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The One-Eyed Man: A Novel
From the “startlingly talented” ( New York Times ) author of Everything Matters!— a bold and timely novel about a grieving man dedicated to unmasking the role that lies and delusions play in our reactionary times
"Nobody writing today walks the knife edge of cynicism and sentiment more bravely, intelligently and confidently than Ron Currie. By turns hilarious and heartfelt, The One-Eyed Man is a revelation, a wonder." --Richard Russo
“Dark, tender, and oh-so-timely.” – USA Today
Ron Currie’s three previous works of fiction have dazzled readers and critics alike with their originality, audacity, and psychological insight. A writer of unique vision and huge imagination, Currie excels at creating complex, troubled, yet endearing characters, and his work has won comparison to everyone from Kurt Vonnegut to George Saunders.
K., the narrator of Currie’s new novel, joins the ranks of other great American literary creations who show us something new about ourselves. Like Jack Gladney from White Noise, K. is possessed of a hyper-articulate exasperation with the world, and like Ignatius J. Reilly in A Confederacy of Dunces , he is a doomed truth teller whom everyone misunderstands. After his wife Sarah dies, K.becomes so wedded to the notion of clarity that he infuriates friends and strangers alike. When he intervenes in an armed robbery, K. finds himself both an inadvertent hero and the star of a new reality television program. Together with Claire, a grocery store clerk with a sharp tongue and a yen for celebrity, he travels the country, ruffling feathers and gaining fame at the intersection of American politics and entertainment. But soon he discovers that the world will fight viciously to preserve its delusions about itself.
How Currie's unconventional hero comes to find peace, to reenter the world, and to be touched again by emotion and empathy makes for a dramatic, utterly memorable story.
"Nobody writing today walks the knife edge of cynicism and sentiment more bravely, intelligently and confidently than Ron Currie. By turns hilarious and heartfelt, The One-Eyed Man is a revelation, a wonder." --Richard Russo
“Dark, tender, and oh-so-timely.” – USA Today
Ron Currie’s three previous works of fiction have dazzled readers and critics alike with their originality, audacity, and psychological insight. A writer of unique vision and huge imagination, Currie excels at creating complex, troubled, yet endearing characters, and his work has won comparison to everyone from Kurt Vonnegut to George Saunders.
K., the narrator of Currie’s new novel, joins the ranks of other great American literary creations who show us something new about ourselves. Like Jack Gladney from White Noise, K. is possessed of a hyper-articulate exasperation with the world, and like Ignatius J. Reilly in A Confederacy of Dunces , he is a doomed truth teller whom everyone misunderstands. After his wife Sarah dies, K.becomes so wedded to the notion of clarity that he infuriates friends and strangers alike. When he intervenes in an armed robbery, K. finds himself both an inadvertent hero and the star of a new reality television program. Together with Claire, a grocery store clerk with a sharp tongue and a yen for celebrity, he travels the country, ruffling feathers and gaining fame at the intersection of American politics and entertainment. But soon he discovers that the world will fight viciously to preserve its delusions about itself.
How Currie's unconventional hero comes to find peace, to reenter the world, and to be touched again by emotion and empathy makes for a dramatic, utterly memorable story.
336 pages, Paperback
First published March 7, 2017
70 people are currently reading
1400 people want to read
About the author
Ron Currie Jr.
8 books564 followersRon Currie, Jr. was born and raised in Waterville, Maine, where he still lives. His first book, God is Dead, won the Young Lions Fiction Award from the New York Public Library and the Addison M. Metcalf Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His debut novel, Everything Matters!, will be translated into a dozen languages, and is a July Indie Next Pick and Amazon Best of June 2009 selection.
His short fiction has appeared in many magazines and anthologies, including Alaska Quarterly Review, The Sun, Ninth Letter, Swink, The Southeast Review, Glimmer Train, Willow Springs, The Cincinnati Review, Harpur Palate, and New Sudden Fiction (W.W. Norton, 2007).
His short fiction has appeared in many magazines and anthologies, including Alaska Quarterly Review, The Sun, Ninth Letter, Swink, The Southeast Review, Glimmer Train, Willow Springs, The Cincinnati Review, Harpur Palate, and New Sudden Fiction (W.W. Norton, 2007).
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 130 reviews
March 1, 2017
In the canon of Ron Currie’s work, a novel that ends with just a few dozen people killed is a relative pick-me-up. After all, his first book was called “God Is Dead.” His second was about a comet destroying Earth. There really isn’t much left for this darkly witty writer to obliterate.
But he’s still finding clever ways to explore the effects of loss. The narrator of his new novel, “The One-Eyed Man,” has been reduced to a single letter: K., and that Kafkaesque allusion is just the beginning. K. has recently lost his wife to cancer, and the trauma of her death has stripped away his understanding of metaphor, his acceptance of imprecision, his tolerance for deception. He’s doomed to total literalism. When a broken streetlight says, “DON’T WALK,” he stands. . . .
To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entert...
But he’s still finding clever ways to explore the effects of loss. The narrator of his new novel, “The One-Eyed Man,” has been reduced to a single letter: K., and that Kafkaesque allusion is just the beginning. K. has recently lost his wife to cancer, and the trauma of her death has stripped away his understanding of metaphor, his acceptance of imprecision, his tolerance for deception. He’s doomed to total literalism. When a broken streetlight says, “DON’T WALK,” he stands. . . .
To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entert...
