1. College and university students who wear licensed, merchandised T-shirts bearing the image of Che Guevara.
2. Women over the age of 25 who think that being called a girl is a compliment.
3. People who post medical photos on Facebook, MySpace and other public sites without warning. I shouldn't have to encounter the contents of your colon or uterus without consent, people.
4. Anyone who can afford better beer but drinks Pabst Blue Ribbon because they think it's hilarious and ironic.
5. Textbook publishers who put out a new edition of their books every two years, even when nothing substantial has changed in the content, gouging students and hamstringing teachers.
6. The University of California again, some more.
7. Fickle Obamaniacs who fell in love with him based on nothing and then out of love over nothing.
8. Students who both ignore instructions and aren't skilled enough to accomplish simple tasks without detailed instructions to guide them.
9. Parents who live vicariously through their kids, whether it be by pushing their children to accomplish the things they've failed to do or putting up pictures of the kids on social networking sites to avoid having to show the world what they look like these days.
10. People who pronounce nuclear as nukular. After the entire Cold War, you still can't figure that one out? Then stop talking.
Saturday, September 5, 2009
Monday, August 31, 2009
Suck It: Brad Pitt
This one has been coming for a while. There are so many reasons this guy should suck it that it's actually quite overwhelming to try to narrow it down into a coherent rant about the incredible annoyance I feel every time I encounter his smug, aging-playboy face. But, having just seen Inglourious Basterds recently, his irritating countenance is fresh in my mind and it brings the need to vent. There's so much here, though, that I think it merits sub-categories of Suck. Onward to the hate!
1) the face: I don't actually see the allure of this guy. I've heard so many times how handsome, attractive and desirable he is to any number of people, but to me the guy looks squinty, leathery, and a little constipated. His eyes are too small and close together, his forehead wrinkles are eating his face, and sunscreen passed him by. I don't get it.
2) the overhyped body: Again, I get that there is a thing. I saw Fight Club. I did not, however, swoon over his gristle-under-Saran-Wrap physique in it, unlike many of the women and even more of the men I know. There's something very G.I. Joe about the guy's body; it just strikes me as possibly molded out of hard plastic and there's something so deeply, deeply gay about it as an object of desire. Maybe, again, that's just because most of those whom I hear expressing admiration and desire for his body are (allegedly) straight men.
3) the lazy acting and/or lack of talent: There are really just the two Brad Pitt expressions: there's the smug guy, who smirks his way through pictures like the Oceans series and Mr. and Mrs. Smith and then the twitchy guy, who inarticulately spazzes through flicks like 12 Monkeys and Snatch. Smug and grating to twitchy and one-note is not much of a range, in my book. Let's just say I hope Oscar keeps freezing him out until he learns a new color.
4) the overpayment: I read a Forbes article from 2008 suggesting he made up to $35 million dollars per picture, between salary and pieces of the back-end of his films. Seriously? And we're falling all over ourselves as a culture to praise the guy for making a $1 million donation? What's the big deal? If he makes only one picture per year, that's still less than 3% in charitable donation. Hell, I give more than that, and I make about $35,000 a year. Besides which, nobody whose primary acting traits are smugness and twitchiness should be making over $30 million dollars per picture. That's just a gross overvaluation of the appeal of said smug twitchiness. Or twitchy smugness, if you prefer.
5) the apparent lack of an individuated personality: For this observation, I'm really indebted to my good friend Miriam, who pointed out that he has no clear persona of his own and just adapts who and what he is to suit whomever he's currently sharing a bed with. When he dated Juliette Lewis, he was kinda funky and rock-oriented. Dating Gwyneth Paltrow, the woman without warmth, he seemed similarly icy and Aryan. With Jennifer Aniston, he was America's Sweetheart, playing the role of the sunny, blessed, and grateful. Now that he's with la Angelina, he's playing the part of reformed bad boy (when was that era, by the by? I don't remember him ever being a bad boy, unless making a couple of movies with George Clooney and buying a motorcycle counts. For the record, it doesn't.) turned humanitarian. In other words, once again, his persona seems to be a comfortably niche-marketed simulacra of hers. This is why he makes such a good icon, really--because there's little hint of a real person oozing out of his enlarged pores.
