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A review by misophorism
The Misophorism Trilogy by Adam Washington
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Yes, this is my book. So, I left a review in jest on this that just said "terrible!" and I think that's true for the first edition. Yeah, not good. I rewrote the entire thing for a never-realized Flenser release and ended up just releasing myself.
So a few things about this book. I initially had this as a numbered list, so if it seems disjointed, that's why.
One review [on Goodreads] (I was told about, I don't read reviews, so it's entirely possible the review was much more fair than the secondhand source made it seem, though I have no earthly idea why they thought I wanted to hear a negative review in the first place) claimed that the book was oppressively dark and one-note. Yes. It is. That's why it says it's a "polemic on life" on the back. If you're expecting a nuanced discourse on the pros and cons of life, this isn't that book. The Stranger is more what you're looking for. The Misophorism Trilogy is a depressive assault on life from every angle imaginable. If that's not something you want to read, that's understandable, but it's something I find cool, personally (obviously, I wrote it), so this kind of thing appeals to me.
The book, especially the second book, and not at all the last one, somewhat the first one, draws heavily on the works of Dan Barrett. The second book in the first edition was borderline plagiarism. In the second edition, a lot of the work was rewriting it with an authorial voice, actually decent prose, and lessening this influence so it stood on its own. However, as I said in my TSOD review, I didn't want to strip out what returning fans recognized from it to the point where it seemed like an entirely different book. So I left a lot of it in, even if I would've preferred to remove it. This was a creative decision all the same, and it takes down the mark of the book in my view. Influence is cool, too much of it makes the writer seem like they're afraid their ideas aren't good enough. If you've read TSOD, that wasn't my problem, obviously, haha, it was more that I didn't know of many works that tackled the style I wanted. Still inexcusable, though in the latter version, THN has this considerably lessened. TLMB less so.
And the prose in the first edition is godawful. Yeah, I know. That's one of the main reasons I rewrote it. For all intents and purposes, from here on out, assume I'm talking about the second edition.
So, decent to good prose (great, sometimes, I hope). Influence on my sleeve is still there, much less intense but still there in The Last Man Blinks. I've given this three stars, so it's not all bad. Well, I'd probably give it a 7/10 nowadays, but the influence is really too much for my tastes, so it's on the lower end of that 7. The gore and graphic imagery doesn't bother me. I don't think it's excessive either. It's just kind of there. Maybe because I wrote it, it has no impact on me, but I can understand how that would either harm or enhance it depending on the reader's tastes.
The characters are really just agents for a point; it's a short, allegedly non-fiction work and therefore the characters don't need to be as fully realized as, say, a 300 page novel I'm working on, so they don't serve the purpose they would in other works of the same sort (notably House of Leaves, where Navidson and Truant are fully developed as people). You spend about 40 pages with Pyrrhus, 20 with Lafon. You spend about 60 pages with Louis Meyer, and another 60 with the Lazarus Society, (who are doing some slight trolling, a miniscule amount of chicanery up in New England). The concepts carry The Misophorism Trilogy, and I think it mostly works, it's only when you know how much I'm pulling from Giles Corey that can put a damper on things in TLMB. The parts where I'm writing as and about myself work. The parts where I'm writing about the Meyer's Method, meh.
The overall message of TMT (spoilers) is twofold:
1. If you're a depressive, you read it and go, "I feel seen; I understand what it's like, it can hurt to read but someone understands." And to also show how this sort of depressive thinking can lead to disaster.
2. If you're a normie you read it and reflect on what you've done.
To put that second point more accurately, it's telling people who said, "Depression is all in your head," or "Manifesting is real; if you think negative thoughts then you're causing your own pain," or "just pull yourself up by your bootstraps," or "you're depressed because you're weak-minded" to go fuck themselves. It's saying to all of those people: "If depression is in my head, explain the suffering of the world?" it's saying to those people, "I too believe in magical thinking, in fact, I think God is real, and He wants us to all suffer," saying, "I did pull myself by my bootstraps, check out this cool four-step Method I developed in a suspicious shantytown with about sixty friends," saying, "Can a weak-minded person really betray their body's natural impulses and thrust a knife through their throat?"
But, let's be real. Normies are never going to even pick up TMT. They're going to look at the cover once and say, "No, thanks." So that message will fall on deaf ears, if fall on them at all.
Do I think the message works, years later, and even years after the second edition? I think it still does. Reader mileage may vary. I don't plan on reviewing all of my works, or even any after this, as that may be too asinine, even for someone pretentious enough to write a "non-fiction" book. But I have a lot of thoughts about these two works (TMT and TSOD) and wanted to put them somewhere. I like The Misophorism Trilogy. When anyone near me dies, recently my sister, I return to Handwritten Eulogies.