April 12, 2018
Now that I'm no longer professionally reviewing contemporary fiction for the CCLaP website, I've discovered an alarming problem simply as a person reading for pleasure, which is that my enthusiasm for contemporary fiction has dropped precipitously this year, in most cases because I can't seem to pick up any new novels anymore without them reminding me of a dozen novels I've already read. Take for example Ron Currie Jr.'s latest, The One-Eyed Man, which starts with an interesting enough premise -- a man who has recently undergone a mental breakdown starts insisting to the point of violent psychosis that the people around him say exactly what they mean without any marketing mumbo-jumbo (for example, no more calling it "hand cleanser" when it's actually "soap"), an infuriating but compelling habit that eventually brings him to the attention of a reality-TV producer, who thinks that he would be perfect for his next "let's gawk at the crazy losers" society-destroying show.
The problem, though, is that this is all the book is, all premise and nothing else -- what I just described, which you learn in the first 30 pages, is also the way you can describe 80 percent of the entire book, until finally reaching a "surprise" ending that's not actually that much of a surprise, and that feels like yet another random unearned sensationalist detail to add to the dozens of others that came before. As I flipped through the pages of The One-Eyed Man in bored frustration, I simply felt like I already knew everything that was going to happen on each next page before actually reading it; and now that I'm reading such books only for personal pleasure, not because of a professional obligation to review them, I'm coming to realize that a whole lot of contemporary fiction can be described like this, just 300 pages of going through the motions of a story that's already been written a hundred other times in almost the exact same way.
That's not entirely fair to Currie, which is why I'm still giving The One-Eyed Man three stars; if you haven't read two thousand contemporary novels in the last ten years like I have, you'll probably like it a lot more than I did, and that's a fact worth pointing out. The question I find myself wrestling with these days, though, is if a book is only worth reading if you're a beginning reader, but becomes worthless if you become well-read and realize that there's already a hundred books out there that are exactly like it, is that really a book worth reading and recommending? That's the subject I find myself struggling with a lot these days, now that I've gone back to simple pleasure reading like everyone else, a topic I'm sure I'll be exploring in greater depth as the year continues.
The problem, though, is that this is all the book is, all premise and nothing else -- what I just described, which you learn in the first 30 pages, is also the way you can describe 80 percent of the entire book, until finally reaching a "surprise" ending that's not actually that much of a surprise, and that feels like yet another random unearned sensationalist detail to add to the dozens of others that came before. As I flipped through the pages of The One-Eyed Man in bored frustration, I simply felt like I already knew everything that was going to happen on each next page before actually reading it; and now that I'm reading such books only for personal pleasure, not because of a professional obligation to review them, I'm coming to realize that a whole lot of contemporary fiction can be described like this, just 300 pages of going through the motions of a story that's already been written a hundred other times in almost the exact same way.
That's not entirely fair to Currie, which is why I'm still giving The One-Eyed Man three stars; if you haven't read two thousand contemporary novels in the last ten years like I have, you'll probably like it a lot more than I did, and that's a fact worth pointing out. The question I find myself wrestling with these days, though, is if a book is only worth reading if you're a beginning reader, but becomes worthless if you become well-read and realize that there's already a hundred books out there that are exactly like it, is that really a book worth reading and recommending? That's the subject I find myself struggling with a lot these days, now that I've gone back to simple pleasure reading like everyone else, a topic I'm sure I'll be exploring in greater depth as the year continues.
March 29, 2017
Reading Ron Currie, Jr. is like opening a book, expecting perhaps some good literary stuff, and getting instead a sly little genie who grants you wishes you didn't know you had. I am never NOT surprised when I read his work, and can never figure out where he's going with it. This book is no exception. As I sat trying to unpack the metaphors and meanings of his main character, K., it was hard to stop laughing at all the really clever and funny lines -- but at the same time I was reminded of a piece I just read about Adrienne Rich (who was her own maverick character). This from one of her works:
"Responsibility to yourself means that you don’t fall for shallow and easy solutions—predigested books and ideas, weekend encounters guaranteed to change your life, taking “gut” courses instead of ones you know will challenge you, bluffing at school and life instead of doing solid work, marrying early as an escape from real decisions, getting pregnant as an evasion of already existing problems. It means that you refuse to sell your talents and aspirations short, simply to avoid conflict and confrontation. And this, in turn, means resisting the forces in society which say that women should be nice, play safe, have low professional expectations, drown in love and forget about work, live through others, and stay in the places assigned to us. It means that we insist on a life of meaningful work, insist that work be as meaningful as love and friendship in our lives. It means, therefore, the courage to be “different”; not to be continuously available to others when we need time for ourselves and our work; to be able to demand of others—parents, friends, roommates, teachers, lovers, husbands, children—that they respect our sense of purpose and our integrity as persons."
Ron Currie understands that. After K., Currie's main character, loses his wife, he discovers that life is very different from the bubble most of us live in, as Rich so richly described as well. And in this 21st Century, that bubble has gotten stretched and contorted and dirtied and shit on until there's nothing left of what's sane. So most of us are living in what I like to call drone-crazies and I include myself in that.
Currie brings us full circle back to humanity in his own unique way, but now the reader carries K's weight of realization and despair. I found it sad and inspiring, funny and ludicrous, too over the top to be anything but real life these days. And while I read it, (and I have felt this way about his other books) I always wish I could be inside his head and see how that mind of his works. Maybe the genie will grant me that one more wish next time. Oh, and I wish I could write as well.