6) the inappropriately younger girlfriend: This is an ongoing pet peeve, and not just with this guy. He's not yet Michael Douglas bad. Even still, he bears watching on this front. I mean really; he was already married to a successful, beautiful and age-appropriate woman. Then, it would seem, the inevitable "oh-crap, I'm going to die one day. I will not always be this pretty and overly attended to by an adoring public" midlife crisis set in, and he heads off for someone more than a decade his junior. I'm with David on this one--you get one decade in either direction. That gives you a full generation in which to screw around. More than that is just sad and kind of greedy. But, if he sticks to people around his own age, he might have to encounter women who remember him when he was a Fabio-esque wannabe, and that might salt his game. GOOD.
7) the dismissal of the wife: And that brings me to the plight of Jennifer Aniston. I'll admit that I actually hated her character on Friends and have found her movies to date to be...fine. So, I wasn't exactly her hugest fan or anything. And for years, I drooled over the bounteous beauty of La Angelina like the rest of the breathing world. However, watching the ungracious and utterly transparent way in which Pitt dropped his wife for his co-star and made no bones about the fact that he was leaving her in part for not wanting to have babies on his timeline and to suit his ego needs flipped it for me. It's one thing to grow apart after years--and in Hollywood, those years can rarely be measured in decades. But, it's quite another to make a very public display of ending one's marriage specifically to hook up with a much younger brood mare. That's just tacky. Not to mention sad and cliche.
8) the skrillions of bastard children: I've seen approximately 4,000 articles on the guy, in part because my mother-in-law has decided to adopt Brangelina as her substitute son and daughter-in-law, since they're giving her skrillions of grandkids and David and I will not. Each of these articles written since 2006 talks about what a Family Man he is, and you can see the praise rays radiating off the page even without the capital lettering. However, none of these articles seem to mention that he is in fact a guy who left a stable marriage to shack up with a younger woman, multiply impregnate her, adopt orphan children with her, and then not cohere the family in a lasting legal way. Apparently, this isn't supposed to grate on anyone's nerves, because we're all so laid-back and California about it. That would be fine, sincerely, if it weren't so transparently hypocritical and full of shit. You don't get to play the Traditional Family Man card for sympathy (Jennifer wouldn't have BABIES, man. What's a guy to do?? Cue the violins.) and also be shacking up with your hot, twisted, blood-wearing, serial-costar-marrying, brother-Frenching mistress.
9) the dissing of the ex-wife: In one final turn of the screw on the whole Jen-Brad-Angie saga, recently he's started (allegedly) talking smack about Aniston. That's just tactless and stupid on a whole new level. Aniston gets bitching rights about you until you both die, schmuck. That's the price of being a womanizing ass. You do not get to complain about her saying that your mistress bragging about bagging you is "uncool." Those aren't even fighting words. Be glad you married the classy one and just stick it to the other one, Pitt, because if your ex-wife wanted to rip you a new one in public once an hour, on the hour, she'd have a ready-made audience of other middle aged women who were dumped by their unfaithful husbands. Be glad she's only calling your girlfriend's perpetual case of foot-in-mouth uncool and not painting a target on both your backs or bashing in the front of your house, in the style of Betty Broderick. Seriously.
10) the architectural get-over-yourself: Apparently, between cashing gazillion dollar paychecks and banging superstars, he enjoys looking at houses. In fact, he likes looking at houses so much that he made a bid to restore and preserve a Greene & Greene house in Pasadena(!) about ten years ago. This resulted in a book, and even more attention to the man. His efforts boil down to throwing a lot of money at it, taking some pictures, and then putting his name up on a plaque on the wall. He's not an architect, he's a very moneyed dilettante. He's somebody's rich, busybody Aunt Greta.
