In the naïveté of my youth, I believed that love reigned as the most powerful of human traits. “All you need is love,” as some one-hit-wonder band from the ’60s used to sing. But then I studied the Holocaust in high school and realized that the survival instinct trumped all. At various times since, these minor epiphanies were successively supplanted, as I considered the drive for food or sex or money to be the defining element of humanity. But now, slightly older and marginally wiser, I see the error of my ways. If there is one characteristic that exemplifies humankind, it’s our innate and infinite capacity for self-delusion. And that, at its essence, is the topic explored in my fictional memoir, Sweet Holy Motherfucking Everloving Delusional Bastard.