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A review by jdsatori
Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff by Sean Penn
1.0
Um.
*Takes off glasses, rubs eyes, leans back in chair, offers a sympathetic smile.*
I’m more than cool with absurd story lines full of logic holes and main characters propped up by the righteousness of their own anger, especially if that anger is directed at capitalism and Trump.
But the writing.
For example: “Whenever he felt these collisions of incubus and succubus, he punched his way out of the proletariat with the purposeful inputting of covert codes, thereby drawing distraction through Scottsdale deployments, dodging the ambush of innocents astray, evading the viscount vogue of Viagratic assaults on virtual vaginas, or worse, falling passively into prosaic pastimes.”
(Translation: “To avoid thinking about sex or simply wasting time, Bob focused on work.”)
The entire book is written with this bombastic barrage of broadcasted bits, their cacophony cratering your contentment, insolency its illogical intent. I know, because I read all 160 pages. Generously, I wonder if this is Penn’s “voice” for Bob. If so, did NO ONE point out that death-by-alliteration-and-assonance does not equal personality?
I want to be able to say, at least, that “it was ok…” but it’s just not.
*Takes off glasses, rubs eyes, leans back in chair, offers a sympathetic smile.*
I’m more than cool with absurd story lines full of logic holes and main characters propped up by the righteousness of their own anger, especially if that anger is directed at capitalism and Trump.
But the writing.
For example: “Whenever he felt these collisions of incubus and succubus, he punched his way out of the proletariat with the purposeful inputting of covert codes, thereby drawing distraction through Scottsdale deployments, dodging the ambush of innocents astray, evading the viscount vogue of Viagratic assaults on virtual vaginas, or worse, falling passively into prosaic pastimes.”
(Translation: “To avoid thinking about sex or simply wasting time, Bob focused on work.”)
The entire book is written with this bombastic barrage of broadcasted bits, their cacophony cratering your contentment, insolency its illogical intent. I know, because I read all 160 pages. Generously, I wonder if this is Penn’s “voice” for Bob. If so, did NO ONE point out that death-by-alliteration-and-assonance does not equal personality?
I want to be able to say, at least, that “it was ok…” but it’s just not.