Existential Thirst Trap by

Robert Dean

Now Available on Amazon

Existential Thirst Trap is peppered with the hard-earned humor of not taking yourself too seriously, that only someone who has been told “no” half of their professional lives can pen sincerely.

There are prevalent recurring themes in Dean’s collection: music of all kinds, loss, writing, Jameson, anxiety, depression, the void, and perseverance. He has clearly spent more than a few moments in selfexploration and on his station in life, which allows him to articulate a certain feeling he has with these 26 letters. We live in a confessional and hyper-conscious time and this is essentially Dean’s memoir in three acts: Free State, Rotten Heart, and Good Men and Gators. The work is emo, and as Dean reminds us often, he is a naturally “sad” person, but Existential Thirst Trap is engagingly casual. In some instances I might tire of this atmosphere; instead, the reading experience is like meeting a stranger at a bar and ending up drunk hugging, exchanging contact info as the lights come up.

The most moving and existential essay I found to be “Free State.” It also happens to be one of his most succinct. He begins, “I shared a bottle of cheap wine with a painter. I was down in my hideaway, Galveston Island. We sat in his studio garage swapping war stories, one glass at a time. He told me about pedaling a bike around paradise, making a living by splashing a rainbow of paint against the world.”

I must admit, I’m a sucker for most things Galveston. Dean definitely has taken the time to embrace the castaway island and just gets it on a primordial level. He explores an ineffable emotion in this vignette, cutting to a core I have yet to read from any other writer tackling the island. He channels the humble rough and tumble esoteric vibe Galveston exudes, a feeling that can only be invoked by the brackish waters of the Gulf of Mexico and the hurricanes she conjures.

“We took dark dives into the ether, knowing the folks around us were just pretending when they said the world wasn’t crumbling beneath their feet. It’s a free state. A free fall. The painter and I understood that was the reason the whiskey hit harder. The fear made our bottles seem a little less empty,” Dean writes.

Dean’s affinity for Galveston also figures in the essays “Some Disaster” and “Old Dudes”. Dean is attempting to make sense of the chaotic zen that is his chosen life as a working writer. His self-reflective loop can be seen as overused, but this is also part of the charm of his writing. Existential Thirst Trap gives many fucks, along with the undeniably brazen honesty of an acutely aware young man’s journal, distilled through the lens of an old soul who has seen many moons and closed many a bar. But maybe that is Dean’s meta joke after all: grinning at the world that is laughing with him in its cosmic indifference. He clinks glasses with you in a dimly lit hole in the wall as y’all attempt to parse out this human nature thing.

EVAN RODRIGUEZ is a freelance journalist living and working in Austin, Texas. He writes for the Austin Chronicle, and has written for Kirkus Reviews, Austin AmericanStatesman, and austin360.com. Rodriguez writes prose and non-fiction, he is currently piecing together his fourth novella, forthcoming from nowhere (yet).

Drod8981@gmail.com