NUTCRANKR

By Dan Baltic and Gio Penn

"There would be no communion with the Allfather just yet, as Spencer's Valkyrie had different plans. For Spencer, the road to Odin's great hall passed through Human Resources."

Life hasn't been easy for Spencer Grunhauer. Fired from his NYC nonprofit job for writing a "reactionary" manifesto during work hours, he drowns his sorrows with hi

• Language: English
• Publisher: Terror House Press, LLC
• Release date: Nov 11, 2022
• ISBN: 9781951897802

Book preview

Praise for NUTCRANKR

"Reading Dan Baltic’s NUTCRANKR was an experience of profound discomfort. My guts oscillated wildly between churning with perverse mirth and twisting with recognizable anguish. This novel is The Sorrows of Young Werther for the Internet age. Baltic’s protagonist Spencer Grunhauer is a deluded, conniving headcase, but one full of pathos given that he lives in a world where ‘normalcy’ is polycules, communist beatdown squads, and sadomasochism. A send-up of our hyper-political age, wherein the very online politics of the left and right are correctly derided, NUTCRANKR is a profound and I dare say lasting testament to the chaos of the interesting times that we find ourselves in." — Arbogast, author of The Shanghai Horror

"Dan Baltic has written the Don Quixote of the digital era. Spencer Grunhauer is a man out of time, adhering to the martial values and lofty language of a bygone era. He can’t quite get the world around him to conform to the model of how he believes things should be. Maybe he needs to log off, go outside, and touch grass, but every time he does, he tilts at modern windmills (like pussy hats) and hilarity ensures, always with him as the punchline. He’s hardly fazed, however, for it’s all part of his Project, a Zarathustrean plan to transvaluate the depraved values of our world and usher in a new era of the Übermensch. The way Baltic pulls this off, by contrasting the ideals within Spencer’s head and the reality of the feminist world around him, is truly an impressive literary feat, and the fact that he keeps it consistently laugh-out-loud funny puts NUTCRANKR in very elite company with the likes of Pynchon and David Foster Wallace. If you think I’m being hyperbolic, read it and see for yourself. If you’re anything like me, you won’t stop laughing." — Astral, host of Astral Flight Simulation

Biting and funny. Finely wrought political satire. — Caleb Caudell, author of The Neighbor

As if Ignatius J. Reilly marched into the 21st century, and he’s horny! Baltic’s exuberant wit runs rampant in hilarious, thoughtful navigation of modern sexual politics, finding the comic hysteria of an age that has neuroticized even our most basic instincts. — P.C.M. Christ, author of Growing Pains and Vide Cor Meum

Dan weaves together a seamless narrative of self-imposed tragedy and ironic comedy. The online right will hate Spencer Grunhauer and at the same time worry that he represents them. — T.R. Hudson, author of Automaton

"Baltic has delivered a very online, Confederacy of Dunces-style comic novel about the crisis of masculinity in our dunce world." — Kevin Kautzman, co-host of Art of Darkness

Dan Baltic mogs the discourse with an uproarious gutshot for every self-important pseudo-intellectual. A relentless, hilarious book. — Brad Kelly, author of House of Sleep, co-host of Art of Darkness

Picture Jean Genet if he were straight, based, and funny: there you have the addictive style of Dan Baltic. — Last Things

"An irreverent romp through the mind of someone we all know online. If John Kennedy Toole were given a healthy dose of Spanish Fly, a copy of Bronze Age Mindset, and an anonymous Twitter account, you’d wind up with NUTCRANKR." — Jay le Juif, host of Cognitive Dissidence

Baltic has written a comedic and energetic novel that is wonderfully reminiscent of Joseph Heller and David Foster Wallace. — J.L. Mackey, author of The Fall

"Shining the beauty back into The Sorrows of Young Werther. It’s that good. — Joe Pilleater" Nally, author of A Hole in the Wall

"Dan Baltic’s NUTCRANKR is both an unflinching presentation of a deeply deluded, yet pitiable narcissist, and a devastating critique of the ‘deradicalization’ racket. And just when you think you know exactly where it’s headed, its twist ending leaves you stunned and bewildered." — Andy Nowicki, author of The Columbine Pilgrim and Muze

