Lionel Lancet and the Right Vibe satirises the meandering of its main character, Lionel, in the hodgepodge of pop ideologies and financial schemes of California as he is caught up in a long-running conspiracy orchestrated by his grandfather, Art. On a languorous summer day, Art Lancet, a business mogul in the crosshair of a resolute lawyer-investigator, conveniently suffers a heart attack and bequeaths a lawsuit to his son, Francis. Francis, being in the know of his father’s wrongdoings, makes a James-Bond-esque exit with his helicopter, and so passes the lawsuit to his dim-witted and inept 20-something son, Lionel. 

You can sense that Lionel is ignorant of his grandfather Art’s dossier (he is barely in the know of his personal surroundings). In the promo video of the novel, Daniel explicitly refers to Pynchon as one of his prime sources of inspiration, and the first ten pages definitely confirm this. Just as Oedipa Mass is hurled into a conspiracy as a consequence of someone else’s death in The Crying of Lot 49, so is Lionel the rightful heir of his grandfather’s crimes. From there on hatches a sequence of comedic coincidences which keep Lionel jostling for survival. Every sporadic move Lionel makes intersects with every planned step of the enemy conspiracy agents. It is Lionel’s comedic tumble through life against the forces of organised evil. 

And it’s not only organised evil Lionel is against. As the privileged grandson of a trust-fund businessman, he has afforded to stay hooked 24/7 on stimuli and remain jobless for far too long. With his grandfather dead and no inheritance money on hand, Lionel has to find the quickest way to bounce back from this heavy financial  blow, find the truth behind the mysterious lawsuit, and crack down on a conspiracy that has an ultra psychedelic drug at its core. On his way to clear his name, he struggles to overcome two key obstacles: his unhealthy love of weed that induces panic attacks in the most wince-worthy moments for the reader and his obsession with YouTube atheists such as Dawkins and Hitches. The style-bending descriptions of Lionel’s panic fits will boost your chances of loving the book, whereas his vague world views will place him at odds with an ultra-progressive new-age feminist with whom he becomes enamoured. 

A short novel packing plenty of humour and modern insight for the modern reader. It managed to ship to the ass-end of Europe, so I suppose it would ship to the ass-end of everywhere else. Support the new wave of self-published authors whose style, ambition, and voice are not marked by metrics or trends, but by pure love for the written word. 

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Q: I will resist the journalistic itch to kick off with a question about how the novel was conceived, but I will allow myself to ask whether the book, despite its satirical overtone, is an extrapolation or a reflection of America’s current political climate?

A: I think the backdrop of the book is the American political climate of 2015-2016, when guys like Ben Shapiro and Milo Yiannopoulos became popular on YouTube. The YouTuber Contrapoints was a big inspiration on the book, specifically her connecting the dots between YouTube atheism and the alt-right before Donald Trump's election. A lot of people kind of roll their eyes at Dawkins and Hitchens for aesthetic reasons--they are obnoxious--but figures like Shapiro and Yiannopoulos are funded by big conservative organizations, and their influence is more sinister. I wanted to explore a protagonist whose interests started out harmless or cringy at worst, but then they lead to something bad and consequential. But it's funny, some people don't even comment on the political aspects of the book. They just see it as a story about a stoner who gets caught up in a conspiracy. 

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"Although Lionel was no believer in fate - that higher order to the universe that might steer him one way or another. - Developed a cache of browsing data that fed YouTube’s algorithm which orchestrated an inevitability to his recommended videos. For sacred reasons known only to coders in Silicon Valley, Lionel’s demographics plus his interest in atheism made him all but destined to click a video titled “Liberal Crybabies DESTROYED with Undeniable Truth"

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Q: While some characters are dead certain of their beliefs, your writing sounds ambivalent and always on the fence about things. Are your characters parodic mouthpieces for loud and self-righteous political reps, or that’s just the level of obnoxiousness some open advocates of certain ideologies have reached?

A: I've always been interested in how ideals have to be compromised to make them real. I think the characters in the book tell you what they believe as a matter of personal branding even if they might completely contradict that with their actions. It can seem exaggerated for characters to mention their beliefs, but political wording has trickled into normal conversation through social media and podcasts--like even people who are just kind of tuned in nowadays will say labor instead of work. I don't think the characters' beliefs in the novel are all that heightened. A lot of people are talking about big ideas, and when they're wrong or confused, I think it plays well for humor. 