11) the rape of New Orleans: And that brings me to his other book, and the Ground Zero of my hate. Just a couple of weeks ago, a book called Architecture in Times of Need came out, pumping Pitt's whole Make It Right foundation and extolling the virtues of their "rebuilding" efforts for the Lower Ninth in New Orleans. The only problem with this is that I was in New Orleans in April, three and half years after Katrina, and Pitt's much-vaunted foundation had only managed to build about a half dozen very high-concept houses, only two of which were inhabited. And, based on the cars in front (both very high end and expensive), they were inhabited by yuppies, not by the previous inhabitants of the Lower Ninth, which has long been one of the poorest districts in the area. To give a little perspective: during the same time window, Habitat for Humanity had managed to build almost 1000 homes in the same area, nearly all of them inhabited, and without anyone in HfH needing to write a book about how awesome their plan was and how cool they are for thinking of it. We talked to some locals while we were there, and let's just say that he's not so universally beloved in New Orleans as the publicity machine surrounding him would suggest. What he seems to be is a guy with more money than sense, and more vague notions of how to heal the world than concrete plans of action for how to get it done. Rather than throw millions of dollars and endless copy at what a saint he is for helping to get built a half dozen impractically high end homes--and the gentrification of the Lower Ninth that these buildings help to further entrench--we'd be far better off sending that same money and press to Jimmy Carter's Nobel Peace Prize winning organization, which actually can and does make things happen, even when nobody from the press corps is looking.
I could probably rant about the guy for days, but I think I'll leave it here for now. I mean, he already gets plenty of attention. Now he's gotten a lifetime's worth from me. So, in that sense, I guess he's won. Like the terrorists.
1) the face: I don't actually see the allure of this guy. I've heard so many times how handsome, attractive and desirable he is to any number of people, but to me the guy looks squinty, leathery, and a little constipated. His eyes are too small and close together, his forehead wrinkles are eating his face, and sunscreen passed him by. I don't get it.
2) the overhyped body: Again, I get that there is a thing. I saw Fight Club. I did not, however, swoon over his gristle-under-Saran-Wrap physique in it, unlike many of the women and even more of the men I know. There's something very G.I. Joe about the guy's body; it just strikes me as possibly molded out of hard plastic and there's something so deeply, deeply gay about it as an object of desire. Maybe, again, that's just because most of those whom I hear expressing admiration and desire for his body are (allegedly) straight men.
3) the lazy acting and/or lack of talent: There are really just the two Brad Pitt expressions: there's the smug guy, who smirks his way through pictures like the Oceans series and Mr. and Mrs. Smith and then the twitchy guy, who inarticulately spazzes through flicks like 12 Monkeys and Snatch. Smug and grating to twitchy and one-note is not much of a range, in my book. Let's just say I hope Oscar keeps freezing him out until he learns a new color.
4) the overpayment: I read a Forbes article from 2008 suggesting he made up to $35 million dollars per picture, between salary and pieces of the back-end of his films. Seriously? And we're falling all over ourselves as a culture to praise the guy for making a $1 million donation? What's the big deal? If he makes only one picture per year, that's still less than 3% in charitable donation. Hell, I give more than that, and I make about $35,000 a year. Besides which, nobody whose primary acting traits are smugness and twitchiness should be making over $30 million dollars per picture. That's just a gross overvaluation of the appeal of said smug twitchiness. Or twitchy smugness, if you prefer.
5) the apparent lack of an individuated personality: For this observation, I'm really indebted to my good friend Miriam, who pointed out that he has no clear persona of his own and just adapts who and what he is to suit whomever he's currently sharing a bed with. When he dated Juliette Lewis, he was kinda funky and rock-oriented. Dating Gwyneth Paltrow, the woman without warmth, he seemed similarly icy and Aryan. With Jennifer Aniston, he was America's Sweetheart, playing the role of the sunny, blessed, and grateful. Now that he's with la Angelina, he's playing the part of reformed bad boy (when was that era, by the by? I don't remember him ever being a bad boy, unless making a couple of movies with George Clooney and buying a motorcycle counts. For the record, it doesn't.) turned humanitarian. In other words, once again, his persona seems to be a comfortably niche-marketed simulacra of hers. This is why he makes such a good icon, really--because there's little hint of a real person oozing out of his enlarged pores.