"Death looms but it does not wait."
That's true for us all, in one way or another.
6.7/10.
So a few things about this book. I initially had this as a numbered list, so if it seems disjointed, that's why.
One review [on Goodreads] (I was told about, I don't read reviews, so it's entirely possible the review was much more fair than the secondhand source made it seem, though I have no earthly idea why they thought I wanted to hear a negative review in the first place) claimed that the book was oppressively dark and one-note. Yes. It is. That's why it says it's a "polemic on life" on the back. If you're expecting a nuanced discourse on the pros and cons of life, this isn't that book. The Stranger is more what you're looking for. The Misophorism Trilogy is a depressive assault on life from every angle imaginable. If that's not something you want to read, that's understandable, but it's something I find cool, personally (obviously, I wrote it), so this kind of thing appeals to me.
The book, especially the second book, and not at all the last one, somewhat the first one, draws heavily on the works of Dan Barrett. The second book in the first edition was borderline plagiarism. In the second edition, a lot of the work was rewriting it with an authorial voice, actually decent prose, and lessening this influence so it stood on its own. However, as I said in my TSOD review, I didn't want to strip out what returning fans recognized from it to the point where it seemed like an entirely different book. So I left a lot of it in, even if I would've preferred to remove it. This was a creative decision all the same, and it takes down the mark of the book in my view. Influence is cool, too much of it makes the writer seem like they're afraid their ideas aren't good enough. If you've read TSOD, that wasn't my problem, obviously, haha, it was more that I didn't know of many works that tackled the style I wanted. Still inexcusable, though in the latter version, THN has this considerably lessened. TLMB less so.
And the prose in the first edition is godawful. Yeah, I know. That's one of the main reasons I rewrote it. For all intents and purposes, from here on out, assume I'm talking about the second edition.
So, decent to good prose (great, sometimes, I hope). Influence on my sleeve is still there, much less intense but still there in The Last Man Blinks. I've given this three stars, so it's not all bad. Well, I'd probably give it a 7/10 nowadays, but the influence is really too much for my tastes, so it's on the lower end of that 7. The gore and graphic imagery doesn't bother me. I don't think it's excessive either. It's just kind of there. Maybe because I wrote it, it has no impact on me, but I can understand how that would either harm or enhance it depending on the reader's tastes.
The characters are really just agents for a point; it's a short, allegedly non-fiction work and therefore the characters don't need to be as fully realized as, say, a 300 page novel I'm working on, so they don't serve the purpose they would in other works of the same sort (notably House of Leaves, where Navidson and Truant are fully developed as people). You spend about 40 pages with Pyrrhus, 20 with Lafon. You spend about 60 pages with Louis Meyer, and another 60 with the Lazarus Society, (who are doing some slight trolling, a miniscule amount of chicanery up in New England). The concepts carry The Misophorism Trilogy, and I think it mostly works, it's only when you know how much I'm pulling from Giles Corey that can put a damper on things in TLMB. The parts where I'm writing as and about myself work. The parts where I'm writing about the Meyer's Method, meh.
The overall message of TMT (spoilers) is twofold:
1. If you're a depressive, you read it and go, "I feel seen; I understand what it's like, it can hurt to read but someone understands." And to also show how this sort of depressive thinking can lead to disaster.
2. If you're a normie you read it and reflect on what you've done.
To put that second point more accurately, it's telling people who said, "Depression is all in your head," or "Manifesting is real; if you think negative thoughts then you're causing your own pain," or "just pull yourself up by your bootstraps," or "you're depressed because you're weak-minded" to go fuck themselves. It's saying to all of those people: "If depression is in my head, explain the suffering of the world?" it's saying to those people, "I too believe in magical thinking, in fact, I think God is real, and He wants us to all suffer," saying, "I did pull myself by my bootstraps, check out this cool four-step Method I developed in a suspicious shantytown with about sixty friends," saying, "Can a weak-minded person really betray their body's natural impulses and thrust a knife through their throat?"
But, let's be real. Normies are never going to even pick up TMT. They're going to look at the cover once and say, "No, thanks." So that message will fall on deaf ears, if fall on them at all.
Do I think the message works, years later, and even years after the second edition? I think it still does. Reader mileage may vary. I don't plan on reviewing all of my works, or even any after this, as that may be too asinine, even for someone pretentious enough to write a "non-fiction" book. But I have a lot of thoughts about these two works (TMT and TSOD) and wanted to put them somewhere. I like The Misophorism Trilogy. When anyone near me dies, recently my sister, I return to Handwritten Eulogies.
"Death looms but it does not wait."
That's true for us all, in one way or another.
6.7/10.