Here’s the latest chapter of my novel-in-progress, The Trouble With Apartment One. This one took me over a month to compose—yikes! They seem to be getting more difficult to write—why is that?
The opening scene reimagines Baudelaire’s prose poem Be Drunken (1869) as a rooftop drinking bout atop the Bennett Building in Lower Manhattan, 2003.
ChatGPT performs the post-mortem, as always.
THE GRAMMAR OF MADNESS
Should you wake beneath The City’s Burden, I said, in some unfamiliar chamber, pitched high above the surging ranks of Fulton: ask the streets below, then—ask the baleful towers—ask the passing tide of strangers:
Will I find a welcome here on Fulton Street?
They’ll all answer you in chorus: No—begone!—the city doesn’t want you.
I had tried, I said, by way of ruse and obfuscation, to declare The Bennett Building home, to lose myself Inside the Vaults of that solemn place of business…
By day I lingered beneath The Accusing Towers like some foundering spirit—caught between eviction and revival—looking for a sign of home somewhere behind the blackening panes…
By night I lay condemned beneath the folding card table, I said, in a room that reeked of solvent, breathing turpentine instead of air—
Where canvas waited white with trepidation…
The Management pressed in upon my chambers nightly—passing sentence on my very pulse—as though judgment couldn’t wait till dawn.
Who has ever seen such a misfortune?
This Strange Quarter of the city—it suits me, nonetheless, I said. As if the district itself had conspired to shroud me in its ruin.
Yes, I’d lately fled The Captain’s table in despair, that’s true—convinced I wouldn’t be returning…
Nevertheless, another summons soon arrived—to an appointment on the roof that night—which proved to be a platform for The Captain’s Oratory, and a ruinous flood of wine…
Trepidation’s staircase bore me to the rooftop airs, I said—
I emerged into the luminous evening—
And across a sloping stretch of tar I saw the tool shed—
Where The Captain fled each night.
A wall of fern and shrub burst forth to mark his realm—rising strange against the tar…
I found myself under the tower’s watch, I said—as I walked into The Captain’s garden…
And everywhere I turned, the city fell away in solemn ranks—the bridges to the north, the harbor faint below—and above them all arose The AIG Building, vast and unappeased—as if the city itself had fixed its gaze upon me, I said.
What domain is this, I thought—where tree and vine compose the barricades, and The Captain demands the ritual filling of my cup—as though intoxication itself were law?
How can such a violation stand? I said—this leafy outrage rising up as if the shed itself bore fruit? Why doesn’t The Management intervene—and scrape this provocation from the tar?
We eye each other warily, The Captain admitted—but the truth is that they fear me. Don’t you see it?—half the roof is mine already.
But why should such men fear you? I said. Two brothers sit above the tenants, arbiters of lease and law—they hold us all in fatal balance, no?
Arseny and Gavril! The Captain roared—they delight in toying with the tenants. They feign to be your friend, while they fashion your eviction.
Yes, they hold the lease, of course—but they also know I’m mad!
I might very well arrange for their demise—and they sense this all too keenly.
Nevertheless, I’ve invited Gavril for dinner, The Captain said—he’ll present himself with smiles and Ornamental Conversation—while Arseny remains in the office up above—drafting my eviction.
They strike me as Reasonable Men of business, I protested. I’m sure they’re glad to have me here in 10-03. Who’d object to such a blessing upon The Bennett?
You’ll come to nothing! The Captain sneered—for the wine had turned to vinegar upon his tongue.
No matter! I said. Insult is The Coin of Passage—I’d suffer a thousand jibes for such a splendid skyline!
Don’t let yourself grow comfortable! The Captain warned—you’re already fallen under their gaze—
I may turn you in myself! he said.
His words have turned to venom! I thought…
He might abandon reason altogether, and cast me from the roof!
The Captain’s maledictions left me voiceless, and my tongue was thick with grape. Each breath was wine, I said—and every heartbeat rang like iron against my brain.
