The Filthy Profound: Finding Meaning in the Gutter

Some of the most honest art hides under a veneer of vulgarity. Whether it’s drunken rants, dick jokes, or blasphemous punchlines, there’s a long tradition of creators using the filthy as camouflage for something far more profound. It’s a calculated risk: if you’re too crude, people dismiss you; if you’re too clean, you risk missing life’s mess entirely.

My work lives squarely in this uneasy middle ground. It’s not transgressive in the sense of literature that seeks to tear down all moral fences, but it absolutely plays in the mud. I like that contradiction. Because sometimes, the best way to get to the heart of grief, masculinity, love, or the small humiliations that make us human is to walk straight through the gutter — laughing as you go.

From frank to transgressive: mapping the terrain

There’s a continuum here, from the bluntly honest to the radically transgressive, and it helps to look at who’s standing where. Just to be clear: I’m talking about influences and signposts, not peers.

Take Charles Bukowski. He’s often filed under “dirty old man literature,” full of whoring, drinking, and bodily fluids. But it’s not transgressive in the shock-for-shock’s-sake sense. Bukowski is fundamentally frank. He’s not trying to be funny or outrageous to provoke you — he’s just telling it exactly as it was for him, with no euphemisms, no pretense. If it’s grotesque, it’s because life often is.

Then there’s Kevin Smith. In films like Clerks, Chasing Amy, and Dogma, he piles on raunch, pop-culture riffs, and dick jokes. But you can tell he’s chasing something deeper: romantic longing, spiritual confusion, the ache for loyalty and meaning. Smith wants you to laugh, but also to care. His brand of the filthy profound is almost sentimental. The jokes clear space for conversations about God or heartbreak that might otherwise feel too earnest.

Garth Ennis, especially in Preacher, pushes it further. His work is gleefully blasphemous, stuffed with absurd gore and outrageous sexual humor. But under all that chaos is a serious theological interrogation — about sin, redemption, and whether God deserves our faith. Ennis makes you laugh in horror, then doubles back to hit you with moral or existential weight. It’s not that he’s hiding profundity behind filth; he’s mixing them together into a slurry that’s hard to separate.

Beyond that line is someone like Chuck Palahniuk, or shows like The Boys, where grotesque, taboo-shattering content becomes an end in itself. They play at the extremes of transgressive fiction — challenging every norm, often with an undercurrent of nihilism. They’re brilliant at times, but the pleasure there is in destruction, in seeing what’s left when social and moral rules are burned to ash.

Where does my work fall?

This is why I’d call my books — The Wake of Expectations and A Pleasant Fiction — part of the filthy profound, but not transgressive. They’re closer to Bukowski, Smith, and Ennis, but each in different ways.

Like Bukowski, I’m interested in showing people as they really are: confused, flawed, horny, guilty, sometimes pathetic. Calvin McShane, the center of my novels, is an over-educated, artistic kid with a dirty sense of humor. He’s smart enough to quote Joyce, but he also can’t stop telling stories about puking on his own shoes. The difference (aside from the vast gulf of artistic brilliance that sets Bukowski apart from most) is, Bukowski’s work often feels blue-collar, stripped of introspection beyond survival. Calvin is self-analytical, almost to a fault. Bukowski might sneer at how many pages I spend inside Calvin’s head.

Kevin Smith is probably the closest match in tone. Calvin and his friends tease, riff, exaggerate, say wildly inappropriate things — precisely because humor is how they process the stuff they’re actually afraid to talk about. Like Smith’s best scripts, my books use filthy banter as a way to slip in truths about love, loneliness, and whether it’s possible to really know another person. There’s a Jersey energy to it, even if my characters grew up in Connecticut.

With Garth Ennis, the kinship is more about philosophy. Preacher disguises itself as shock-and-awe blasphemy, but it’s deeply preoccupied with faith, friendship, betrayal, and what kind of God could justify so much suffering. Likewise, my novels bury questions about God, grief, moral duty, and whether love redeems anything inside stories that are often raucous and inappropriate. The humor isn’t there to obscure the meaning — it’s there because that’s how people like Calvin survive.

The difference is that I don’t go as far as Ennis in making the grotesque the canvas itself. My work is more intimate. The outrageous moments are there, but they’re always anchored in a recognizable, often painfully ordinary emotional reality.

Why not call it transgressive?

Because it’s simply not. I’m not out to violate taboos just to prove they’re fragile. I’m not dismantling social or moral structures for fun or catharsis. Calvin doesn’t represent some rebellion against propriety — he’s just trying to figure out how to live with disappointment, desire, grief, and guilt. If the jokes sometimes get filthy, that’s because real life does too. If he makes fun of God, it’s not to burn the church down, but to process why God didn’t show up when his family needed Him.

Why bother with the filth at all?

Because the filth is honest. People joke about sex and shit and blaspheme precisely because those are the places we feel most vulnerable. To make it funny is to admit it’s real. And once you admit that, you can start talking about the big things: the way your heart broke at 19 and never quite healed right, the question of whether love is enough to keep someone around, or what you’re supposed to do with a God who stays silent through all your worst moments.

Humor is also a dare. It says: will you dismiss this because it’s crass, or will you stick around and realize it’s dead serious underneath?

Smith dared you with comic book debates and dick jokes. Ennis dared you with a vampire sidekick and God literally quitting His throne. Bukowski dared you by being too drunk to filter himself. I’m daring you with Calvin — a character who masks his heartbreak and guilt in filthy jokes, hoping you’ll see what he’s really afraid to admit.

The dirty joke is the door. The philosophy is waiting inside.

So if you finish my books and think, “Huh. That was fun, but also unexpectedly devastating,” then good. That’s the filthy profound. It’s why I wrote it that way. And why I’ll probably keep doing it — because for some of us, that’s the only honest way to tell the truth.

And yes, I keep mentioning Bukowski, Smith, Ennis — and even in passing, Palahniuk, Moore, Morrison, Tarantino — not because I think I’m in their league. But because I’m a fan. They’re influences. They gave me a vocabulary for mixing the ridiculous with the raw. They made it okay to be obscene and sincere on the same page.

I make these comparisons because that’s the tradition I’m writing into, and if the shoe fits… maybe it’s worth trying on. Not to claim it outright — but to see if it takes me anywhere honest. And hopefully, to take you there too.

Javier

© 2025 Chapelle Dorée Publishing, LLC. All rights reserved. This content may not be reproduced, distributed, or modified without permission.