Dark / Drama / Thriller
Date Published: July 28, 2023
Publisher: Troubadour Books
“Love before Covid - A raw, philosophical dive into love’s
messy reality—unflinching, dark, and unapologetically human. Unlike
typical romance novels, LOVE BEFORE COVID is a dialogue-driven exploration
of human flaws and ideologies, blending fiction with metaphysical inquiry.
It’s not about comfort; it’s about confrontation and
insight.”
Laced with dark humour, it is best described as traumatic (sur)realism.
Love Before Covid takes the reader on a journey through the mind of Joe
Pastorius - jazz fan, poet, and victim of horrendous sexual and emotional
abuse at the hands of his mother.
The real-time dialogues between the characters that emerge from Joe’s
unconscious come via arguably corrupted memories and dystopian dreams. They
tell us more about Joe than he could ever know, and perhaps more about our
world than you could ever imagine.
Dialogues entail an exploration of clashing perspectives and opinions, that
cause reflection. Today though, our world has been infiltrated by online
dialogues that tend to feel like wild unfiltered streams of human thought,
raw, chaotic and often polarising and devoid of much reflection. Arguably
that attitude, and lack of reflection is mirrored by the characters you will
encounter. The reflection comes from the reader as the situations unfold.
Your moral boundaries will without doubt be pushed to the limit.
You will meet an altruist who can’t stand up for himself, a charming
but violent public intellectual, a beautiful dancer who hates fat people, a
flirty and gregarious bartender who will do anything to get pregnant, a
traumatised art historian who never wants to be a mother, a successful
intellectual Mexican writer who is secretly disapproving of her childhood
friend’s career as a pornstar, the teenage genius son of that pornstar
who has sexual fantasises about his mother, a woman who is pressured into
cutting off her penis and a successful therapist who has a habit of ruining
people’s lives.
And yes, before you ask, some of the characters in this book eventually
catch Covid 19. However, there is always hope. For Joe Pastorious, that
comes in the form of the psychopath named Janet Waverley.
Excerpt
INTRODUCTION
Dear Reader,
This book is both a novel and a collection of dialogues.
The dialogues in this book are moving thought experiments. They portray
elaborate, unfolding situations which, at every turn, force the reader to
examine his or her philosophical intuitions about a range of topics,
situations and people.
These dialogues are not merely fiction told in dialogue form. Fiction is
drama that may (incidentally) comment upon or examine philosophical issues.
Drama normally involves scenes in which dialogue is used to set up and
advance a plot. In this book, plots are used to set up and advance the
dialogues of the characters.
The dialogues in this book are something like philosophy, because the
dramatic elements are merely a pretext to examine the philosophical issues
raised by the situations in which the characters talk to each other. The
dialogues happen in real time and are often deeply frustrating, as dialogues
are in real life. Reading this book, you may feel as though you are
listening in on a series of intensely private conversations.
If you heard any of these conversations in real life, you might feel as
though you were being privy to a rather juicy bit of gossip. Or you might
call the police. You might shed a tear. You might even masturbate (and then
read some more traditional philosophy).
Like any piece of philosophy, the writing in this book is sometimes
laborious. However, unlike traditional philosophy, the aim of this book is
to explore, rather than resolve, a set of philosophical concerns. There are
even issues raised in this book that many well-regarded philosophers find
quite silly – too silly to take seriously as philosophy.
Love Before Covid is thus an attempt to invoke the gadfly spirit of
Socrates in the 21st century, largely by abandoning the academic tradition
he inspired. This book is expected to irritate both lovers of philosophy, as
well as lovers of fiction. It may even irritate people from both sides of
the 21st century’s culture wars.
The plot concerns the love life of a man called Joe Pastorious. However,
this book does not tell you what to think of Joe, nor does it sing his
praises by showing how much he conforms to the most cherished values of our
time. Like many non-fictional people, Joe Pastorious is a complex human
being. You may love him or hate him. To call him imperfect would be an
understatement, but the degree to which he is likeable or loathsome is
thoroughly up to you.
There are other fictional people in this book who also dialogue, but they
only make appearances because of our protagonist. In some ways, they explain
Joe, much more than Joe explains himself.
Joe Pastorious met his wife Janet Waverley in the autumn of 1999. Joe and
Janet fell in love in a place called Leicester, which is a small city in the
middle of England. Many things have been said of Leicester, but one thing
that is not said enough is it is a fantastic place to fall in love. It was
the perfect place for Joe and Janet to fall in love. This is true, despite
the fact that Joe and Janet’s love is anything but perfect.
To truly understand the imperfect nature of this love, we must go back, not
to the beginning, but to an imaginary autumn of 2002. It’s not enough
to merely remember this autumn, from the vantage point of an imaginary
present. We instead must adopt this moment’s perspective, seeing its
events as though they were happening now.
When in the present, one can’t predict the future. Hence, the present
is the best place to understand imperfect people. When people are dead and
we know absolutely everything they have ever done, this creates an illusion
of certainty the present thankfully wipes away. You can’t trust a
corpse, because there is nothing about a corpse’s decisions that may
hurt or disappoint you.
A living, breathing person is not like this. They are only capable of being
truly understood, when they can be trusted. They can only be fully trusted
when their future is uncertain.
Love’s power resides in the romance of this uncertainty.
About the Author
During the pandemic Dr Greg Scorzo completed his first novel ‘LOVE
BEFORE COVID’ as well as producing an innovative radio play based on 6
chapters from that book, also called – LOVE BEFORE COVID. available on
our YouTube Channel. and via Audioboom with links to all major podcast
platforms.
Greg says, “I was interested in the challenge of writing a novel that
was formally experimental, while still being easy for a mass audience to
read and understand. I love the idea of a piece of philosophy that is
simultaneously a work of fiction, and a philosophical thought experiment
which can function like a great, twisty roller coaster of a story that asks
the reader many questions. Unlike traditional philosophy and many
fashionable works of literature, this book purposefully asks questions
without giving answers, encouraging readers to think (and emote) for
themselves.”
Since gaining his PhD in Philosophy in 2011, Greg Scorzo has aimed to find
creative and original ways to take philosophical thinking outside of
academia. By using modern accessible philosophical dialogue inpublic talks,
podcasts and his novel Love Before Covid, Greg explores clashing
perspectives and opinions that cause reflection. Based in Leicester, he was
a founding member of Culture on the Offensive and runs the podcast The
‘Art of Thinking’.
Dialogues entail an exploration of clashing perspectives and opinions that
cause reflection. Statements and declarations can close minds.
The ‘Art of Thinking’ with Greg Scorzo podcast is available on
YouTube where he does friendly philosophical interrogation of ideas
with many interesting thinkers. Also available via Audioboom linking to all
major podcast platforms.
His extended essays on Arts and Culture as well as Cultural Issues are
available on this platform www.gregscorzo.com
He has a passion and extensive knowledge of film and music.
From 2017 – 2020 Greg Scorzo was active in running over 60 engaging
voluntary community sessions, centred around ‘The Art of
Thinking’ The focussed on universal philosophical themes,
arts and culture and cultural issues. The ethos behind these events was to
encourage the use of EMPATHY, CLARITY and COURAGE in ensuing dialogues with
the audience. These were organised by COTO.
He also took up invitations to partner and run sessions at other events,
including the Battle of Ideas Festival at the Barbican London, the
Philosophy Now conference, Leicester Comedy Festival and DeMontfort
University’s Cultural Exchanges festival. He is always interested to
partner up with other like minded people.
Contact Links
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Purchase Links
https://mybook.to/LoveBeforeCovid
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