Goodreads | Paul's review

Paul's review

The Average American Male: A Novel
by Chad Kultgen

[close]

blog this review

Copy/paste the text below into your blog.

<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/151724.The_Average_American_Male_A_Novel?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="The Average American Male: A Novel" border="0" src="http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172236001m/151724.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/151724.The_Average_American_Male_A_Novel?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">The Average American Male: A Novel</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/87687.Chad_Kultgen">Chad Kultgen</a> 
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/20838983?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a>
 rating: 1 of 5 stars Holy ass.
 
 This book doesn't even deserve the time I'm about to take to talk about how awful it is. Does this guy really think we've already forgotten about American Psycho after just sixteen years? Replace the violence with more sex, then rewrite the entire thing with no sense of character, voice, description, vocabulary, consistency, intellect, emotion, subtlety, etc., and you get this pathetic excuse for a novel. Christ, the titles are even similar. I actually wouldn't be surprised if Chad Kultgen is really Bret Easton Ellis, considering the fact that Ellis' last two books were horrible, and Kultgen's photo is mysteriously absent on the web. I smell some serious bullshit here. Though, maybe it's this sentence I smell:
 
 "When Casey has her period she refuses to suck my dick and she's very uncomfortable with fucking." I found this by turning to a page at random and typing the first thing I saw. Honestly. Any page, I guarantee, will yield similar results. Wait though, here's something awesome: The chapters (whose titles come basically straight out of American Psycho) are numbered, but sometimes Kultgen doesn't give the chapter an actual number, he just calls it "some chapter." Hilarious! So nihilistic! So existential! So twentysomething blasé! It's so funny, in fact, that the author drops this pitiful little punchline after just two chapters, then again three chapters later, then again three-ish chapters after that, and so on until the book finally comes to its pathetic conclusion. In which, by the way, the protagonist fails to change in any way or come to any sort of revelation about what an asshole he is, but instead remains absolutely static. Every character in here is horribly clichéd and boring and poorly formed and, yes, average. All this unnamed guy does is jerk off to everything, usually like three times a day, and think about/have sex. He plays video games for four hours at a time and doesn't appear to have any responsibility or gainful employment until he mentions 95% of the way through that he "decides to take a long lunch break at work." WTF? In the second to last chapter the tense switches to the past for two sentences, then goes back to present. WTF? The book is horrible horrible horrible. WTF? Seriously, WTF. 
 
 Apparently the book wasn't selling well until the pub spent $2500 on these little YouTube shorts, which are appropriately shitty, and now the thing's selling like crazy. <a target="_blank" href="http://www.averageamericanmale.com">http://www.averageamericanmale...</a>. 
 
 NB there's tons of sex in this book, though American Psycho is far more "offensive" in terms of subject matter, and what I'm objecting to here is the way the book's written, the half-assed characters and lazy throw-away phrases, not the subject matter. If I wanted to hear about a dude "shooting probably the biggest load of [his:] entire life up [some girl's:] ass" every six pages I'd, well, be an idiot.
 
 If I find out that you've read this book and liked it I'm going to come over and punch you. 
 
 Then we'll discuss it like human beings, though, because seriously I'd be curious to hear what you had to say.
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/787522?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>

Paul's review
rating:

Holy ass.

This book doesn't even deserve the time I'm about to take to talk about how awful it is. Does this guy really think we've already forgotten about American Psycho after just sixteen years? Replace the violence with more sex, then rewrite the entire thing with no sense of character, voice, description, vocabulary, consistency, intellect, emotion, subtlety, etc., and you get this pathetic excuse for a novel. Christ, the titles are even similar. I actually wouldn't be surprised if Chad Kultgen is really Bret Easton Ellis, considering the fact that Ellis' last two books were horrible, and Kultgen's photo is mysteriously absent on the web. I smell some serious bullshit here. Though, maybe it's this sentence I smell:

"When Casey has her period she refuses to suck my dick and she's very uncomfortable with fucking." I found this by turning to a page at random and typing the first thing I saw. Honestly. Any page, I guarantee, will yield similar results. Wa...more Holy ass.

This book doesn't even deserve the time I'm about to take to talk about how awful it is. Does this guy really think we've already forgotten about American Psycho after just sixteen years? Replace the violence with more sex, then rewrite the entire thing with no sense of character, voice, description, vocabulary, consistency, intellect, emotion, subtlety, etc., and you get this pathetic excuse for a novel. Christ, the titles are even similar. I actually wouldn't be surprised if Chad Kultgen is really Bret Easton Ellis, considering the fact that Ellis' last two books were horrible, and Kultgen's photo is mysteriously absent on the web. I smell some serious bullshit here. Though, maybe it's this sentence I smell:

"When Casey has her period she refuses to suck my dick and she's very uncomfortable with fucking." I found this by turning to a page at random and typing the first thing I saw. Honestly. Any page, I guarantee, will yield similar results. Wait though, here's something awesome: The chapters (whose titles come basically straight out of American Psycho) are numbered, but sometimes Kultgen doesn't give the chapter an actual number, he just calls it "some chapter." Hilarious! So nihilistic! So existential! So twentysomething blasé! It's so funny, in fact, that the author drops this pitiful little punchline after just two chapters, then again three chapters later, then again three-ish chapters after that, and so on until the book finally comes to its pathetic conclusion. In which, by the way, the protagonist fails to change in any way or come to any sort of revelation about what an asshole he is, but instead remains absolutely static. Every character in here is horribly clichéd and boring and poorly formed and, yes, average. All this unnamed guy does is jerk off to everything, usually like three times a day, and think about/have sex. He plays video games for four hours at a time and doesn't appear to have any responsibility or gainful employment until he mentions 95% of the way through that he "decides to take a long lunch break at work." WTF? In the second to last chapter the tense switches to the past for two sentences, then goes back to present. WTF? The book is horrible horrible horrible. WTF? Seriously, WTF.

Apparently the book wasn't selling well until the pub spent $2500 on these little YouTube shorts, which are appropriately shitty, and now the thing's selling like crazy. http://www.averageamericanmale....

NB there's tons of sex in this book, though American Psycho is far more "offensive" in terms of subject matter, and what I'm objecting to here is the way the book's written, the half-assed characters and lazy throw-away phrases, not the subject matter. If I wanted to hear about a dude "shooting probably the biggest load of [his:] entire life up [some girl's:] ass" every six pages I'd, well, be an idiot.

If I find out that you've read this book and liked it I'm going to come over and punch you.

Then we'll discuss it like human beings, though, because seriously I'd be curious to hear what you had to say....less

Like this review? yes flag

comments (showing 1-3 of 3)

newest »

date

message 1: by Casey

04/30/2008 09:02AM

It is true, though. About my period.