"Responsibility to yourself means that you don’t fall for shallow and easy solutions—predigested books and ideas, weekend encounters guaranteed to change your life, taking “gut” courses instead of ones you know will challenge you, bluffing at school and life instead of doing solid work, marrying early as an escape from real decisions, getting pregnant as an evasion of already existing problems. It means that you refuse to sell your talents and aspirations short, simply to avoid conflict and confrontation. And this, in turn, means resisting the forces in society which say that women should be nice, play safe, have low professional expectations, drown in love and forget about work, live through others, and stay in the places assigned to us. It means that we insist on a life of meaningful work, insist that work be as meaningful as love and friendship in our lives. It means, therefore, the courage to be “different”; not to be continuously available to others when we need time for ourselves and our work; to be able to demand of others—parents, friends, roommates, teachers, lovers, husbands, children—that they respect our sense of purpose and our integrity as persons."
Ron Currie understands that. After K., Currie's main character, loses his wife, he discovers that life is very different from the bubble most of us live in, as Rich so richly described as well. And in this 21st Century, that bubble has gotten stretched and contorted and dirtied and shit on until there's nothing left of what's sane. So most of us are living in what I like to call drone-crazies and I include myself in that.
Currie brings us full circle back to humanity in his own unique way, but now the reader carries K's weight of realization and despair. I found it sad and inspiring, funny and ludicrous, too over the top to be anything but real life these days. And while I read it, (and I have felt this way about his other books) I always wish I could be inside his head and see how that mind of his works. Maybe the genie will grant me that one more wish next time. Oh, and I wish I could write as well.
March 21, 2017
In 2002 or so, shortly after the reality shows "Survivor" and "Amazing Race" changed television for good, I made a very amateurish film entitled "Are You Really That Stupid?" with family and friends as "stars". Contestants were told, off-screen, to sing their favorite song (for example), but I edited in directions, from myself, the host, like "Please Sing the National Anthem". One response was a nice rendition of Spears "Hit Me Baby One More Time". I even added a commercial, one in which my nieces and I did a great version, with umbrellas and choreography, of the Weather Girls' "It's Raining Men" and I found it odd that no one questioned why, exactly, I knew ever single word, start to finish. Naturally, the smartest person of all, my brother-in-law at the time, was in on the game, got all the answers right, and won "Stupidest American of All." Anyway, here, we get a book about a reality show entitled "America Soooo Stupid" or something like that, so thanks, Currie, for your homage to my not-famous-at-all-film. Now, perhaps Chuck Palahniuk could have taken this material to the next level over my own from 15 years ago. But Currie isn't Palahniuk (no one is). However, Currie does write a dozen or so funny zingers like "This isn't America. This is Texas." And the opening chapters take a vivid snapshot of pointless rage some people seem to experience these days, like people honking at stoplights a millisecond after a light turns green (not an event in this book, just something I experience about every day I drive, as I don't slam down on the gas when the light turns. I live in Florida where most people don't work, so why is everyone in such a hurry? To get to the beach, perhaps?) Anyway, if asked, I would honestly say that this book "was okay", thus my two-star rating. Oh, and what a missed opportunity to make at least one, one-eye joke. Or maybe the title IS the joke, like the Brando film "One-Eyed Jacks" which has got to be the best porn movie title not used for a porn movie. (On a side note, the best film I've made is "Kill Hill Beach Project: Oh No Not Again" which opens with me kicking a bucket of sand. Hey, it was hilarious in "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, World.)
February 4, 2017
Ron Currie Jr. is one of the only authors I have to read with a pen in my hand. His words speak to me, and his books tend to find me when I need them the most. He is funny. He is real. He isn't afraid to be grotesque or tragic or gross. And he chronicles the ephemera (ripped that word from this book, what a great freaking word) like no one else. As I read this book I thought, "Man, he just gets it." It's nice to read to learn new things, and even nicer to also feel understood.
Everything Matters!, Currie's other book, felt like it was practically written for me. This one, not so much. The subject matter doesn't hit me as hard, so this might be more of a 4.5 for me. I'll admit I lost some steam in the middle, and I was far more interested in his relationship with Sarah and his newfound worldview than I was with his reality show and the ensuing drama. I'll also admit the conflicts that arose in that vein sometimes seemed a bit forced or exaggerated, but the good outweighs the bad here, and I'll be damned if I deter anyone from reading this book or any of Currie's. They're just so good.
Everything Matters!, Currie's other book, felt like it was practically written for me. This one, not so much. The subject matter doesn't hit me as hard, so this might be more of a 4.5 for me. I'll admit I lost some steam in the middle, and I was far more interested in his relationship with Sarah and his newfound worldview than I was with his reality show and the ensuing drama. I'll also admit the conflicts that arose in that vein sometimes seemed a bit forced or exaggerated, but the good outweighs the bad here, and I'll be damned if I deter anyone from reading this book or any of Currie's. They're just so good.
September 8, 2016
This is a funny jab at our society and our penchant for violence. K, our "hero," recently lost his wife to breast cancer and, as part of his coping mechanism, starts to take things very literally. For the reader, his literal take on anything is hilarious and you probably will laugh out loud at various things K says. However, his new literal approach on life means that he irritates everyone around him which makes him perfect for reality television!
The characters vary from one-dimensional to fully-developed, but that works for this "black and white" world that K. now inhabits. I found it interesting that at various points in the story, we're reminded of his late wife and how he dealt with it in the past which explains his current demeanor. This extra layer makes you question how genuine K is, but that's how we react to any reality show star. We always question motives and Ron Currie exploits this to create a truly enjoyable and thought-provoking novel.
I recommend this book for anyone who appreciates how crazy the real world is and how hard people try to live in it.
The characters vary from one-dimensional to fully-developed, but that works for this "black and white" world that K. now inhabits. I found it interesting that at various points in the story, we're reminded of his late wife and how he dealt with it in the past which explains his current demeanor. This extra layer makes you question how genuine K is, but that's how we react to any reality show star. We always question motives and Ron Currie exploits this to create a truly enjoyable and thought-provoking novel.