6) the inappropriately younger girlfriend: This is an ongoing pet peeve, and not just with this guy. He's not yet Michael Douglas bad. Even still, he bears watching on this front. I mean really; he was already married to a successful, beautiful and age-appropriate woman. Then, it would seem, the inevitable "oh-crap, I'm going to die one day. I will not always be this pretty and overly attended to by an adoring public" midlife crisis set in, and he heads off for someone more than a decade his junior. I'm with David on this one--you get one decade in either direction. That gives you a full generation in which to screw around. More than that is just sad and kind of greedy. But, if he sticks to people around his own age, he might have to encounter women who remember him when he was a Fabio-esque wannabe, and that might salt his game. GOOD.
7) the dismissal of the wife: And that brings me to the plight of Jennifer Aniston. I'll admit that I actually hated her character on Friends and have found her movies to date to be...fine. So, I wasn't exactly her hugest fan or anything. And for years, I drooled over the bounteous beauty of La Angelina like the rest of the breathing world. However, watching the ungracious and utterly transparent way in which Pitt dropped his wife for his co-star and made no bones about the fact that he was leaving her in part for not wanting to have babies on his timeline and to suit his ego needs flipped it for me. It's one thing to grow apart after years--and in Hollywood, those years can rarely be measured in decades. But, it's quite another to make a very public display of ending one's marriage specifically to hook up with a much younger brood mare. That's just tacky. Not to mention sad and cliche.
8) the skrillions of bastard children: I've seen approximately 4,000 articles on the guy, in part because my mother-in-law has decided to adopt Brangelina as her substitute son and daughter-in-law, since they're giving her skrillions of grandkids and David and I will not. Each of these articles written since 2006 talks about what a Family Man he is, and you can see the praise rays radiating off the page even without the capital lettering. However, none of these articles seem to mention that he is in fact a guy who left a stable marriage to shack up with a younger woman, multiply impregnate her, adopt orphan children with her, and then not cohere the family in a lasting legal way. Apparently, this isn't supposed to grate on anyone's nerves, because we're all so laid-back and California about it. That would be fine, sincerely, if it weren't so transparently hypocritical and full of shit. You don't get to play the Traditional Family Man card for sympathy (Jennifer wouldn't have BABIES, man. What's a guy to do?? Cue the violins.) and also be shacking up with your hot, twisted, blood-wearing, serial-costar-marrying, brother-Frenching mistress.
9) the dissing of the ex-wife: In one final turn of the screw on the whole Jen-Brad-Angie saga, recently he's started (allegedly) talking smack about Aniston. That's just tactless and stupid on a whole new level. Aniston gets bitching rights about you until you both die, schmuck. That's the price of being a womanizing ass. You do not get to complain about her saying that your mistress bragging about bagging you is "uncool." Those aren't even fighting words. Be glad you married the classy one and just stick it to the other one, Pitt, because if your ex-wife wanted to rip you a new one in public once an hour, on the hour, she'd have a ready-made audience of other middle aged women who were dumped by their unfaithful husbands. Be glad she's only calling your girlfriend's perpetual case of foot-in-mouth uncool and not painting a target on both your backs or bashing in the front of your house, in the style of Betty Broderick. Seriously.
10) the architectural get-over-yourself: Apparently, between cashing gazillion dollar paychecks and banging superstars, he enjoys looking at houses. In fact, he likes looking at houses so much that he made a bid to restore and preserve a Greene & Greene house in Pasadena(!) about ten years ago. This resulted in a book, and even more attention to the man. His efforts boil down to throwing a lot of money at it, taking some pictures, and then putting his name up on a plaque on the wall. He's not an architect, he's a very moneyed dilettante. He's somebody's rich, busybody Aunt Greta.