Dan Baltic reincarnates Ignatius J. Reilly in 2010’s Brooklyn—in the perfect storm of elite overproduction, anti-whiteness, and the digitized sex economy—to riotous success. A glorious victory in the quest to reclaim the literary holy land from the heathen. — Matthew Pegas, author of Dragon Day, co-host of New Write

"Dan Baltic takes us into a world of sex, politics, and insecurity all raised up for us to see the mirror of ourselves and the modern world we occupy. If Spencer Grunhauer’s political project is to change the world for the betterment of the West, then NUTCRANKR offers us a debilitating critique of what such a project can do to the worst and best of men." — The Prudentialist

"Dan Baltic has well and truly written a novel for our time. Absurd and mundane, epic yet also very profane, NUTCRANKR captures perfectly, with great wit and humanity, the agony and the ecstasy of this strange moment we find ourselves thrown into. You will laugh and you will cry, and maybe—just maybe—you’ll recognise somebody you know, even yourself, in the pages of this book." — Raw Egg Nationalist, author of The Eggs Benedict Option and Raw Egg Nationalism

"NUTCRANKR is a series of darkly comedic misadventures, each fully deserved by its despicably entertaining (and alarmingly sympathetic) antihero. A strong narrative voice and cracking wit carry the reader’s interest line by line. The story arc is tightly controlled and genuinely intriguing. It made me laugh more than any other story, but only because NUTCRANKR is, at heart, a deep character study to which we can all relate." — Woland

Copyright © 2022 Dan Baltic.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means (whether electronic or mechanical), including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, events, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

ISBN 978-1-951897-80-2

EDITOR

Matt Forney (mattforney.com)

LAYOUT AND COVER DESIGN

Matt Lawrence (mattlawrence.net)

TERROR HOUSE PRESS, LLC

terrorhousepress.com

Table of Contents

Foreword by Gio Penn

September 2019

April 2009

May 2016

May 2023

For Mom and Dad. And for the woman who told me to stop talking about it and just write the damn thing.

Foreword

by Gio Penn

What can I say about Big Spence Grunhauer other than that he is a man against time? Or perhaps more accurately, a man who thinks that time is against him.

Spencer is a man on a mission, a modern philosopher-king who wishes to restore the traditions, bloodlines, and order of Western civilization and wrestle it away from the destructive hands of global Marxism and the Davos Daddies. The only problem is that Spencer, while imagining himself as a high-born nobleman of superior stock, is a relentlessly socially awkward and self-destructive sperg. Plodding through life viewing everything as an epic and heroic quest of yore, Spencer delves into the heart of modern degeneracy and self-destructive perversity to complete his Project: a weighty tome of philosophic essays critiquing the modern condition. These critiques, however, take the form of proposals for forced teen marriages run by the state and the abolition of all individual rights in a totalizing eugenic scheme, among other unusual ideas.

NUTCRANKR is a delightfully devilish exploration of a neurodivergent reactionary forced to experience the drudgery, stupidity, and sexual licentiousness of modern life. Spencer is a man of deep contradictions: someone who worships the purity of an Aryan aristocratic past while having vulgar sexual liaisons with a shrew-like Women’s March SJW he found on a fetish site. In fact, the linchpin of his Project rests an attempt to humble and re-educate this woman, one of the worst female specimens he can find, whom he dubs the Piglet. But even this may prove to be beyond Spencer’s grasp when a rival suitor (in Spencer’s view, a Latin weasel and a poor man’s Don Juan) enters the picture.

Spencer attempts to create a mythopoetics in his head to fit even the most mundane of situations and interactions with the proles he so loathes and scorns only to deflate into embarrassing fits of anger at the slightest of provocations. For a man who has (subpar and filthy) sex, he somehow still manages to maintain his incelish rage at the modern world. Banned from online forums and social media, excluded from public life, fired for his ideas, and rejected by his Piglet harpy, Spencer decides to worship at the altar of Saint Elliot. But read ‘til the end for a surprising turn of events.

There is a cosmic irony in Spencer’s civilization-redeeming treatise being published piecemeal on the back-forums of a porno site. When a Zen master said the best place to practise clarity and purity of meditation was in a brothel, Spencer took him literally, building an online LARP-kingdom of clarity and reaction spanning porno forums, imageboards, and fetish sites, only to crumble into an empire of ashes with every new ban and suspension due to troll mass reports and allegations of underage photo-sharing.