I recommend this book for anyone who appreciates how crazy the real world is and how hard people try to live in it.
February 26, 2017
I was thoroughly surprised by how much I enjoyed this book. I am normally not a fan of the ridiculous or attempts at humor (I just don't get how its funny), but in a way, that was actually the point of the book and it really resonated with me. I didn't love the last few chapters, and wasn't a huge fan of the ending, but there were many points when I couldn't put the book down or couldn't wait to get back it. K felt like a kindred soul - not in the details, but in the intention and the essence. The desire for facts, for truth, for understanding, among the ridiculous, was cool.
January 8, 2018
It’s with a heavy heart that I say I didn’t like this book, because I love Ron Currie Jr. Flimsy Little Plastic Miracles and Everything Matters! are two of my favorite books. They’re filled with beautiful insight and laugh out loud humor. Unfortunately The One Eyed Man didn’t live up to my expectations. I can see some similarities to his earlier work, but they were few and far between.
I’ll start with the narrator, K. He’s a logical thinker, but spends most of his time brooding and annoying everyone around him. At first he’s easy to forgive since he’s grieving his wife’s recent death, but all in all he’s basically an over entitled asshole. Maybe this is supposed to be endearing? Difficult people can be entertaining in a love to hate sort of way, but trust me K doesn’t have any redeemable qualities. There were a few of his rants that made sense to me, but for the most part I couldn’t help but wonder how anyone could stand to be in the same room as him. Then there’s the plot. It was never strong enough to support the characters and if it wasn’t ridiculous enough it only gets more extreme and unbelievable.
Maybe it’s me. Maybe all the satire and meaning is lost on me. I’ve seen plenty of 4 and 5 star ratings, and despite how I feel about this book I still think Ron Currie Jr. has serious talent. If you’ve never read anything by him before do yourself a favor and start with Everything Matters!
I’ll start with the narrator, K. He’s a logical thinker, but spends most of his time brooding and annoying everyone around him. At first he’s easy to forgive since he’s grieving his wife’s recent death, but all in all he’s basically an over entitled asshole. Maybe this is supposed to be endearing? Difficult people can be entertaining in a love to hate sort of way, but trust me K doesn’t have any redeemable qualities. There were a few of his rants that made sense to me, but for the most part I couldn’t help but wonder how anyone could stand to be in the same room as him. Then there’s the plot. It was never strong enough to support the characters and if it wasn’t ridiculous enough it only gets more extreme and unbelievable.
Maybe it’s me. Maybe all the satire and meaning is lost on me. I’ve seen plenty of 4 and 5 star ratings, and despite how I feel about this book I still think Ron Currie Jr. has serious talent. If you’ve never read anything by him before do yourself a favor and start with Everything Matters!
February 12, 2017
The publisher sent an advance copy to work, and knowing the "Writers Forum" host wouldn't be in for a few weeks, I snagged it and brought it home for snowmageddon weekend. The fact that I finished reading it before the storm even arrived speaks for itself. Two mittens up!
March 20, 2017
As with all of Ron Currie's novels, this one veers off into directions unknown and impossible to predict. I mean this in the best way possible. Everything Matters!, his first novel, really had an effect on me, and I have such a fondness for his prose. The One Eyed Man is no exception. You never know what's coming next. Every once in awhile the characters can can seem a little more like archetypes than actual people at first, but bit by bit the reader is given information that shapes the how and why and what of it all. I preordered this book last year, and when it showed up at my desk I was overjoyed - and thankfully, now after reading it, am not disappointed.
April 2, 2017
Some people will love this book, some people won't. But everyone will have to admit it is provocative. I found it funny, dark, sad, philosophical and irritating. My favorite quote: "certainty is a myth only children and Republicans ever truly believe in."
August 1, 2018
Loved it. By times hilarious, weird and heart breaking. From the first paragraphs through to the end I was all in. I'll be reading more of Mr. Currie's work!
June 7, 2017
K. is almost as charming as Eleanor Oliphant, though not quite. This is a lovely book with a faster pace than it really has any right to have, as it's about a grieving widower and his stumble into a reality television show. There's some great parody in here, particularly of Bill Maher and Rachel Maddow, and I'm definitely going to have to check out some of Ron Currie's other books after reading this one. The very end was satisfying, though the lead-up to it was... well, it's all a bit far-fetched, but there's something about plots involving militias that just plain loses me. Currie kept my attention better than most, though, and that's saying a lot.
May 1, 2018
After the first fifty pages I was prepared for Currie to expand on the premise he'd set up--that of a man, recovering from the death of his wife, suddenly becoming completely objective and able to see 'truth' without any preconceptions or other influences that usually color one's perceptions. Unfortunately, this started going in both very predictable ways (debates about gun control, gay rights, etc.) and very unpredictable ones that seemed only tenuously connected to the novel's theme, which became more and more diffuse. By the end I wasn't entirely sure what the point of it all was.
June 20, 2020
I was ambivalent about reading this book initially, but was glad that I saw it through to the end. I loved this book as I was completely engaged through most of the book. The main character, a guy named K, takes the reader into his reality and lets us see his world through his eyes. This was the first novel in a long time that got me to think about K's thoughts, actions and decisions.
Excellent book! I am looking forward to reading more by Currie Jr.
Excellent book! I am looking forward to reading more by Currie Jr.
July 30, 2017
Entertaining
It is a hilarious and honest tale, sarcasm delivered dead-pan. I especially enjoyed the protagonist,despite his self delusions, I sympathize and empathize with him; hence, I was rather disappointed at the end, but that's on me...