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Q: Every other character appears strapped to a phony political agenda save for indifferent Lionel who clings on his YouTube Atheism. Politics is a social scrimmage that seems to have engrossed everyone. Is there a chance of escape for the politically apathetic like Lionel Lancet in our society?

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A: I get how the book can seem cynical, but I mostly just wanted it to be funny. There is something hilarious about grandiosity and swinging for the fences and falling far short. To be a little grand right now, I also wanted to explore how the narrative we tell ourselves about our political stance might be a rationalization for what we want. For example, I read a great book called Dark Money by Jane Mayer in preparation for Lionel that showed me that all of these think tanks that push libertarian philosophy end up getting boring old conservatives elected. We can quibble about philosophy all day, but it's often a smokescreen. Showing that difference between the story we tell ourselves and the reality of the world is central to the book. Like for Lionel, he flatters himself with notions of objectivity and logic while becoming more right-wing without even knowing it. If there's any hopeful message in the book, it's to release yourself from philosophy and navel-gazing. "But isn't non-philosophy still a philosophy?" Let's not go there.  

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Q:  “He grew up in a media landscape that valued portraying his demographic as witty, smooth-talking, but most of all, intelligent. However, this intelligence was not portrayed as a product of hard work or rumination. It was effortless intelligence, intelligence that could be summoned in an instant, intelligence as an essential quality that surmounted all obstacles…”

One of my favourite passages describing a persistent issue since the dawn of mass media. In your video How to Be a Beautiful Genius Artist you share your experience of moving to LA and how the decision was prompted by a contagious misconception that everyone who wants makes it big goes there. Have we started to effortlessly acquire thoughts, feelings, skills, and dreams thanks to the mesmerising images we see on our screens, and have we forgotten to think for ourselves?

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A: A lot of that was semi-autobiographical, specifically loving stories about smart characters as a kid: Malcolm from Malcolm in the Middle, Leo's character in Catch Me If You Can, Will Hunting in Good Will Hunting, etc.  Looking back, the trope is kind of silly, someone just dazzling everyone with their smarts. The worst is probably George Clooney in Out of Sight. Realizing all this made me want to try a character who identified with those guys but was way dumber. 

Living in L.A. really opened my eyes to how media influences American culture. It's everywhere, but there especially, people base their personalities on character types from movies and intellectual properties. I'm no different. Different brands and movies and bands shaped my identity. It's not as depressing as it might sound. Like, are we going to stop? The song Black Beatles by Rae Sremmurd and Gucci Mane was popular when I first moved out there, and I was struck by the contrast between the almost existentially serious melody and the lyrics that are just about partying. I love art that plays with that contrast. It expresses the human experience as something important and base at the same time. So I think we can still think for ourselves. We use the cultural modes of the time and transcend them. At our best moments, anyway. 

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Q: In that line of thought, data harvesting and internet surveillance were briefly mentioned but left unexplored. Do you think Lionel would care if his browsing history was released to the public?

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A: This one made me smile. I don't think Lionel's history would be that depraved. He'd probably feel vulnerable for having his browsing habits laid out for all to see, but wouldn't we all? 

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Q: It took 4 years to finish the book. How did you manage to keep your ideas afloat and always relevant to the ever-shifting political landscape of America?

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A: I actually didn't set out to write a political book. Paul Thomas Anderson's Hard 8 made me want to write a noir about an older man and a younger man, and Infinite Jest gave me the idea to have an inheritance with dangerous implications. The story evolved from there. The book went through a lot of changes too. I was actually scrambling, adding new sections in the days leading up to the release. Even though the world changes all the time, people justifying hoarding wealth is nothing new. And the difference between the world and the way we talk about it is a very old idea. I consider that to be the core of the book, but others might disagree. 

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Q: And finally giving your fingertips a rest from typing, what advice would you give Daniel Backer from 4 years ago when he was first setting out to write the novel?

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A: I learned a lot by writing this book, and I'm very happy with how it turned out. I don't think I would have done anything differently. But if I could time travel, I would tell myself, "Stop telling people it's going to be done this summer. It's going to take 3 ½ more years."

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