Skin Book

I'm thinking about instituting a new book-reading rule next year: stop reading books as soon as they uninterest me. Were that it was that new year, because this piece of shit would have been a good book to start stopping with.

In actuality, I've been quitting books for years: I just don't write reviews for them because I usually stop reading them by the first or second page, and who am I to judge if a book might not get better as it goes on? But this book, this "book" I knew I was going to hate by page 1. Yet I kept reading. Why? Mainly because it was short enough, mainly because I was intrigued it if could really be that bad.

It was bad.

I've always thought quitting a book to be a cop-out, an apology to our ADHD-Driven world. But really, what is the point in finishing a book that sucks? Is something gained from the experience, or would our time be better spent elsewhere? This is what I set out to find out.

Like I said, I knew exactly where this book was going right away and I didn't like it. Here would be a joyless, smug ride though flippant jokes and superficial, staged scenarios.

Ever since reading a certain review in the New Yorker many Sundays back, I have been experiencing "funny" books in a new, party-pooper fashion. You can only see the begining of the review here
() but if the chance arrives I would search it out. Basically, Wood's problem with "funny" books is that they lack "believability:" a man chases an ostrich through his living room and Woods thinks, "No, he didn't." So it was with me in reading this book: narrator does something obnoxious (has dinner routinely with his quirky, barely sketched-out friends at an Icelandic restaurant, for example) and all I can think (besides "Why am I reading this?") is, "No, he didn't."

I guess I shouldn't complain. The second-rate "crazy-random" humor on display in How I became Stupid is a formula my own writing often falls into, but the fact of the matter is as used here, it simply isn't funny. It's somehow predictably random, and nothing can be worse than a predictable joke.

(I should mention one "funny" scenario is at least plausible, that being the protagonist visiting his pediatrician at a relatively "elderly" age, that being 25. I too went to my pediatrician until my parent's health insurance finally ran out, somewhere along the age of 24. Let's just say my genital warts were far from his usual area of expertise! ((Or so I hope)) (((Okay I'm kidding about that last part))) ((((or am I?)))) ((((no, no, I am))))).

If a book isn't believable, it should at least be funny. If a book isn't funny, it should at least by insightful. If a book isn't insightful, it should at least be stylistically competent. This book is irredeemable: it offers nothing, save for a few nice descriptions anyone could come up with if they sat down long enough and the insights and moral-posturings of an unremarkable, talentless 24-year year-old Frenchman.

Despite the familiar, unrealistic jokes, the rotating cast of uninspiring stereotypes, pretentious conversations, dull witticisms, and corny attempts at feeling, every possibly Big Issue of Modern-Day Life is smugged over in the most superficial, snarky, high-horse way possible. I've read Pet Columnists in Free Magazines with more interesting and original (and thankfully more humble) things to say about Modern Life.

I'm not going to get into how much of a colossally boring, whiny, snobby twerp the "protagonist" (author) is, but I think this one quote, taken practically at random, shall suffice:

"'But we could substitute another game that my neighbors introduced me to. It's called Monopoly. The aim of the game is very simple: you have to get money, be crafty with it... behave like the perfect, idiotic capitalist. It's facinating. One of the virtues of the game is that, in its own playful way, it should teach me- and perhaps even convert me to- a liberal-minded morality. I will adhere to something that, at the moment, I condemn as a simple game, and I won't worry about the crippling rents that put so many families on the streets. I'll become selfish and penny-pinching, and the only thing I'll worry about will be money, the only thing that will matter to me, my only big existential question, will be how I can get as much of it as possible.'"

Don't you just want to strangle this fucker by the neck? I'm not sure I could be in the same room with this guy without at least slapping him in the face, and here I read a whole novel of his stupid, smarmy thoughts.

In the begining of the book, the protagonist attempts various "hilarious" methods at being happy: alcholosim, suicide. Even as horrible as this book is, this section STILL should have been cut from the text, but I kept hoping one of the methods the protagonist would come upon would be to get the shit kicked mercilessly out of him, so at least I could incur some depleting, meta-happiness from the act.

I'm not even going to get into how badly written the book is, how heavy-handed and self-righteous the trackless prose is, or how one quirky, forgettable character cutely speaks in verse, but we are never shown him speaking in verse: we are TOLD he speaks in verse, as if that's enough. Also, he's radioactive and glows in the dark. Isn't that just fucking adorable?

(Here's where I'd talk about how the French are never really funny because they try too hard but I'll save my humor-jingoism for another time.)

Ultimately, I didn't get anything out of this book: it actually got worse as it went along (and it never really got along), and it WAS a complete waste of my time: the writing wasn't funny, the insights were uninsightful, the action boring yet unbelievable, the narrator nauseating, the ending abysmal. As a matter of fact, I'm tempted to skip over to the Continent to deliver to the author a well-deserved kick in his smug little balls. Yes, I was THAT personally insulted by this crap.

But hey, maybe I did get a little something out of all this: I wrote a scathing review, though many years too late, many years too long after this shitty little missive was farted out to a gullible European audience, many years too long after we in the US got a sloppy-second whiff of this precious little wretched turd.

It's too easy, but I gotta say it: HOW I became STUPID may not have made me stupid, but it certainly tried its best.