11) the rape of New Orleans: And that brings me to his other book, and the Ground Zero of my hate. Just a couple of weeks ago, a book called Architecture in Times of Need came out, pumping Pitt's whole Make It Right foundation and extolling the virtues of their "rebuilding" efforts for the Lower Ninth in New Orleans. The only problem with this is that I was in New Orleans in April, three and half years after Katrina, and Pitt's much-vaunted foundation had only managed to build about a half dozen very high-concept houses, only two of which were inhabited. And, based on the cars in front (both very high end and expensive), they were inhabited by yuppies, not by the previous inhabitants of the Lower Ninth, which has long been one of the poorest districts in the area. To give a little perspective: during the same time window, Habitat for Humanity had managed to build almost 1000 homes in the same area, nearly all of them inhabited, and without anyone in HfH needing to write a book about how awesome their plan was and how cool they are for thinking of it. We talked to some locals while we were there, and let's just say that he's not so universally beloved in New Orleans as the publicity machine surrounding him would suggest. What he seems to be is a guy with more money than sense, and more vague notions of how to heal the world than concrete plans of action for how to get it done. Rather than throw millions of dollars and endless copy at what a saint he is for helping to get built a half dozen impractically high end homes--and the gentrification of the Lower Ninth that these buildings help to further entrench--we'd be far better off sending that same money and press to Jimmy Carter's Nobel Peace Prize winning organization, which actually can and does make things happen, even when nobody from the press corps is looking.
I could probably rant about the guy for days, but I think I'll leave it here for now. I mean, he already gets plenty of attention. Now he's gotten a lifetime's worth from me. So, in that sense, I guess he's won. Like the terrorists.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Quick Suck: a Hit List
So, with various illnesses, start of new contract years, ongoing budget fiasco situations, etc., it's been difficult to find both time and motivation to really let loose with the hate. In the meantime, then, the time is ripe to give a quick (and, hopefully, frequently updated) list of people, places and things that should Suck It for various reasons. Some will be more obvious in the reasoning than others. Sometime when I feel like it--a time between now and never, to be sure--I'll come back and elaborate on those which merit explanation.
For now, today's ten that should SUCK IT:
1. Ron Jeremy
2. University of California
3. Yelapa, Mexico
4. Owners of cars displaying more than five bumper stickers
5. Stephen Spielberg
6. Google
7. John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods
8. Warren Jeffs--whack-job and FLDS cultist
9. Wikipedia
10. People who use "text" as a verb.
Updates as events merit.
For now, today's ten that should SUCK IT:
1. Ron Jeremy
2. University of California
3. Yelapa, Mexico
4. Owners of cars displaying more than five bumper stickers
5. Stephen Spielberg
6. Google
7. John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods
8. Warren Jeffs--whack-job and FLDS cultist
9. Wikipedia
10. People who use "text" as a verb.
Updates as events merit.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Playlist: Furies
(awesomely problem women)
Haunted by Poe
Northern Star by Hole
It's All Over But the Crying by Garbage
Not An Addict by K's Choice
Hold On to Me by Courtney Love
Somebody by Veruca Salt
Just Let the Sun by Skin
Cherry Bomb by The Runaways
Death of a Whore by Juliette Lewis and the Licks
I Like Fucking by Bikini Kill
Well You Wanna Know What? by Bratmobile
Crazy by Alanis Morissette
Dirty Deeds by Joan Jett
Mother Mother by Tracy Bonham
Crazy on You by Heart
Mommy Complex by Peaches
WEAK by Skunk Anansie
Haunted by Poe
Northern Star by Hole
It's All Over But the Crying by Garbage
Not An Addict by K's Choice
Hold On to Me by Courtney Love
Somebody by Veruca Salt
Just Let the Sun by Skin
Cherry Bomb by The Runaways
Death of a Whore by Juliette Lewis and the Licks
I Like Fucking by Bikini Kill
Well You Wanna Know What? by Bratmobile
Crazy by Alanis Morissette
Dirty Deeds by Joan Jett
Mother Mother by Tracy Bonham
Crazy on You by Heart
Mommy Complex by Peaches
WEAK by Skunk Anansie
Playlist: Summer Camp 2009
