As Good as Dead: A Cautionary Tale

As Good As Dead is a cautionary tale about an unknown writer "living in the bowels of anonymity" who suddenly hits it big with a novel-turned-movie deal. On his quick trip to fame, Vic stops along the way to comment on celebrity, marketing machines, the notion of banging out an overnight success on one's typewriter, and the act of becoming a legend. Wherever big bucks are involved, there will be a call to compromise or a pact with the devil: one pill makes you smaller, one pill makes you tall. Vic has his initial fifteen minutes (or seconds) of rubbing shoulders with the stars as he completes a cross-border tour from Hollywood, to Oprah, to a lavish party at the Playboy Mansion--before he takes the inevitable fall down the rabbit hole and is forced to decide between his integrity and belief systems, and his newfound fortune and fame. At its most basic, the novel is about language: all meaningful attempts to communicate end in failure and/or comic tragedy due to the limits of language. The novel is also written as a roman à clef in good humour--many of the characters are recognizable within the Toronto writing community. Rogal couples his dramatic wit with an accelerated steam-of-consciousness style in his fifteenth book and third novel.