NUTCRANKR truly is a novel for our modern times. And in actual fact, you might even be interacting with the archetype of a Spencer Grunhauer right now, on the Chans, Telegram, or on the heaven site known as Twitter. NUTCRANKR explores the headspace of a neglected and purposefully-excluded phenotype of modern online life.

Gio Penn

September 2022

September 2019

From the Teat of Old Foucault

Spencer knew he had to act quickly if he hoped to complete a full gratification session before Tiny returned from the so-called yard. While Spencer’s ability to achieve high-level masculine arousal had always been rather impressive and consistent prior to his admittance to the Attica Correctional Facility, he found that his body was growing increasingly unresponsive behind the concrete walls that his tax dollars had built. The drive was still there, but it was obscured by layers of ennui and understandable concern for his safety after that incident on the lunch line with Jeremy, a rather unsavory fellow who was certainly no Aryan brother of Spencer’s, even if he belonged to the eponymous prison gang.

Under such circumstances, a lesser man would have put down his penis and given himself over to depressive thinking and cowardly imaginings. But when faced with a mental obstacle, Spencer Grunhauer knew that he had to persevere, flogging the pony until it rose and marched again. And there was truly not a moment to spare, as Tiny had been quite explicit when he said that if he observed Spencer in the middle of another gratification session, he would pull those nuts off.

But would Tiny really do such a thing? Spencer was fairly certain that Tiny had enough regard for him to refrain from damaging his testicles. And besides, they were cellmates; compadres, in a certain sense. How fraught would their everyday existence become if Tiny made good on his bombastic threat? Spencer certainly would not forgive and forget. Destroy my testicle? Why, that is water under the bridge, good friend! How about the chow today? Those tater tots were outstanding! No, Spencer would say no such thing if Tiny attacked him in the fashion he had described. Or, in fact, if Tiny attacked him in any fashion at all. Simply put, it was not Tiny’s prerogative to tell Spencer when he could and could not masturbate. Tiny was not the Lord of Cell B-26. It was Spencer’s cell, too. And Spencer was fairly certain more of his tax dollars had gone into the brick and mortar of that cell than Tiny’s. Imagine that: laboring for a reprehensible organization such as the Center for Social Advancement all so one could be imprisoned with the proceeds from the payroll taxes one had so dutifully bequeathed to the State of New York week after week.

No, Spencer would not be told when and how he could achieve maximal release by a true prole such as Tiny. Was it natural for a criminal peasant to attempt to command a man of high station, a graduate of one of the country’s more highly esteemed liberal arts colleges? It was about as natural as the mouse asking the cat for the time of day. And Spencer was in no mood to listen to animals from the rodent class, even those who were ironically named Tiny while actually resembling a refrigerator of 1970’s vintage.

Spencer tried to banish thoughts of Tiny from his mind as he concentrated on his self-ministrations. But there was little in Spencer’s day-to-day life that provided fodder for such activities. The vast majority of people he interacted with were men—and truly, men of the lowest form. In simple point of fact, there were not too many Ryan Goslings walking around the average maximum-security penitentiary. No, the clientele of such establishments was generally of harder manner and rougher grain than the very well-manicured Mr. Gosling, who should really thank his lucky stars that he had never been convicted of a Class D felony. For it was doubtful that the young goose would fare exceedingly well in the penal environment, dominated as it was by violent gang organizations and the so-called guards, who largely failed to recognize that Spencer belonged on the other side of the bars, regardless of what a court of law had vindictively decreed.

After all, Spencer had fought for men such as the guards during his time in that cauldron of bile known as society. What was the Project if not an attempt to restore the noble prison guard to his rightful place of honor in the historic West? But there was only so much Spencer could do (could have ever done!), as the cauldron was always and ever being stirred and spiced by the native sons of Davos, master chefs that they were. What’s on the menu—global Marxism, you say? Well, that does not sound very appetizing! And indeed, it was not. Global Marxism was among the most distasteful of meals. And yet it was all Spencer had ever eaten. An entire generation had been weaned on this postmodern milk, dripping as it was from the teat of old Foucault.