(seasonal hits)
Back Against the Wall by Cage the Elephant
I Don't Care by Apocalyptica featuring Adam Gontier
Notion by Kings of Leon
Gives You Hell by The All-American Rejects
Re-Education (Through Labor) by Rise Against
100 Little Curses by Street Sweeper Social Club
Feel Good Drag by Anberlin
Ain't No Rest for the Wicked by Cage the Elephant
Blame It by Jamie Foxx featuring T-Pain
LoveGame (Dave Aude Radio Edit) by Lady GaGa
I Gotta Feeling by Black Eyed Peas
Say Hey (I Love You) by Michael Franti & Spearhead
I Know You Want Me by Pitbull
Sugar by Flo Rida
1901 by Phoenix
New Divide by Linkin Park
You're Gonna Go Far, Kid by The Offspring
Know Your Enemy by Green Day
Savior by Rise Against
Black Heart Inertia by Incubus
She Loves Everybody by Chester French
Back Against the Wall by Cage the Elephant
I Don't Care by Apocalyptica featuring Adam Gontier
Notion by Kings of Leon
Gives You Hell by The All-American Rejects
Re-Education (Through Labor) by Rise Against
100 Little Curses by Street Sweeper Social Club
Feel Good Drag by Anberlin
Ain't No Rest for the Wicked by Cage the Elephant
Blame It by Jamie Foxx featuring T-Pain
LoveGame (Dave Aude Radio Edit) by Lady GaGa
I Gotta Feeling by Black Eyed Peas
Say Hey (I Love You) by Michael Franti & Spearhead
I Know You Want Me by Pitbull
Sugar by Flo Rida
1901 by Phoenix
New Divide by Linkin Park
You're Gonna Go Far, Kid by The Offspring
Know Your Enemy by Green Day
Savior by Rise Against
Black Heart Inertia by Incubus
She Loves Everybody by Chester French
Playlist: Spring Training 2009
(seasonal hits)
Love Hurts by Incubus
Dead and Gone by T.I. featuring Justin Timberlake
Second Chance by Shinedown
Wake it Up by E-40
Love Sex Magic by Ciara featuring Justin Timberlake
Just Dance by Lady GaGa
Swerve by Lil Boosie & Webbie
Single Ladies by Beyonce
Right Round by Flo Rida
Kids by MGMT
If U Seek Amy by Britney Spears
Poker Face by Lady GaGa
Lifeline by Papa Roach
Spaceman by The Killers
Sex on Fire by Kings of Leon
Panic Switch by Silversun Pickups
Undead by Hollywood Undead
Whoop that Trick by Al Kapone
Pop Champagne by Jim Jones & Rob Browz
Zero by Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Dead Memories by Slipknot
Indestructible by Disturbed
Magnificent by U2
Love Hurts by Incubus
Dead and Gone by T.I. featuring Justin Timberlake
Second Chance by Shinedown
Wake it Up by E-40
Love Sex Magic by Ciara featuring Justin Timberlake
Just Dance by Lady GaGa
Swerve by Lil Boosie & Webbie
Single Ladies by Beyonce
Right Round by Flo Rida
Kids by MGMT
If U Seek Amy by Britney Spears
Poker Face by Lady GaGa
Lifeline by Papa Roach
Spaceman by The Killers
Sex on Fire by Kings of Leon
Panic Switch by Silversun Pickups
Undead by Hollywood Undead
Whoop that Trick by Al Kapone
Pop Champagne by Jim Jones & Rob Browz
Zero by Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Dead Memories by Slipknot
Indestructible by Disturbed
Magnificent by U2
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Suck It: Reification Posing as Irony
Tonight I finished reading James Hynes' The Lecturer's Tale, and was reflecting on what a downhill experience reading it has been, how ultimately disappointing. And I should love this book. The critiques of literary criticism, queer theory, postmodernism, the politics and absurdities of academia, all of that ring very true. There are some lovely imbedded references to literature, primarily the hoary old chestnuts of the canon, with a few nods to the New Canon of Tokenistic Inclusion. It's self-aware and ironic and yet also strangely earnest. These are all things which pluck at my little heart strings and make me all gooey and willing to forgive an author a great many faults.
In short, I should be the perfect audience for this book.
And yet. When I started it, I was really enjoying it, reading a portion out loud to David on Friday, outlining characters and their similarities to people in UCSD's Literature department during my time there over lunch with Anthony on Saturday. At first, I was savoring a few chapters at a time, enjoying the many send-ups and call-outs of idiosyncrasies and hypocrisies I've witnessed in my own experience of academic life. Then, it slowed, and I started lagging to read it, almost dreading the next turn of the plot; by the end, finishing it became the subject of more morbid curiosity than genuine suspense. I'll give it a 3 out of 5 primarily because rarely does anyone so accurately send up a Lit department, and I've got my own axes to grind on that score.
