The Raft by Phil Rot (2025, Fun And Games)

Based And Rot-pilled

I’m lost at sea, don’t bother me (Thom Yorke was singing about The Raft by Phil Rot in this song, all the way back in the year 2000.)

I’ll get this out of the way nice and early: this is the funniest “micro-novel” (the author’s invention and strictly not a novella) that I have ever read.

It’s a slender tome, but the wisdom contained in it is multiple times larger-er than books ten times its length. And as Rot himself rightly declared on X recently, who wants to read a book past 30k words? We live in the age of the reduced attention span, don’t you know, it isn’t looming, it’s here!

Reviews should contain comparisons, is my belief, so sloppier-brained readers can cling to something tangible. Nothing exists in the desert, and no man needs nothing. So here we go, are you ready?

You don’t need to read H.P. Lovecraft anymore. There, I said it. Passage Press should remove their “Master(bator)works” Lovecraft edition and replace it with The Raft by Phil Rot. You no longer have to wade through the same nameless horror, unknown dread, fear-beyond-man’s-comprehension wordage of H.P. Lovecraft. You just need to read The Raft by Phil Rot.

Another thing this book reminded me of, which warmed my old cockles, was the band Arab On Radar. It has the same absurdist sensibilities that the band had, and also the long out-of-print book Pussy Pow Wow that their singer Mr. Pottymouth put out, which contained a scene where the protagonist sucks off a disabled war veteran in a wheelchair.

This is what reading The Raft feels like, this is a good thing BTW

What I mean when I compare it to Arab On Radar and retro grindcore such as Anal Cunt (this book at points feels like the literary equivalent of the cover art of the album I Like It When You Die) is that Phil Rot is not operating inside any traditional literary framework whatsoever.

The book does whatever the hell he wants it to do, it entirely defies convention and categorisation. Words are mashed together or altogether made up, descriptors are mostly based around prostitute comparisons, and the whole thing just exists on an entirely different plane.

Do not let those comparisons dissuade you, however. This is no “joke” or, dare I say, “meme” book. Rot’s writing talent is nothing short of astounding, and behind the vulgarity lies a deeper and more profound message concerning family and men.

I don’t want to elaborate on that, or the ending, too much, because ruining the end of this book would be a crime that deserves execution by the state.

I am a forty-one-year-old man who has fundamentally ruined his life and now finds himself deep in the urethra of Online Indie Lit. I have read hundreds of books in my miserable lifetime, and this is possibly the funniest book I have ever read.

Multiple times I had to stop reading to roll over in my (race car) bed and get all my laughter out. As much as I would like to share the absolute corkers that inspired such guffawing with you here, I don’t want to ruin a single word of the reading experience you are also going to have when you finally give up reading The Idiot by Fyodor Bore-voyesky and instead order The Raft by Phil Rot on Amazon right now.

If you have Prime, it’ll probably come the next day courtesy of an exotic van driver.

Here, I’ll make it even easier for you, pumpkin-head: Buy this book or go to Hell.

I was aware of Phil Rot’s game from his hilarious Substack, but I was not expecting the absolute ripper I just read in one sitting. I am going to read it again shortly and am also ordering copies for my stupid fucking friends for Christmas.

Absurd, hilarious, moving in the strangest ways imaginable, self-aware, modern yet somehow also fable-esque. It’s hard to believe such a book exists, two-thousand years could pass before you found a book like this in Barnes & Noble, but luckily you don’t have to wait that long because it came out in January this year, dummy.

Also if you don’t subscribe to his Substack below, you’re not going to be part of the fun. And people will call you “No Fun” when they find out, you don’t want that do you?

All hail Phil Rot.