“The ecstatic sadism with which we have been forced, in our own reality, to relive the theatrical killing of our deity is exploded here in hundreds of thousands of copies: it is a myriad of human sacrifices, in the image — albeit still very modest — of the gladiators crucified along our Appian Way.

The difference here is that the victims are all instantly divinized, in an Orwellian reversal of a bottomless degeneracy. Our journey, through these scenes of relived and redefined pain, turns out to be tortuous and demanding, and at times truly confounding.

Hence these books with their red, breathing and pulsating cover, of which it is well understood, in the manner in which their readers groan tenderly and ostentatiously, that they detail, in an absurd luxury of details, the deplorable circumstances of each of these executions.

These readers are the coreligionists, but they are not the only ones to populate the stage: carrier chairs also slowly parade obese patricians with literally gray skin, whose only function seems to be to stuff themselves continuously during their stroll.”

[iii-18]