, who is so careful to establish his tolerance bona fides in matters of race, sexual orientation, ethnicity, and religion (except you fundies; you're bad), is seemingly blind to one particular inclusionary buzzword. Despite the cast of Good Guys being a polyglot cast of every faith (except Evangelicals) and non-faith, they almost all stand to pee. In fact, the novel only paints two female characters in any detail: One is portrayed as a social climber from the sticks; a shallow, power-obsessed, anti-intellectual harpy, and the other is Sarah Palin.
Meanwhile his protagonist appears to loathe the girlfriend described above, and never really describes what she looks like; she might have been blonde, I think? But, oh! How he goes on with the physical descriptions of the book's messiah figure!
This messiah happens to be the protagonist's former college roommate, a gay Indian guy who goes on to become the world's most self-effacing and virtuous dot-com squillionaire. He's also so good-looking that F3* uses it as proof he's the antichrist.
He's also a yogi who functions as a sort of Hindi anti-Galt, and our protagonist, an obvious author-insert, cannot talk about him without going on at length about the beauty of his perfectly symmetrical features and (I'm not making this up) the smell of his sweat when they do drunken yoga together.
The absolute best part of this is that he all but types "No homo!" after these interludes, too. There's this overwhelming sense that the author may not realize just how hard his subconscious is man-crushing on poor, doomed Sanjay. I've caught myself snickering hard enough at the seemingly ingenuous obliviousness of a couple of these digressions that I had to set the iPad down for fear of dropping it.
If I'm being trolled, he's doing it masterfully.
*F3=Fox, Faith, and Freedom: See, in the book, Ralph Reed's Faith and Freedom Coalition and Fox News merge to become F3. Seriously. And all the poor hicks out in flyover country who can't get real news because CNN and MSNBC and NPR are apparently unavailable outside of Manhattan, San Fran and the Chicago Loop, are brainwashed by F3.
29 comments:
The author obviously has his finger on the pulse of Middle America. It's as if he's actually attended our book burnings!
Wow, Tam, I hope you copy some of this stuff to the Amazon reviews.
I finally just read The Last Centurion last week. If I read this one so quickly afterward, will my head explode? And will it be your fault?
-Smasher in Atom land.
Has anyone tried smashing this book against Atlas Shrugged really hard?
Only in theory. The energy release upon their mutual annihilation is too great for current technology to contain.
We can only assume Tam is keeping her dead-tree copies of Ayn Rand's works in a lead-lined ammo can.
gvi
I think I will avoid this book, thanks for the heads up, as I just bought RKB's book " I am Solider of Fortune" I think having them in the same room would cause a rift to open in the muiltverse, or something.Wonder why the "prove your not a robot" word was loony?
Maybe the author just doesn't consider women important?
A closet misogynist and Gay, maybe?
Or just a latent?
Yikes! I thought I might go pick it up just to marvel at the sheer terribleness. Then I saw the price.
We can only assume Tam is keeping her dead-tree copies of Ayn Rand's works in a lead-lined ammo can.
Hopefully.
Stuff like this or Atlas Shrugged isn't even good as cage-liner. Too much of a danger the world-class orneriness of Ayn Rand would seep into the animal. You could wake up one night like this..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_Q3EsZ9TaM
Sad how someone can take a couple of old-fashioned liberal ideas and clobber such amounts of bullshit, sophistry and worse on it.
I mean, the whole story and point of 'Atlas Shrugged' can be read in a much more fun and readable form, with more interesting characters by picking up any of the better books on Soviet history. The ones that weren't written by commies.
Most all can stand to pee.
It's just some are better at it than others...
:-)
gfa
Thank you, Tam, for taking upon yourself this onerous task, that others need not do so.
JC beat me to it. Thanks for reading it so we don't have to.
You should write an absolutely scathing review of this, completely raking him over the coals for his portrayal of women, and leave it somewhere the author is likely to see it (if possible. Amazon? Does he have a blog?).
Don't bring up any of the other stuff you've posted about recently. He'll just dismiss it as more Brainwashed Republican (and possibly homophobic) fist shaking. Focus entirely on how he's Not Inclusive Enough, and possibly a closet-misogynist. There is a slight chance that angle may actually get to him.
If I'm being trolled, he's doing it masterfully.
I'm getting the idea that sections of the book were typed one-handed ....
Why am I reminded of the South Park where Mr. Garrison attempts to write romance?
SCM, I'd say it's much more than a slight chance. If somebody claimed he transgressed the Law of Inclusivity it would put him on the defensive and possibly create some awkward social problems.
And I'd bet money that he thinks the Bechdel Test is a genuine measure of literary quality. The irony, she burns.
It is finished.
Like the protagonist with his memoirs, I have borne witness to horror.
Anonymous said...
Has anyone tried smashing this book against Atlas Shrugged really hard? 2:36 PM, September 08, 2013
global village idiot said...
Only in theory. The energy release upon their mutual annihilation is too great for current technology to contain.
Better not bash it up against the Turner diaries. Instead of mutual annihilation, they'd fuse together and resurrect Hitler.
Actually he (and many on the academic and professional Left) have/has a forbidden unrequited love - not of Arjun or Sandeep, but of Sarah Palin. The use of the male figurine/icon is a substitute totem and also a way to deal (by suppression) with their Beta-Male characteristics - and being a closet-misogynist is a salient, *Feature* characteristic of the Academic Male..
> In fact, the novel only paints
> two female characters in any
> detail: One is portrayed as a
> social climber from the sticks;
> a shallow, power-obsessed, anti-
> intellectual harpy, and the
> other is Sarah Palin.
So what you are saying, is he wrote the same female character, twice.
I read "Less Than Zero" a long time ago because of the reviews.
I regretted it.
I read that best seller "The Road" because I was stuck in an airport for a delayed flight for 8 hours, and I believed the blurbs on the cover.
I regretted it.
I did NOT read 50 "Shades of Ick", and won't read this book either.
Live and learn, I say.
I liked Amy's book.
I'm kinda with Kristophr on this one. Some of the most vigorously misogynistic people I've had the misfortune of being around were homosexual dudes.
Of course, if this guy is living in liberaltopia, I have no idea why he'd be closeted. *shrug*
perl,
Self loathing... that is why.
An old friend of mine has a brother who is gay. The gay brother would go out gay bashing with a group of his strait friends (that didn't know he was gay). The group would commonly put their victims in the hospital.
I only met him once... the self loathing was almost palpable.
Not knowing the author, I couldn't say for certainty that this is true in his case, but it's probably a good guess.
s
A quick glance at Democratic Underground (about all I can stand because I'm fresh out of Pepto Bismol) reveals they haven't quite glommed onto the book yet. Only one obscure post in a thread on another topic.
Though I am open to being convinced otherwise, I remain unconvinced that it is anything other than parody. If salon.com picks it up...maybe. If Kos runs with it, I'll take it as dispository.
gvi
gvi,
" If salon.com picks it up...maybe."
That's where Ace of Spades heard about it: http://www.salon.com/2013/06/29/our_theocracy_nightmare_president_palins_martial_law/
Well, that leaves me at "maybe."
Mind if I ask why you're engaging in just precisely THIS form of self-mortification? What's the matter with just wearing a hairshirt like everyone else?
gvi
It's sort of interesting, this sort of political fanfiction has been around since the 1980s, people just so scared that The Day The Religous Right Took Over would occur, as seen in various attempts at dystopian fiction in different mediums over the years, by people who are absolutely convinced that their side are the downtrodden underdogs and that, even as the 90s and early Aughties slid by, society was moving in a direction pleasing and/or favorable to the Pat Robertson-types of the nation.
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