It is a hilarious and honest tale, sarcasm delivered dead-pan. I especially enjoyed the protagonist,despite his self delusions, I sympathize and empathize with him; hence, I was rather disappointed at the end, but that's on me...
March 24, 2017
Currie hits it out of the ballpark with this one. (Full review to come.)
September 11, 2022
That was dark. Dark veiled in humor and philosophy. Don't read while depressed.
November 25, 2017
This book starts off promising, builds up, and then implodes. I hated the last 30% of the book on multiple levels. My sense is that the author wrote himself into a corner, then lost interest, but had a contractual obligation to finish the book.
March 23, 2017
First appeared at http://www.thenewdorkreviewofbooks.co...
In these troubled times, you never know what will be someone's last straw of relative sanity. In the case of K, the protagonist in Ron Currie's funny, ripped-from-modern-culture new novel, The One Eyed Man, it's hand soap. Why hand soap? Because this hand soap insists on calling itself "liquid hand wash." And that just seems absurdly stupid to him.
"Why this bottle of liquid hand wash, of all the nonsense I’d encountered in nearly forty years on the planet, was the thing that suddenly sent me over the edge, I cannot say. I will simply report what I know: that there in Tony’s bathroom I was visited by the hammer-stroke certainty that the culture I counted myself a part of, the culture that had weaned and reared me, had become proudly, willfully, and completely divorced from fact."
If you like this paragraph, and I intensely do, you'll probably really like this novel. These lines form the cornerstone of K's life strategy going forward. He decides, partly because of this moment of clarity and partly because something has snapped in him after his wife's death from cancer, he'll make every decision in his life based only on pure facts, not on emotion, not on manipulation, and not on what others think.
And furthermore, he decides to confront stupidity in all its forms. As one example, he takes on a redneck with a racist "WHOSE NEXT" bumper sticker. This earns him a punch in the face — the first of many beatings he takes as a result of his new policy about resisting bullshit in all its forms. One of the things I love about this novel is that it's partly about the sheer amount of stupidity we have to either deal with or ignore simply to get through an average day. Most people can relate to that.
K's new outlook, combined with the small measure of fame he achieves by breaking up a robbery at a coffee shop at the beginning of the novel, lands him a reality TV show called "America You Stoopid." Here, he takes on all our worst unexamined assumptions and stupidities, and those who hold them to be gospel — no one is safe, not liberal, conservative, religious person, or atheist. Currie (and K) reserve particular contempt for gun nuts, which leads to a spectacular, almost Stephen King-esque ending.
I've loved both of Currie's other books I've read, Flimsy Little Plastic Miracles and Everything Matters!, and I loved this too. In this world of "alternate facts" and constant purposeful manipulation of the truth, even at the highest levels, this novel really lands solidly. But beyond that, as always with Currie's writing, it's just madly entertaining. It's definitely dude-lit, but without the often annoying self-deprecation that hallmarks most dude lit. There are no punches pulled here. And it's terrific. Highly recommended.
In these troubled times, you never know what will be someone's last straw of relative sanity. In the case of K, the protagonist in Ron Currie's funny, ripped-from-modern-culture new novel, The One Eyed Man, it's hand soap. Why hand soap? Because this hand soap insists on calling itself "liquid hand wash." And that just seems absurdly stupid to him.
"Why this bottle of liquid hand wash, of all the nonsense I’d encountered in nearly forty years on the planet, was the thing that suddenly sent me over the edge, I cannot say. I will simply report what I know: that there in Tony’s bathroom I was visited by the hammer-stroke certainty that the culture I counted myself a part of, the culture that had weaned and reared me, had become proudly, willfully, and completely divorced from fact."
If you like this paragraph, and I intensely do, you'll probably really like this novel. These lines form the cornerstone of K's life strategy going forward. He decides, partly because of this moment of clarity and partly because something has snapped in him after his wife's death from cancer, he'll make every decision in his life based only on pure facts, not on emotion, not on manipulation, and not on what others think.
And furthermore, he decides to confront stupidity in all its forms. As one example, he takes on a redneck with a racist "WHOSE NEXT" bumper sticker. This earns him a punch in the face — the first of many beatings he takes as a result of his new policy about resisting bullshit in all its forms. One of the things I love about this novel is that it's partly about the sheer amount of stupidity we have to either deal with or ignore simply to get through an average day. Most people can relate to that.
K's new outlook, combined with the small measure of fame he achieves by breaking up a robbery at a coffee shop at the beginning of the novel, lands him a reality TV show called "America You Stoopid." Here, he takes on all our worst unexamined assumptions and stupidities, and those who hold them to be gospel — no one is safe, not liberal, conservative, religious person, or atheist. Currie (and K) reserve particular contempt for gun nuts, which leads to a spectacular, almost Stephen King-esque ending.
I've loved both of Currie's other books I've read, Flimsy Little Plastic Miracles and Everything Matters!, and I loved this too. In this world of "alternate facts" and constant purposeful manipulation of the truth, even at the highest levels, this novel really lands solidly. But beyond that, as always with Currie's writing, it's just madly entertaining. It's definitely dude-lit, but without the often annoying self-deprecation that hallmarks most dude lit. There are no punches pulled here. And it's terrific. Highly recommended.
March 17, 2017
http://www.themaineedge.com/buzz/the-...
What if honesty isn’t always the best policy?
We claim to want people who will tell us the truth, but what happens when the truth isn’t necessarily what we want to hear? Would you really want to encounter someone who will not only see the bare, raw truth, but then in turn give it to you unvarnished? What happens to basic discourse if the gap between your truth and literal truth is revealed to be much larger than you allow yourself to see?
