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.
Interview with Greg Scorzo
What is your favorite part of the book?
I like the dialogue between Lena and Davis where these two intelligent women are having a dialogue about whether its ethical to both be a porn star and be someone raising a teenage son. I like it because it’s dealing with something people would rather not think about, even though common sense suggests there is an obvious answer. The dialogue, in a way which is funny and really tense, grapples with how common sense can be deeply threatening to certain moral and political frameworks.
Does your book have a lesson? Moral?
This book has moral obsessions the reader is encouraged to think about and grapple with. But whatever moral conclusions are drawn are for the reader alone to decide. Love Before Covid doesn’t argue for moral claims as much as it gets the reader to sit inside them, feel them deeply, and experience the full weight of their contradictions, paradoxes, and hypocrisies. It’s a visceral feeling; not an experience where one is told what to think.
Are your characters based off real people or did they all come entirely from your imagination?
They are all from my imagination. I would feel guilty if I ever based a character on someone I knew in real life. However, I will say that the character of Janet was inspired by the character of Audrey Horne from Twin Peaks. This is because, growing up watching Twin Peaks, I could never quite figure out why I liked Audrey as much as I did. Audrey, especially in the first season, behaves like a sociopath.
Of all the characters you have created, which is your favorite and why?
My favorite character in the book is probably Loraine. I like her because we all know somebody like Loraine, but for whatever reason, she never appears in books, movies, or TV. Loraine is absolutely horrifying, but she’s horrifying because she’s really really ordinary. She’s not a psychopath, a rapist, a terrorist, a monster, a vampire, or someone who kills people for organized crime. She’s just a very beautiful, very successful dance instructor who hates fat people. She’s bossy and mean about it. And the irony is: she has a fat boyfriend.
What character in your book are you least likely to get along with?
Probably Alice. Alice feels entitled to play with people’s emotions, even to the point where she has no problem psychologically torturing people she loves. She’s one of these people who delights in seeing how angry she can make another person. She’ll even get pregnant on purpose with someone else’s baby, just to upset her lover. And she’ll reveal the pregnancy with a smirk on face, a smirk that says: “You can’t control me. I am now carrying your nephew’s child. And you can do nothing about it.” People like that freak me out. Having said that, I do picture Alice looking a lot like Imogen Heap (who in real life, is a very nice human being).
What would the main character in your book have to say about you?
Joe would ask me how I lost weight and reversed by diabetes. For him, that’s probably the thing he wants most in life.
Do you want each book to stand on its own, or are you trying to build a body of work with connections between each book?
I’m finishing my second novel, which is not a sequel to the first book. It’s a stand alone work. However, it exists in the same universe as Love Before Covid. Janet’s therapist Doctor Adams (a background character in Love Before Covid) is also a background character in my second book. Maybe my third book will be about Doctor Jillian Adams. She’s a highly manipulative, uninsightful, and thoroughly toxic psychologist/therapist who uses a “Sex Positive Feminist” modality to reel in young clients, female clients, and clients in the adult industry. And there’s a hint in the first book that her “psychopath” diagnosis of Janet may have been a mistake.
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
Purchase Links
https://mybook.to/LoveBeforeCovid
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1 comments:
If your writing process were a landscape, what would it look like- chaotic jungle, structured city, shifting desert?
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