A kaleidoscopic blend of personal essays and cultural criticism that explores the profound and occasionally horrific truths of what it means to be traumatized.
When a stranger shoots his dad on a Costa Rican pier, Peter Counter hauls his blood-drenched father to safety. Returning home, Counter discovers that his sense of time and memory is shattered, and in its place is a budding new mental illness: post-traumatic stress disorder.
Counter begins to see violence everywhere. From the music of Cat Stevens to Jeb Bush’s Twitter feed. Walter Benjamin to Johnny Carson. Taskmaster. Video games. ASMR videos on YouTube. The world is steeped in gore. Again and again, Counter finds himself reliving his father’s shooting as his trauma is fragmented, recast, and distorted on a compulsive mental tilt-a-whirl.
Formally inventive and incisively smart, How to Restore a Timeline revels in a fragile human condition battered by real conflict and hyper-curated media portrayals of death. Channeling Jordan Peele, George Orwell, and Phoebe Bridgers, these essays look us dead in the eye and ask: What kind of life can we piece together amid all the carnage?
Praise for How to Restore a Timeline:
“No one thinks, unpacks, illumines, and reckons with horror, both personal and pop-cultural, quite the way Peter Counter does. How to Restore a Timeline is a brilliant, humorous, heartbreaking examination of how certain events break our lives apart, and what we do with the pieces.” —John Hodgman, bestselling author of Vacationland: True Stories From Painful Beaches and Medallion Status: True Stories From Secret Rooms
“Once I started Peter Counter’s How to Restore a Timeline I couldn’t put it down. There is such beauty, intelligence, and deftness that infuses not only each essay in this incredible book, but each sentence, each word. Counter takes us by the hand and leads us through his own trauma-disrupted timeline, and in so doing, gives us the maps and schematics by which we can approach—and maybe even restore—our own. This is a book to hold close in difficult moments—and to return to when those difficult monets come crashing unexpectedly back.” —Alicia Elliott, author of A Mind Spread Out on the Ground
“In exploring his own personal traumas, Peter Counter’s incisive writing leaves behind an exit wound of its own. Every essay is a piece of pop culture shrapnel that fractures in the reader’s mind. You will heal, but you’ll carry the scars of this profound collection forever.” —Clay McLeod Chapman, author of Ghost Eaters
“Beautifully written, genuinely moving, and totally inventive. Intelligent and unflinching. A haunting rumination on trauma, memory, survival, media, and violence. Essential reading.” —Rachel Harrison, bestselling author of Cackle and Such Sharp Teeth
“Suffused with warmth and humour yet unsparing in its honesty, Peter Counter’s genre-defying new work challenges us to explore the unturned pages and unshared stories in our own lives and consider how we could take power over them and change them for the better.” —David Demchuk, author of The Bone Mother and RED X
“Peter Counter is our guide through the labyrinth, the string he provides anchoring each tailored diversion into pop culture. Hold tight to that thread as these essays converge, revealing a book built to house our collective hauntings, its alcoves overflowing with insight into the visceral demands of memory.” —Andrew F. Sullivan, author of The Marigold and The Handyman Method
“Exhilarating. A work of intellectually rigorous cultural criticism that reads like a thriller. I was hooked from the very first page.” —Melissa Maerz, author of Alright, Alright, Alright: The Oral History of Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused
“The way Peter Counter writes about trauma is an extraordinary thing. He explores violence and its consequences, the compulsive revisions and relivings and ripple effects, with a merciless, loving specificity. In a book so gore-soaked and anguished, Counter manages something rare: How to Restore a Timeline is as kind as it is brutal. This book’s hands are bloody, but they are holding yours.” —Natalie Zina Walschots, author of Hench
A collection of 29 essays on horror, Be Scared of Everything is entertaining and accessible, combining pop culture criticism and narrative memoir to find the value of human fear, frailty, and insignificance.
“Peter Counter’s Be Scared of Everything is a heady mix of memoir and critical essays. Discerning, unafraid to examine larger questions without easy answers, the collection is also warm and entertaining. The link between the essays and personal reflections on horror is empathy, which is why so many of us continue to be drawn to the genre.”—Paul Tremblay, author of A Head Full of Ghosts and The Cabin at the End of the World
“Be Scared of Everything is a command directed at everyone: punks, normies, horror film fans, UFO abductees, telemarketers, pet necromancers, you, no one will leave this book in their current form who permits the devious, curious, always-illuminating Peter Counter over their mental threshold.”—Meredith Graves
“Peter Counter’s writing on horror is thoughtful, lively, and strangely touching. From classic movie monsters, to personal demons, to a genuinely surprising (and funny) analysis of Frasier, Be Scared of Everything faces horror’s thrills, problems and paradoxes, with shades of Noel Carroll, Eugene Thacker, and Stephen King circa Danse Macabre.”—John Semley, author of Hater: On the Virtues of Utter Disagreeability
A personal essay anthology, edited by Chrissy Stroop and Lauren O’Neal, that collects the stories of 21 Christian apostates. My own piece, “St. Tornado-Kick”, explores my experience with Catholic school, angels, karate, and post traumatic stress disorder.
"...a profound, well-written collection that will appeal not just to 'exvangelicals' and other critics of the religious right, but also introspective fundamentalists who seek explanations for their dwindling numbers. An incendiary but profoundly moving deconstruction of conservative Christianity." —Kirkus Reviews
"This collection serves as an important public testimonial of those who have walked away from religion, and will surely inspire others to tell their stories." —Publishers Weekly