my first book review

as a literature student, as one who claims to be post-human and understand the basics of psychology, it would be unethical of me to let this be.

the book: jonathan wyler - man

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the review as posted on amazon:
In reading "Man" I have been led to feel pity for the protagonist, who has thought himself into a dark place from which he is only confronted with the ugly side of a realm no less imaginary than the happier ones he decries. He keeps himself disconnected from anyone who could present him with any intellectual challenge, suffers delusions of grandeur and brings to mind a child Narcissis, fascinated upon seeing his reflection for the first time and assuming that he is the first to do so.

What little he gets right is alarmingly overwhelmed by what he gets wrong - this man is so proud of his ability to dissect social form that he has blinded himself to social function. From the arts to philosophy to love, the sheer pretentiousness of such unformed, uninformed, childish philosophy and lack of even a basic grasp of the complexities of human psychology shine through to make this text tedious and at times unbearable; I couldn't put it down simply because I kept hoping that the next page would bring character development and reversal.

This appears to be the work of an uneducated man too lazy to perform even the most cursory research before sharing his opinions in a manner declaring him to consider himself an intellectual. He speaks authoritatively of the most superficial and childlike of observations and I would hope that the $7 I've sprung for this rubbish could go towards a semester or two of literature studies, to expose the author to something of the vast, wonderful world of literature, psychology and philosophy for which this book functions as a desperate cry for help.

He examines everyone's life but his own, and the irony is far from delightful. His lack of understanding in realms of human motivation, music, cinema, legal systems and the concept of justice, and even on topics as uninteresting as that of the service industry are all offensive in their myopia and serve no function other than to highlight a perspective more appropriate to an angsty teenager than to someone who considers himself an author.

"Be skeptical of textbooks, university professors and bosses," he states, and this would be a good stance to take if it wasn't presented within a warped context in which it expresses disavowal rather than caution.

The author is in search of questions, but is not interested enough in obtaining the answers to them to look around at the excess of information that any member of the first world has access to. In deconstructing the "what"s of the world and not the "why"s, he appears to be trapped in Plato's cave, one foot on the path to the light but the other firmly planted in the dark.

I consider this book to be dangerously subversive in that it has the potential to influence the negative and the lazy in a morbid and self-destructive manner; the author has herein constructed a dark master narrative so wrapped up in the certainty of its own reality that he is blind to the absurdity of its contradictions with that which he does not understand and so willfully ignores.

I'm less concerned about my money being squandered than I am about the time that I've spent being offended by such shameless anti-literature. It is tempting to respond to each and every offending example, but if what I have written above hasn't brought about catharsis then becoming petty probably won't either. In response to "The Educator": "I think this is the kind of book that should go into school in our era of post-modernism" is the kind of comment that I can only hope is being made ironically.

the following are excerpts that i removed prior to posting the review. primarily because they contain potentially offensive material.

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on downloading:

man is a book written by a guy i used to study with that came to our barbecue on independence day - i've heard good reviews, and i will definitely check it out when i have a moment.

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after the first couple of chapters:

so far, not so good. as far as style goes it's the second worst thing i've ever read, and as far as content goes... well, quite frankly it's offensively stupid and miserable.
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the protagonist is such a complete and utter douche that i feel my gorge rising at every utterance. this is what happens when a work of fiction is written by someone who has no talent, doesn't read and has zero appreciation for literature. but i'm hoping he's just really, really good at constructing completely foreign characters and then destroying them.

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midway:

... i would hope that the $7 I've sprung for this rubbish will go towards an internet connection or a library card, perhaps even a semester of literature studies, to expose the author to something of this vast, wonderful world of literature, psychology and philosophy ...

... his lack of understanding in realms of human motivations, music, legal systems and the concept of justice, the service industry - are offensive in their myopia and serve no other function than to highlight a head so far up his bum that everything looks and smells bad...

... and makes claim about such newsworthy items as phones causing cancer that proves how little he himself researches when presented by false data...

... author's delusions of grandeur... the book is a manifestation of Man's behavior, a harassment of the sensibilities by a self-aggrandizing loser ... entirely unoriginal in thought but exquisitely powerful in its lack of insight...

... i must admit that i lost patience after reading Man's review of slumdog millionaire... in the final scene i was accosted by an ending so puerile and fantastically lacking in any sense of reality that i could almost hear the crystal ball of my hopes of a suddenly emerging intellectual discovery exploding into a mist of fine shards of disillusionment...