That’s what Ron Currie gives us in his new novel “The One-Eyed Man.” It’s the story of a man – known simply as K – who finds that after the death of his wife, he can no longer process metaphor. That is, he is compelled to determine (and speak) the absolute baseline of truth, to seek semantic accuracy no matter what it might cost him personally.
Following the passing of his wife Sarah, K is adrift, lost in a world that he doesn’t understand nearly as well as he thought he did. A chance encounter with a physics textbook leads him to a mental place where he seeks out clarity above all else. This forthright literal-mindedness soon causes rifts – his quest for truth confuses friends and enrages strangers.
K’s condition gains notoriety following his intervention in a robbery. So much so that he winds up being brought in by a hedonistic reality show producer named Theodore who wants to craft a show around K’s inability to abide the delusions of others. With K’s new acquaintance Claire – a disaffected, quick-witted former clerk at a Whole Foods analogue – as a sidekick, the nation’s newest reality craze “America, You Stoopid” is born.
K travels the country, speaking to people of all different beliefs and faiths. And inevitably, he drives every one of them to anger at best and crazed violence at worst – simply by refusing to accept their ideas at face value. He simply speaks the truth as he sees it, and again – while people might THINK they want the truth, what they truly seek is affirmation.
Unsurprisingly, the show is a huge hit, with K getting confronted and assaulted by people from all over the societal spectrum. Self-styled progressives and gun-toting extremists, old people and young ones – even men of faith get in on the action. His provocations aren’t consciously deliberate; instead, they spring solely from that quest for clarity.
But when things go too far, K is left to determine what this crusade is really about – and whether he’s willing to sacrifice everything to see it to the conclusion that was all but inevitable from the very beginning.
Sometimes, you read a book and it floors you on every level. It tells a rich and engaging story while also wrestling with complex themes. It features compelling characters. The prose is deft, fluid and vivid. It has humor and pathos and wields them with both surgical precision and shaggy-dog joy.
That’s the kind of book “The One-Eyed Man” is.
Currie has drawn comparisons to literary giants like George Saunders and Kurt Vonnegut – and with good reason. Not only does he create perfectly imperfect characters, but he brings a linguistic fearlessness to his sentences that almost demands savoring; a second thought (or a second reading) often makes the funny lines even funnier and the sad ones even sadder. His sense of the low-key surreal is unmatched in his generation, which in turn contributes mightily to the implementation of imaginative ideas and a bold literary vision. And let’s toss in considerable satiric gifts and some keen observation of humanity while we’re at it.
Do you get it yet? This is a BRILLIANT piece of literary fiction, an exquisite deconstruction of American social mores driven by quirky characters and a propulsive narrative. It’s a work of sharp wit and breathtaking intelligence.
As far as my literary 2017 thus far is concerned, “The One-Eyed Man” truly is king.
What if honesty isn’t always the best policy?
We claim to want people who will tell us the truth, but what happens when the truth isn’t necessarily what we want to hear? Would you really want to encounter someone who will not only see the bare, raw truth, but then in turn give it to you unvarnished? What happens to basic discourse if the gap between your truth and literal truth is revealed to be much larger than you allow yourself to see?
That’s what Ron Currie gives us in his new novel “The One-Eyed Man.” It’s the story of a man – known simply as K – who finds that after the death of his wife, he can no longer process metaphor. That is, he is compelled to determine (and speak) the absolute baseline of truth, to seek semantic accuracy no matter what it might cost him personally.
Following the passing of his wife Sarah, K is adrift, lost in a world that he doesn’t understand nearly as well as he thought he did. A chance encounter with a physics textbook leads him to a mental place where he seeks out clarity above all else. This forthright literal-mindedness soon causes rifts – his quest for truth confuses friends and enrages strangers.
K’s condition gains notoriety following his intervention in a robbery. So much so that he winds up being brought in by a hedonistic reality show producer named Theodore who wants to craft a show around K’s inability to abide the delusions of others. With K’s new acquaintance Claire – a disaffected, quick-witted former clerk at a Whole Foods analogue – as a sidekick, the nation’s newest reality craze “America, You Stoopid” is born.
K travels the country, speaking to people of all different beliefs and faiths. And inevitably, he drives every one of them to anger at best and crazed violence at worst – simply by refusing to accept their ideas at face value. He simply speaks the truth as he sees it, and again – while people might THINK they want the truth, what they truly seek is affirmation.
Unsurprisingly, the show is a huge hit, with K getting confronted and assaulted by people from all over the societal spectrum. Self-styled progressives and gun-toting extremists, old people and young ones – even men of faith get in on the action. His provocations aren’t consciously deliberate; instead, they spring solely from that quest for clarity.
But when things go too far, K is left to determine what this crusade is really about – and whether he’s willing to sacrifice everything to see it to the conclusion that was all but inevitable from the very beginning.
Sometimes, you read a book and it floors you on every level. It tells a rich and engaging story while also wrestling with complex themes. It features compelling characters. The prose is deft, fluid and vivid. It has humor and pathos and wields them with both surgical precision and shaggy-dog joy.
That’s the kind of book “The One-Eyed Man” is.
Currie has drawn comparisons to literary giants like George Saunders and Kurt Vonnegut – and with good reason. Not only does he create perfectly imperfect characters, but he brings a linguistic fearlessness to his sentences that almost demands savoring; a second thought (or a second reading) often makes the funny lines even funnier and the sad ones even sadder. His sense of the low-key surreal is unmatched in his generation, which in turn contributes mightily to the implementation of imaginative ideas and a bold literary vision. And let’s toss in considerable satiric gifts and some keen observation of humanity while we’re at it.
