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1.92 AVERAGE
1.92 AVERAGE
While there were well-written passages, the rest was precisely the kind of pretentious, overwrought, pseudo-intellectual bullshit one would expect from Sean Penn.
Sharp, clever, so smart it needs footnotes to keep up, I abandoned it because it's too sharp, too clever and too much of what I already know about the world EXCEPT for one thing. I didn't know that Sean Penn wanted you to know, REALLY know, just how fuckin' smart he be. Congrats, it's in writing, the rare and much sought after: a work of fiction with footnotes.
Pynchon via Penn
It’s good, it’s weird, it’s timely, and it tries too hard. The alliteration grows tiresome, the acronyms are annoying and the footnotes could have been way more useful if they injected a wee but of humor. But all quibbling aside, I liked it. I’m just not sure why.
It’s good, it’s weird, it’s timely, and it tries too hard. The alliteration grows tiresome, the acronyms are annoying and the footnotes could have been way more useful if they injected a wee but of humor. But all quibbling aside, I liked it. I’m just not sure why.
This book has in its favor brevity and two good epithets (Trump is "the Mussolini of Mayberry" and his sons are the Uday and Qusay of their generation). It refers to the murder of five police officers in Dallas, indicating that the book went through production quickly, maybe too quickly: the book also says approximately "Zimmerman's Nobel-winning lines [about the sun not being yellow]." Sean Penn promoted the book on Bill Maher on 16 September and on Stephen Colbert on the 27th (when he claimed to have received the manuscript in May), the Nobel committee announced its selection of Bob Dylan on 13 October, and the book was released on the 18th.
Think back to high school or your time as an undergrad. Do you remember that super pretentious "writer" that thought he was an intellectual and the best writer ever. He wrote this book. I swear, Penn used a thesaurus on every word in this book and chose the largest word on the page. He goes into such unnecessary detail; I'm pretty sure he read numerous Wikipedia to become knowledgeable on so many random, specific topics.
I only made it halfway through this book before I had to abandon it.
I only made it halfway through this book before I had to abandon it.