Every Tuesday, get to know a bit about the stories behind the books you love, and discover your next favourite novel.

Zilla: If you’ve followed the tumultuous writing projects of us at Night Beats, you’ll know we have a soft spot for anarchists and submersibles that overwhelms all of our good sense. Ben Zalkind’s novel Honeydew might not be entirely sensible, but it is a delight, so here’s Ben to tell us about it.

Ben: Honeydew follows a quartet of second-rate saboteurs that runs afoul of a mega-corporation and its celebrity CEO. It’s got everything: a billionaire tech bro who plans to pilot a submersible drill to Earth’s mantle, a criminal kingpin who bankrolls an anarchist collective, a Swiss family doctor moonlighting as a spook, and even a direct action splinter cell composed entirely of elderly activists. One of my blurbers, the novelist Ryan Chapman, described it as “a Monkey Wrench Gang for the frenzied, techno-dystopian now.”

Zilla: What inspired you to write this madcap book?

Ben: Honeydew was a sort of outlet for my (many) preoccupations: tech oligarchy, surveillance capitalism, the clarifying power of humour, and why, to paraphrase the great cultural critic, Thomas Frank, Johnny still can’t dissent. The spark for the story itself was an illuminating Evan Calder Williams essay in The New Inquiry that traces the history of sabotage and highlights the early-20th-Century Industrial Workers of the World organizer and early feminist radical badass, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. She coined the term “fine thread of deviation” to distinguish capitalist subterfuge (e.g., planned obsolescence) and worker sabotage. The former is “good for business” and the latter is a crime. This led to an encounter with the recently declassified OSS (now CIA) Simple Sabotage Field Manual and the journalist Brian Merchant’s fantastic Blood in the Machine, which sets the story straight about the unfairly maligned Luddites, who were among the earliest resisters of automation. To my surprise, the narrative that emerged from this hodgepodge of research was a farce, equal parts A Confederacy of Dunces and The Monkey Wrench Gang, about a quartet of feckless wannabe saboteurs who have the right idea but can’t quite follow through.

Zilla: You’ve named plenty of nonfiction influences on your philosophy and writing. Who are your fictional favs?

Ben: It’s so hard to choose just one. Let’s go with Steerpike from Mervyn Peake’s extraordinary Gormenghast Trilogy. I don’t think a more developed, sympathetic antagonist has ever been written. Peake’s dense, descriptive prose is unlike anything else I’ve read, and his characters are so richly detailed that they seem to be drawn on the page (Peake was equally famous for his art, some of which accompanies certain editions of his books).  Through the course of the story, we watch Steerpike transform from an oppressed kitchen wretch in a sprawling castle to a Machiavellian mastermind bristling with resentment. And what’s most stunning is that we can trace the formation of his consciousness. We know why he does what he does. We might not agree, but we can’t help but understand. Truly a masterclass in characterization. 

Zilla: So do you write character-driven books? Or plot driven?

Ben: I would describe Honeydew as a plot-driven novel with an ensemble cast of characters, perhaps a bit like one of Terry Pratchett’s Vimes books.

Zilla: Now that Honeydew is out, what’s next?

Ben: It’s a sort of follow-up to Honeydew, but not quite a sequel. I don’t want to say too much, but we will see much more of Mo Honeydew, whose story will be one strand of a three-part braided narrative that will expose new cracks and crevices in Bonneville City, where a very large infrastructure project looms darkly. 

Zilla: Thanks for sharing your story and your process. We’re looking forward to reading! Where can the Night Beats community find you and your book?
Ben: You can get the book at the press’ website. You can find me on my website, on Substack, Instagram as @benzalkind, on Facebook as Ben Zalkind – Author, and on Bluesky as benzalkind.bsky.social.