Do you get it yet? This is a BRILLIANT piece of literary fiction, an exquisite deconstruction of American social mores driven by quirky characters and a propulsive narrative. It’s a work of sharp wit and breathtaking intelligence.
As far as my literary 2017 thus far is concerned, “The One-Eyed Man” truly is king.
January 13, 2017
This might just be the black comedy (oh so black) I've been waiting for all my life! When we first meet our hero (known only as K.), he is waiting to cross the street to a coffee shop. But since the recent death of his wife he's had an epiphany having to do with Einstein's theory of relativity, and has become so literal minded that he refuses to cross the street to the coffee shop for hours because the DON'T WALK sign has not changed. A further series of absurd events conspire to make K. the host of a popular reality TV show in which he confronts people with the truth with disastrous and hilarious results. Currie is a master satirist, able to walk a tightrope of comedy over a gaping chasm of heartbreak. I can't wait to read his earlier stuff.
December 31, 2018
This book is fucking awful. By halfway through I started to wretch every time I saw the phrase "Valid point."
There is not one actual sympathetic character in this book. Protagonist/narrator is literally an empty shell, and is so self-serving and pompous with the worst reddit-centrist takes that aren't even presented as the opinions of a character, but the wise objective seer that proves that everybody else, what with their weak *empathy*, and *caring about other people* are wrong.
Also we get a literal manic pixie dream girl, and also at the end the wise teenager trope is trotted out in full force.
And, from the beginning, we get the dead wife. Who we know/learn nothing about. I really get the feeling that the author realized he'd done nothing to characterize this person, who's loss is supposed to be driving this character, so about 2/3rds of the way through the author starts justifying it by saying that the narrator and his wife were growing apart anyways, and *that's* why we don't know anything about her, because the narrator doesn't know anything about her, and that's deep.
So many of the interactions with passing/minor characters just don't make sense at all even. The remind me more of conflicts you see in internet comment sections that actual personal interactions. It's bizarre. Our narrator accosts a large stranger who is wearing mesh shorts (using some pretty offensive language to describe the person, of course), and asks them why "fat men wear athletic shorts." In real life, somebody walking by would just keep walking, and probably shake their head or yell "FUCK YOU!" as they do so. I've been on the subway for a while and in my experience 99% of angry verbal shit in real life is attempted to be delivered as the final word, i.e. yelled as they are walking away.
I've seen other reviews compare this to Chuck Palahniuk, but his books make it clear when they are satirizing something, and do it in a way that doesn't glorify it, IMHO. This is some 6th-grade level sophistication and just overall hack characterization, plotting, and pacing (holy CRAP the pacing is next-level awful.) The writing itself is basic at best.
TECHNICAL BEEF: in the last 10 pages of the book, the narrator refers to his car as a Fit, when everywhere else it is a Fiesta. Keep your subcompact cars straight! C'mon!
edit: Calls his car a Fit twice. WTF. Such a weird dumb mistake to make.
There is not one actual sympathetic character in this book. Protagonist/narrator is literally an empty shell, and is so self-serving and pompous with the worst reddit-centrist takes that aren't even presented as the opinions of a character, but the wise objective seer that proves that everybody else, what with their weak *empathy*, and *caring about other people* are wrong.
Also we get a literal manic pixie dream girl, and also at the end the wise teenager trope is trotted out in full force.
And, from the beginning, we get the dead wife. Who we know/learn nothing about. I really get the feeling that the author realized he'd done nothing to characterize this person, who's loss is supposed to be driving this character, so about 2/3rds of the way through the author starts justifying it by saying that the narrator and his wife were growing apart anyways, and *that's* why we don't know anything about her, because the narrator doesn't know anything about her, and that's deep.
So many of the interactions with passing/minor characters just don't make sense at all even. The remind me more of conflicts you see in internet comment sections that actual personal interactions. It's bizarre. Our narrator accosts a large stranger who is wearing mesh shorts (using some pretty offensive language to describe the person, of course), and asks them why "fat men wear athletic shorts." In real life, somebody walking by would just keep walking, and probably shake their head or yell "FUCK YOU!" as they do so. I've been on the subway for a while and in my experience 99% of angry verbal shit in real life is attempted to be delivered as the final word, i.e. yelled as they are walking away.
I've seen other reviews compare this to Chuck Palahniuk, but his books make it clear when they are satirizing something, and do it in a way that doesn't glorify it, IMHO. This is some 6th-grade level sophistication and just overall hack characterization, plotting, and pacing (holy CRAP the pacing is next-level awful.) The writing itself is basic at best.
TECHNICAL BEEF: in the last 10 pages of the book, the narrator refers to his car as a Fit, when everywhere else it is a Fiesta. Keep your subcompact cars straight! C'mon!
edit: Calls his car a Fit twice. WTF. Such a weird dumb mistake to make.
August 24, 2019
This book is fantastic, a hilariously tragic portrait
of the reality television generation taken to absurd lengths. Ron Currie has not yet written a bad book, and this may be his best.
of the reality television generation taken to absurd lengths. Ron Currie has not yet written a bad book, and this may be his best.
October 27, 2020
K’s not sad about his wife’s horrible death from cancer, not since he realized that Einstein’s writings mean that nobody ever dies and nothing ever ends. Instead, he gets caught up in the little things, and obsesses over the truth. He wonders why a bottle of hand wash doesn’t say “soap”, and goes to the grocery store to demand answers. He pulls people over on the road to question them about their bumper stickers. He’s not trying to be an asshole, but he simply can’t help himself. He stands at a crosswalk for hours because the sign was broken. This causes him to be in the right place at the right time to (sort of) save a coffee shop barista from being mugged. This leads to a stint of minor celebrity, and an offer to lead a candid, live-action reality show where K simply questions people about their deeply-held beliefs. He exposes their hypocrisy in the process, and more often than not, gets beaten up for it.
