Description: 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.
Brief description: Steven DeLay is a writer living in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. An Old Member of Christ Church, Oxford, he is the author of Faint Not (2022), In the Spirit (2021), Before God (2020), and Phenomenology in France (2019). He is also the editor of Life above the Clouds: Philosophy in the Films of Terrence Malick (2022) and editor of Finding Meaning: Philosophy in Crisis (2023) based on the series of online essays, ""Finding Meaning,"" at 3:16 AM.
Review Quotes: "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