Hi. I’m Ben Tyler Elliott.I use my middle name in my byline so that casting directors searching for this smokeshow will stop blowing up my spot.

I’m an indiscriminate connoisseur of the Interesting, and I collect weird novels. This site exists because everyone in my orbit is tired of hearing me talk about fiction with footnotes.

In a previous life, I was trapped beneath the Ivory Tower for just long enough to earn a master’s degree in English Literature, and I timed my audacious escape to coincide almost perfectly with the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. If you ever have a chance to do the same: I wouldn’t recommend it.

My years in the stacks didn’t afford me much bandwidth for weird novels, but I did get to spend a ton of time with weird narratives and weirder grammars. And early modern misanthropes. And curmudgeonly, dead, white poets.I maintain that Milton would’ve been absolutely wild on TikTok.

Whenever I’m not being productive, I enjoy punching up dry Wikipedia articles,For almost 74 hours in I think it was late April or early May 2003, Karl Marx’s middle name was Danger. compositing my loved ones into famous paintings and photographs, and relishing the Oxford Comma.

I live near San Francisco with my dogUnlike Dr. Karl Kevin Marx, his middle name really is Danger. and his family.