It had so much to recommend it, so what went wrong? There are plenty of issues: the plot is a pastiche of a handful of very well known, canonical tales, for one. That's not inherently a problem, especially if you hold to the Campbellian view that there are only the few megamyths. But, if you're writing an insider's book, a send-up of the sense and sensibilities of a literature department, you should probably expect that some of your audience will not only get your references, but will in fact get there somewhat ahead of you. So, knowing that, shouldn't you do more than mug at the readership and have the characters engage in battles of literary quotation?
It becomes a hall of mirrors, a reinstitution of the "great works" as an aesthetic position, as self-serving political conservatism, and worst as just another lazy writing tactic. Case in point: throughout the text, Nelson's ongoing academic research projects comment upon the character's circumstances and parallels to canonical texts. This bugs because it doesn't go anywhere, it just points out some obvious readings of the text. I actually can really enjoy a novel that deconstructs while you read it; I have love for Gertrude Stein's very difficult The Making of Americans and Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves. But this one kept irritating me. Either Hynes doesn't trust the audience to "get" his reappropriation of Shakespeare et al and can think of no better way to impart the themes than to come out and state them or he's just so impressed by his own observational skills and knowledge of the western canon that he's got to tell the reader about it, effectively making it a puffing up of his academic chest, the blustering self-congratulation of the deeply insecure. If you're going to be snottily superior about your own erudition and cleverness, then you had better dazzle me, and this just doesn't get it done.
That's not the worst of its sins, though. The big issue for me comes as a reader, rather than a critic: the lead character is a douche due several metric tons of comeuppance. And while the author all but transparently tells the reader that he thinks of old Nelson as a charismatic Gatsby or a Hemingway broken-heart or some other (allegedly) lovable ass and that we should too, the fact that the author has to step forward to tell you that you should love the guy, accept his utter lack of redeeming qualities, and find him "charismatic" in the bargain should have been a hint to the author and editors that, as written, he's an alienating jerk to read about, and I for one don't root for him even once after about fifty pages in.
I can't think of anyone whose poor-little-mes interest me less, or ring more false. Nelson is the guy who's pissed off he's not going to make it into the history books personally for the exact reason that it's already full of guys exactly like him. He thinks he's really getting screwed because history's full of guys like him--mediocre white guys--who became rich, famous, and powerful, and yet he's grinding out a middle class life. That guy never sees that his life is easier, safer, and more comfortable than almost everyone else's in dozens of large and small ways not despite his unexceptionality but because of it. In this sense, Nelson is the spiritual brother of Tyler Durden, another middle class white man who thinks his own stultifying mediocrity is actually him being oppressed and victimized by outside agents. Like Durden, his solution is to impose his will on those Others. The imperial narrative, the will to power. Rinse, repeat. Yawn. The fact that Hynes (and Nelson) can point out that they know the critique of their positions doesn't, in fact, change their positions. It's like when a guy prefaces a flagrantly sexist story or opinion with "I love women," or "I consider myself a feminist, but" or my personal favorite, "let's be honest..." Your disclaimer and self-awareness do not excuse or redeem you. So, suck it.
I don't want to spoiler plot, so I won't get into specifics, but the whole mishmash falls apart under its own preciousness and self-congratulation by the third act. Like the main character, it can cite chapter and verse of literature and can ape the jargon of theory, but it comprehends not. It starts out an incisive if bitter satire and ends up a paean to the mediocre but entitled middle class white professional man who rages at the world which promised him a kingdom and then told him he had to earn his keep. In the final analysis: if you're a lit grad student, academic grunt, or disenchanted humanities major, give it a read at least through the first 100 pages for the gleeful calling-out of the b.s. run amok in literature departments. After that, it's your call.
In short, I should be the perfect audience for this book.
