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).
