In the Throes explores the awakening of intelligence and the coming into awareness of an evolutionary mishap on a forbidding apocalyptic planet.The story follows eponymic Gruff, the first linguistic/metaphysical awakener of his species, as he navigates identity, mentation, and ontology in relation to the Gruff's natural prey: humankind.Combining the writings of Freud and the spiritual truths of Krishnamurti, author Mathias B. Freese depicts the Gruff as an evolutio...

Having once been a psychotherapist who's never hesitated to turn the therapeutical gun barrel toward himself, Mathias B. Freese ramps up his radical reflexivity in this latest work, from confessional first-person narration to third-person "stories" starring "characters" named Matt. (This genre could be called meta-Matt.) "I write to know perhaps something about who I am," Freese writes. "I write to arrive at some awareness, however dim, about self or other, for when I have that fleeting mo...