And yet. When I started it, I was really enjoying it, reading a portion out loud to David on Friday, outlining characters and their similarities to people in UCSD's Literature department during my time there over lunch with Anthony on Saturday. At first, I was savoring a few chapters at a time, enjoying the many send-ups and call-outs of idiosyncrasies and hypocrisies I've witnessed in my own experience of academic life. Then, it slowed, and I started lagging to read it, almost dreading the next turn of the plot; by the end, finishing it became the subject of more morbid curiosity than genuine suspense. I'll give it a 3 out of 5 primarily because rarely does anyone so accurately send up a Lit department, and I've got my own axes to grind on that score.
It had so much to recommend it, so what went wrong? There are plenty of issues: the plot is a pastiche of a handful of very well known, canonical tales, for one. That's not inherently a problem, especially if you hold to the Campbellian view that there are only the few megamyths. But, if you're writing an insider's book, a send-up of the sense and sensibilities of a literature department, you should probably expect that some of your audience will not only get your references, but will in fact get there somewhat ahead of you. So, knowing that, shouldn't you do more than mug at the readership and have the characters engage in battles of literary quotation?
It becomes a hall of mirrors, a reinstitution of the "great works" as an aesthetic position, as self-serving political conservatism, and worst as just another lazy writing tactic. Case in point: throughout the text, Nelson's ongoing academic research projects comment upon the character's circumstances and parallels to canonical texts. This bugs because it doesn't go anywhere, it just points out some obvious readings of the text. I actually can really enjoy a novel that deconstructs while you read it; I have love for Gertrude Stein's very difficult The Making of Americans and Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves. But this one kept irritating me. Either Hynes doesn't trust the audience to "get" his reappropriation of Shakespeare et al and can think of no better way to impart the themes than to come out and state them or he's just so impressed by his own observational skills and knowledge of the western canon that he's got to tell the reader about it, effectively making it a puffing up of his academic chest, the blustering self-congratulation of the deeply insecure. If you're going to be snottily superior about your own erudition and cleverness, then you had better dazzle me, and this just doesn't get it done.
That's not the worst of its sins, though. The big issue for me comes as a reader, rather than a critic: the lead character is a douche due several metric tons of comeuppance. And while the author all but transparently tells the reader that he thinks of old Nelson as a charismatic Gatsby or a Hemingway broken-heart or some other (allegedly) lovable ass and that we should too, the fact that the author has to step forward to tell you that you should love the guy, accept his utter lack of redeeming qualities, and find him "charismatic" in the bargain should have been a hint to the author and editors that, as written, he's an alienating jerk to read about, and I for one don't root for him even once after about fifty pages in.
I can't think of anyone whose poor-little-mes interest me less, or ring more false. Nelson is the guy who's pissed off he's not going to make it into the history books personally for the exact reason that it's already full of guys exactly like him. He thinks he's really getting screwed because history's full of guys like him--mediocre white guys--who became rich, famous, and powerful, and yet he's grinding out a middle class life. That guy never sees that his life is easier, safer, and more comfortable than almost everyone else's in dozens of large and small ways not despite his unexceptionality but because of it. In this sense, Nelson is the spiritual brother of Tyler Durden, another middle class white man who thinks his own stultifying mediocrity is actually him being oppressed and victimized by outside agents. Like Durden, his solution is to impose his will on those Others. The imperial narrative, the will to power. Rinse, repeat. Yawn. The fact that Hynes (and Nelson) can point out that they know the critique of their positions doesn't, in fact, change their positions. It's like when a guy prefaces a flagrantly sexist story or opinion with "I love women," or "I consider myself a feminist, but" or my personal favorite, "let's be honest..." Your disclaimer and self-awareness do not excuse or redeem you. So, suck it.
I don't want to spoiler plot, so I won't get into specifics, but the whole mishmash falls apart under its own preciousness and self-congratulation by the third act. Like the main character, it can cite chapter and verse of literature and can ape the jargon of theory, but it comprehends not. It starts out an incisive if bitter satire and ends up a paean to the mediocre but entitled middle class white professional man who rages at the world which promised him a kingdom and then told him he had to earn his keep. In the final analysis: if you're a lit grad student, academic grunt, or disenchanted humanities major, give it a read at least through the first 100 pages for the gleeful calling-out of the b.s. run amok in literature departments. After that, it's your call.
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