All Has Been Lost, All Has Been Won
This hybrid literary work contains autofiction, letters, transcripts of zooms, quoted essays and articles, an homage to a Tobias Wolff story, a character watching a fictional film, and fiction passages.
An island in the remote Pacific Ocean is the setting where author Benjamin Obler retreats to examine issues of character judgement in the literary space, and in American politics and culture across decades.
As of Summer 2025, this work is at the beta reader stage and receiving a few rewrites.
"The voice is honest, self-inquisitive in a way that opens up philosophical space. It invites the reader into a mind turning itself over, not to impress, but to seek.
The tone balances irony and earnestness well. It pokes fun at the idea of inventing a new literary genre, but also exposes genuine longing underneath the whimsy."
—Donald Proffit, author of Scapegoat
This is a three-page synopsis of ALL HAS BEEN LOST, ALL HAS BEEN WON, complete with spoilers.
The tumultuous, fraught summer of 2023, on a remote Pacific Island, and in America's heartland, the Midwest.
The manuscript is 62,700 words and is a dead ringer for the Literary genre, the work being experimental and integrating various text types, and the narrative being by nature introspective, if not patently recursive.
"Preaching the End of the World" by Chris Cornell, a song from 1999, from whose lyrics the title is derived: "Cause all has been lost / and all has been won / And there's nothing left / for us to save."
The author is an advocate of #amsl, author manuscript list, as a replacement for the established methods of #mswl, manuscript wish list.
