Dear Me! Or the History of the End of the World as We Knew It, Told as I See It, or More Accurately, Saw It by Daniel R. Olafson

Danny Olaf is alone at "the end of mankind on this planet." The time is not too far in the (your) future and Danny is the last man on earth. Everyone else is simply gone-or not-so-simply. Arthur Mencken-no relation-threw like a girl. It's complicated. But Danny is here to tell us-whether we are here to read it or not-what the fuck happened?! Just so you know. Dear Me! is the urgent, cautionary tale (told far too late to do any good) of how one Daniel Olfason (aka Danny Olaf) became the last man on earth by not picking Arthur for intramural softball (see: aforementioned debility), thereby inspiring Arthur to vow at that very moment: to kill every man, woman and child on earth-except Danny. Just to get even. As narrator, Danny is at turns reliable and unreliable, depending on your (or his) point of view at the moment. Chapter sequences are broken up with "actual fictional" entries in Danny's (actual fictional) journal to give much-needed narcissistic irrelevance to the already self-involved Americanized proceedings. Danny leaves no sundry stone unturned, no horrifying embarrassment unconfessed, and no, well, anything un-whatever'd. Just to be clear. While Danny plows through his life story as an outspoken atheist's son and a wandering woman's best boyfriend, hanging out with a band of substance- and belief-challenged friends in "our solipsistic, socially-retarded society," Arthur is planning-and worse, cracking-his Plan (For the Total Extermination of Everyone but Danny Olaf). Just because. The tone of the novel is pitch-black at times, told in fits and spurts of comic pain and loathing, with little or no regard for politically correct political correctness. Instead, Dan prefers truth!-even if he has to lie to tell it. In this way, Danny Olaf is Everyman. Until The End, when he is Only Man, and everything is, or has become, relatively speaking: Just.