Indecision Book

What is wrong with me?

Much like the character in this novel I couldn't make up my mind what to give this book. I waffled between two and three stars; but I didn't hate this book. I hated parts of the book, but I didn't hate the book. As far as vapid young writers go, one could do worse.

But don't I have it on good authority that this book sucks donkey balls?

Yeah. And it does. The narrator is a kind of whiny, self-absorbed elitist who can't make up his mind about anything, but knows that life owes him something more than the menial job he holds down and the slacker like lifestyle he lives. He's the kind of person people hate. He's kind of like myself at 27, which just so happens to be the same age the narrator is in 2001, right around the time that planes hit buildings; which my grammatically flawed sentence should make the reader realize would be the same exact age I was when 'shit went down, yo!' Reading this once again made me realize what an awful human being I was / am. This is what I look(ed) like to other people, and it's a pretty disgusting picture. In my own defense though, I was never a) from a rich family and basically floating around in a trust-fund wasteoid haze b) had any of the excess drug/sex this idiot engages in and c) was never in any way shape or form basically a hippie dressed up as a hipster, which is what this guy is. Which regarding point c- Kunkel; you and your publishers may want to get the rights to the Grateful Dead song you pilfer for your cresting the wave of catharticism pot-smoking hippie shit you pull unexpectedly out of no where at the end. Seriously dude, not cool.

Ugh. I've just been outed as giving this three stars!

What to do?

At one point I couldn't figure out if the main character was meant to be so unlikable. One (well the reader, me, maybe you) was told how likable he was, but he was sort of the kind of person that I never did like, the white hat wearing stoner with the button down shirt not tucked in that was soooo mellow and basically a privileged jock fuck who smoked too much pot.

Fuck Fuck Fuck.

Fuck it, this book is getting two stars. Because everything I liked about the book, the legitimately funny parts, the interesting characters that were the dudes sister and father, and well, I guess that is about it, everything good was ruined by something awful. Some banality. Some piece of profundity, that was really as deep as that fucking Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians song that I fucking hate. And the fucking puns! Like his last name that I know was only picked to make an oh so witty and urbane Heideggar joke / play on words in the narrators email address. Uggh. I don't even think this book was necessarily planned out... I don't have the energy to point out why, but it just doesn't, it sort of drifts and meanders around with loss ends and things brought up in the first fifty pages that lead no where.
And then there is the ending!

Oh God, the politically retarded ending. Shoot me in the head, how did I think to give this three stars. All because it wasn't as godawful as the Zweig book, but mostly that is because this was 200 pages shorter, and Kunkel can string together words coherently, something Zweig couldn't do.

Fuck.
I give up. Two stars. The third was guilt for me being an awful douchebag with no direction and being neurotic about making choices, but fuck you I'm so not as loathe worthy as this dude.