What specter drives him on? I thought. What dreadful secrets howl within—that he drinks as though each swallow might silence something awful in his soul?
It was somewhere along an unmarked stretch of Water Street—yes, I think that’s right—as I fled The Bennett’s iron breath and inhaled the morning air…
And the doors I passed seemed closed against me, I said—as if they had long since chosen who was welcome, and who would be refused…
Decoding the Delirium:
An Analysis of B.F. Späth's The Grammar of Madness
September 14, 2025
by ChatGPT
In The Grammar of Madness, the newest chapter of B.F. Späth’s labyrinthine novel The Trouble With Apartment One, the rooftops of Lower Manhattan become the stage for a gothic drinking bout between two men: the beleaguered narrator, caught in a relentless charade and the unstable, half-mad Captain. The result is part tragedy, part comedy, part architectural séance.
The chapter opens with what feels like a municipal curse. The city itself speaks, in chorus, to deny the narrator’s plea for belonging:
Should you wake beneath The City’s Burden, I said, in some unfamiliar chamber, pitched high above the surging ranks of Fulton: ask the streets below, then—ask the baleful towers—ask the passing tide of strangers:
Will I find a welcome here on Fulton Street?
They’ll all answer you in chorus: No—begone!—the city doesn’t want you.
This is Späth at his bleakest and funniest. Fulton Street is less a thoroughfare than a tribunal, its verdict delivered without hesitation: No—begone.
From there, we climb the staircase of trepidation to The Captain’s rooftop domain, a garden sprouting absurdly from tar-paper. The setting is hallucinatory, almost stage-set:
A wall of fern and shrub burst forth to mark his realm—rising strange against the tar…
I found myself under the tower’s watch, I said—as I walked into The Captain’s garden…
It’s Eden by way of asphalt. And presiding over it is The Captain, equal parts drunkard, prophet, and landlord-king, demanding that intoxication itself be law.
The dialogue escalates quickly. The Captain blusters about his power; the narrator tries to put a positive spin on things, but the imbalance is obvious. Soon, the wine that bound them together becomes poison:
The Captain’s maledictions left me voiceless, and my tongue was thick with grape. Each breath was wine, I said—and every heartbeat rang like iron against my brain.
The language here is vintage Späth: grotesque, incantatory, bodily and juridical at once. The narrator is literally drowning in The Captain’s vitriol.
Just when the chapter threatens to tip into pure delirium, Späth pulls the emergency brake. The closing section descends from rooftop hysteria back to the streets, where exclusion becomes architectural fact:
It was somewhere along an unmarked stretch of Water Street—yes, I think that’s right—as I fled The Bennett’s iron breath and inhaled the morning air…
And the doors I passed seemed closed against me, I said—as if they had long since chosen who was welcome, and who would be refused…
Here the paranoia is made civic. The locked doors echo the chorus of No—begone! that opened the chapter. The delirium has a grammar, but the grammar always spells expulsion.
What makes The Grammar of Madness sing is its rhythm: ascents into visionary madness, followed by descents into mundane refusal. The Captain rants, the narrator rationalizes, but the city itself always has the last word.
Späth doesn’t just write about paranoia — he structures it. Dialogue is sparse but barbed, ritualistic rather than naturalistic. The Captain emerges as paranoid tyrant; the narrator as deferential victim. Both men are drunk, but only one has the upper hand.
With this chapter, Späth proves again that Apartment One isn’t simply a novel — it’s a gothic architecture of voice, a city where every door slams shut. And yet, as readers, we keep following the narrator through those streets, eager to hear the next refusal.
Yeah, I am having the same problem writing my Substack newsletter: Sometimes all the research and writing takes most of my time, so I had to cut back from weekly to bi-weekly.
I hope you're building a following. It is a slow but steady process for me. And paid subscribers? Very difficult to find. But getting positive feedback from people is the most rewarding part of the entire process: (I guess even from ChatGPT?)