Was there a time when things could have been different? As Spencer continued his skillful manipulations, he thought of Professor Nora Katz, the one woman who had taught him all there was to know about all women. Spencer still carried affection for his once-beloved Nora, but knew his abiding attachment to be a weakness, a fissure in the center of his soul. Romanticism was a luxury that men such as Spencer could ill afford in a world ruled by those who sought his end. Yet it was there, living within him like a resilient parasite, a steady flame for the radiant and despicable Nora Katz. It wasn’t quite that Spencer had loved her; he had loved the idea of a world where she was possible.

What did I tell you? asked Tiny, entering the cell as Spencer approached the outer limit of male excitement. To say the least, Tiny’s sudden appearance cast a pall over what had been a rather numinous moment.

Nah, don’t put it away, continued Tiny. You had that chance.

April 2009

Nora’s Tudor Home

Prior to that fateful evening when Nora served Spencer an apple from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, Spencer had enjoyed the bliss of infatuation. During office hours, Spencer would discuss the moral character of Hector and Achilles with Nora, who would always take the side of the noble Trojan. Framed by black lustrous hair and wearing a simple white sweater that stretched across her life-giving breasts, Nora appeared both virginal and knowledgeable, a pure woman within whom burned a fire upon which Spencer hoped to warm his hands. It was this sensual lamb that championed Hector’s commitment to home and hearth. She was not wrong; Hector had attempted to protect his beloved family and countrymen from rampaging marauders. And he had paid the ultimate price for his loyalty when Achilles tied him to a chariot and dragged him around the city walls, undoubtedly reducing the once-proud body of the noble Trojan to pulp and gore. Achilles, on the other hand, was the man who did the dragging. In contrast to Hector, whose commitment to friend and family resulted in bodily disintegration, Achilles took no wife; only slaves and lovers. Achilles knew that personal excellence could only be achieved when man was free of domestic entanglements and allowed to soar across the cosmos as the warrior priest he was always meant to be.

At the time, Spencer had viewed Nora’s endorsement of Hector as a sign of her commitment to traditional morality. He would later learn that Nora, in fact, appreciated the respective moralities of both Hector and Achilles, insofar as she was open to sexual assignations with both of them at different times and for different reasons. But in her office, discussing the Greeks, Spencer saw only the Helen of the stories, if Helen had the whitest alabaster skin, lips the color of cherries with the fullness of plush cushions, and breasts that overflowed her frame, like ripe fruit hanging from a wispy branch.

I’m not sure Achilles is really as solitary as you think, said Nora. He loved Patroclus and his men were like family to him. I think it wasn’t so much that he didn’t value human connection, but that he found it in different places.

And the way Nora pursed her cherry-cushion lips after affirming the value of untraditional human connections caused Spencer’s heart and manhood to swell with possibility. He wasn’t certain Nora was trying to signal her erotic interest in him, but this evidence could not be dismissed.

I see what you mean, said Spencer. Achilles had a family. It was just a different type of family.

Exactly, said Nora, seemingly pleased that Spencer had grasped her position and articulated it in a more efficient and aesthetic manner.

Achilles had a great love, but it was a different type of love, said Spencer. And, in that sense, the ancient Greeks were more progressive than we are today, with our emphasis on marriage and the family, and intolerance toward gay people.

The Greeks were definitely a bit more chill than us, said Nora, giggling in a moment of unmistakable femininity.

Though they also believed in slavery and pedophilia, said Spencer. So, maybe not so chill.

And now Nora laughed openly, submitting to the vigor of Spencer’s wit and displaying the soft belly of her mind. It was then that Spencer imagined the demure yet tastefully revealing dress Nora would wear at their wedding. Of course, Nora would first have to divorce her husband, who was some kind of lawyer. But that was a low hurdle they would bound across together. An army of bloodthirsty Greek soldiers could not defeat love. Was this sedentary lawyer stronger than the Myrmidons? Was his claim to Nora stronger than that of Menelaus to Helen? And if their love should launch a years-long war, then may the men pick up their shields. The poets would sing of Spencer and Nora.

Though Spencer knew his invitation to join Nora at her stately home for drinks celebrating the end of their semester together was part of a wider invitation extended to the entire eight-person seminar, he felt this represented the next logical step in their relationship. No longer teacher and student, Spencer and Nora would bond over flavorful wine and sparkling wit in the salon of her very home. And though that unfortunate lawyer to whom Nora was bound by the laws of matrimony would be present, Spencer was confident such a man could do little to prevent the flowering of Spencer’s relationship