The book is a first person narrative from the viewpoint of a 28 year old guy living in the LA area. The guy is college educated. He has what we can only guess by virtue of his shopping and eating habits is a decent paying job. He also has no soul. I'm a little frightened that I identify with him a little.
This guy has spewed onto paper every evil, insensitive thought that has ever come into my head about women. He's also found a few of his own that I'm proud to say, had never entered my head until last night when I read this book. Thats right. It's a fast and easy read. The author routinely refers to women as bitches in the book. This is something that, even in my own head, I do not do. He views women almost exclusively as sex objects. I'm not proud to say that I've been guilty of that on occasion.
In spite of the ugliness, read this book. It's a frightening and enlightening view into the mind of an average suburban, white, heterosexual American male. The particular male portrayed happens to be more cold hearted and emotionally immature than most of us were at 28. I don't think I've ever been as unfeeling for as long an amount of time as the narrator, but I've been as immature, and as meatheaded.
What I really identified with is the portrayal of some of the thoughts that pop into this guys brain while he moves through life. Some of these things are obvious, some serendipitous. He checks out attractive women. He gets annoyed by what he sees as th silliness of some of the more estrogen laden situations in which he finds himself. The chapter about waiting in line at a Marie Osmond book signing with his girlfriend while surrounded by women who are chattering on about Oprah, Dr. Phil, and such is laugh out loud funny. He spends time finding old video games that he's never had a chance to finish.
The narrator also captures the laziness, fear, and emotional ineptitude which so many of us bring to our relationships. The guy actually manages to accidentally get engaged because he just goes along with his girlfriend, and never has the guts to tell her how he really feels. I know quite a few guys who have ended up in some very strange places solely because they have a relationship, and are either too lazy to work at it, too afraid to leave it, or to blind to see it for what it is.
Anyway, I've rambled on. Read this book. It's funny, irritating, oversimple, and a million other things. But read it anyway. Know that it does not represent all of all of us men. It DOES represent a little in most of us.
Currently on the Bedside Table or in the queue:
- Stephen King's Bag of Bones
- W. Sommerset Maughm's Of Human Bondage
- Alan Furst's The Foreign Correspondant
- Laurell K. Hamilton's Danse Macabre and Micah
- Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five
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