Outlook

Benjamin Flew is dead-- a suicide. And Sam Wood wants to understand.
Two years ago, Sam (and seven others) received an enigmatic ""goodbye world"" email from Flew, one of Sam's former guitar students. Sam does not know any of the others who received the email, but his curiosity about the circumstances regarding Flew's death reaches a boiling point.
After lying to his girlfriend and abandoning his studies, Sam embarks on a road trip--a quest for discovery--accompanied only by his laptop, his phone, and an esoteric collection of classical CDs. Outlook, the fifth book from the mind of Charlie Johns, follows Sam on his journey as he engages with Benjamin's old colleagues--and runs face-first into a startling revelation.

""Intelligent and intriguing.""
--Julian Barnes, author of A Sense of an Ending

""Stylish, thought-provoking, and original.""
--D. M. Thomas, author of The White Hotel

""Eloquent and deeply moving.""
--Evan Eisenberg, author of The Recording Angel: Music, Records, and Culture from Aristotle to Zappa

Charles William Johns studied fine art at Goldsmiths College and later pursued a Masters in Contemporary Art Theory, submitting his final thesis on the resurgence of nihilism in contemporary philosophical discourse. His debut book, Incompatible Ballerina and Other Essays, was published in 2015. Since then, he has published a monograph on the relation between neurosis and philosophy (2016) and has edited a collection of essays on neurosis (The Neurotic Turn, 2017) with contributors such as Graham Harman and Nick Land. Recently, Johns has been writing fictional work, such as Malchus (2017) and Outlook (2018), describing characters who transgress in some form (socially, psychologically, and religiously).