"I saw the word Solipsist while reading the dictionary in 1993. I was living
in NYC at the time and the word defined how the city made me feel. I worked on this book in several cities all over the world until 1996. The writing is obsessive and claustrophobic. To be solipsistic is to totally realize the ego and the nightmare of utter self-possession. I went for it and it swallowed me whole."
Don't read this book, unless you want prose that is aggressive, cathartic, brutally honest, and exposes life for what it is. If you are an optimistic, happy, positive person who believes that most things work usually work out for the best in the end, I hope that your existence is one frought with joy, and you can go on reading Rhonda Byrne and Joyce Meyer self-help texts before staying up and watching the usual popular sitcoms.
However, for the rest of us who are actually awake and have eyes open to the way things truly are, this novel is a Bible. 'Candid' is a great word to describe Solipsist, but more than that, it is a document of pure authenticity, in the sense that it details reality with enough negativity to make even the most pessimistic look like jovial individuals. More than that, it is a book packed with enlightenment. Rollins is a machine full of human feeling, and he's in tune to what the world is really like, how horribly unfair, unpredictable, and atrocious it can be, how unusual and depressing late night insomniac despair can get. If you've ever felt like introspective suffering is an unavoidable, natural part of life, especially to thinkers, you're in for one of the best treats you'll ever come across in overlooked literature. This is just as good as Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre, and Notes From the Underground by Dostoyevsky, equal to Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar, and infinitely better than The Stranger by Albert Camus. If existentialism and inwardly produced angst is what you're searching for, look no further. Henry Rollins has delivered a book here that even he recognizes as his best; it shall make life a little easier for you by giving you something to relate to, if you've ever had the sense that the world isn't what you want it to be. Do I recommend this book? Of course. I also consider it mandatory for anyone that has ever been humiliated, agitated, or down on themselves. Check it out, if you want a taste of the way the world is.
However, if you're comfortable in a little bubble of blind optimism, stay as far away as possible.
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