The Dice Man by Luke Rhinehart

Traditional autobiographies wish to help you understand how the adult was "formed." I suppose most human beings, like clay chamber pots, are "formed" - and are used accordingly. But I? I am born anew at each green fall of the die, and by die-ing, I eliminate my since. The past - paste, pus, piss - is all only illusory events created by a stone mask to justify an illusory stagnant present. Living flows, and the only possible justification of an autobiography is that it happened by chance to be written - like this one. Someday a higher creature will write the almost perfect and honest autobiography: "I live."

Sophomore year in college I bought a really idiotic book called something along the lines of, America's Best Cult Fiction. What can I say? I wanted (okay, fine - want) to be a cool kid, and that meant (means) reading more obscure - but good - books than anyone else. So I read a book to tell me what books to read to be cool. (See that awesome logic there?) Ultimately, being the poor person I was (am), I could only afford to buy one real book after the purchase. So, after carefully studying my options, I bought The Dice Man by Luke Rhinehart (which is a pen name - henceforth when I'm speaking about the author, I'll refer to him by his real name, George Cockcroft (yes, that is a ridiculous surname) to avoid confusion). I then ignored it for three years. I do that a lot, I know.

Two months ago I hauled it back with me to New York from California, and I finally got around to starting it last week. And couldn't stop. Which, for the first time in my history as a reader, actually worried me a bit. There was something freakishly seductive about the book and the lifestyle it was fictionalizing, something oddly compelling about abandoning the construction of self for a life lived purely based on the whims of chance.

The premises of the book is thus: What if you left every decision up to the roll of a die?