People’s behavior in this book runs counter to anything that makes sense to me. The fact that it’s satire does not completely absolve it of this crime. I had a hard time seeing the kernels of truth that are supposed to resonate in that art form. The story of his wife’s death was a heartbreaking and human story, but everything after that, sheesh. Claire really gets at the heart of it early on - K is grieving in an elaborate and unconventional way, and his request for truth and clarity with everything is literally impossible. He wants the world to be more simple and straightforward than it can ever be. It’s not just K. Almost everybody he talks to wants to attack him for his honesty, when they should have a coherent rebuttal for a perspective they’ve heard before.
Indeed reasonable answers fall on deaf ears here. “Still” or “All the same” are treated as rejoinders that cancel out a reasonable counter-argument to somebody’s simplistic worldview. K spouts stereotypes that don’t necessarily have basis in his beloved truth, making broad assumptions about, for example, gay men or gun owners. Most desperate is when K just resorts to name-calling. It might be honest, but that’s really not the kind of truth he purports to want.
Claire’s low standards could fill a whole review. They really did Arnulfo wrong by forcing him to confront his father. What the hell was even the point of introducing Russian operatives? And finally, dude didn’t feed his cat, then didn’t go home for the rest of the book. I kept waiting for him to come home to a dead cat, but apparently it was an outside cat and just peachy, so why did you make me stress about it?
People’s behavior in this book runs counter to anything that makes sense to me. The fact that it’s satire does not completely absolve it of this crime. I had a hard time seeing the kernels of truth that are supposed to resonate in that art form. The story of his wife’s death was a heartbreaking and human story, but everything after that, sheesh. Claire really gets at the heart of it early on - K is grieving in an elaborate and unconventional way, and his request for truth and clarity with everything is literally impossible. He wants the world to be more simple and straightforward than it can ever be. It’s not just K. Almost everybody he talks to wants to attack him for his honesty, when they should have a coherent rebuttal for a perspective they’ve heard before.
Indeed reasonable answers fall on deaf ears here. “Still” or “All the same” are treated as rejoinders that cancel out a reasonable counter-argument to somebody’s simplistic worldview. K spouts stereotypes that don’t necessarily have basis in his beloved truth, making broad assumptions about, for example, gay men or gun owners. Most desperate is when K just resorts to name-calling. It might be honest, but that’s really not the kind of truth he purports to want.
Claire’s low standards could fill a whole review. They really did Arnulfo wrong by forcing him to confront his father. What the hell was even the point of introducing Russian operatives? And finally, dude didn’t feed his cat, then didn’t go home for the rest of the book. I kept waiting for him to come home to a dead cat, but apparently it was an outside cat and just peachy, so why did you make me stress about it?
June 13, 2020
For much of the time that I was reading The One-Eyed Man, I didn’t really want to be reading it, which has absolutely nothing to do with the book, which is smart, funny, wry, tender and surprising in all the ways that I expected after having read Ron Curry, Jr.’s Everything Matters!Everything Matters.
But I started reading this book as America began protesting the murder of George Floyd, and I continued to read it through many days when I wished I had an input that wasn’t the voice of a white man from the county I grew up in. Curry is a lot of other things, too, and I mean any of this disparagingly, but as a reader who can count the number of white men I read in a given year on one hand and have fingers left over, I tend to value voices and stories that stretch beyond my understanding of the world. The lens of the white American man has been pretty reliably presented for most of my life, so it’s not where I tend to look.
It was a superficial disappointment and didn’t matter all that much, in the end. Ron Curry Jr.’s sharp eye for the terrors and embarrassments of the modern day is refreshing and validating. It makes you think he might be a difficult kind of guy to get along with, but you’d trust him to write a pretty good social studies book.
There’s a lot of satire here, and the kind of big, improbable-but-still-very-possible action that Curry is so skilled at, and a delightfully literal protagonist with a surprising
The descriptions of smoking are absolutely phenomenal. They’re enough to reform the most staunch non-smokers. This is a writer who has thought very long and hard about each intimate detail of smoking a cigarette. There is one action-packed chapter full of drama that I recall simply as “the cigarette chapter,” because the smoking weaves in and out of the narrative, providing safe and sturdy islands between chaos.
“Clarity? Certainty? Only children and republicans expect life to be that simple.” The One-Eyed Man is a delight, both an escape and heavily grounding, even if my timing was a little off.
But I started reading this book as America began protesting the murder of George Floyd, and I continued to read it through many days when I wished I had an input that wasn’t the voice of a white man from the county I grew up in. Curry is a lot of other things, too, and I mean any of this disparagingly, but as a reader who can count the number of white men I read in a given year on one hand and have fingers left over, I tend to value voices and stories that stretch beyond my understanding of the world. The lens of the white American man has been pretty reliably presented for most of my life, so it’s not where I tend to look.
It was a superficial disappointment and didn’t matter all that much, in the end. Ron Curry Jr.’s sharp eye for the terrors and embarrassments of the modern day is refreshing and validating. It makes you think he might be a difficult kind of guy to get along with, but you’d trust him to write a pretty good social studies book.
There’s a lot of satire here, and the kind of big, improbable-but-still-very-possible action that Curry is so skilled at, and a delightfully literal protagonist with a surprising
The descriptions of smoking are absolutely phenomenal. They’re enough to reform the most staunch non-smokers. This is a writer who has thought very long and hard about each intimate detail of smoking a cigarette. There is one action-packed chapter full of drama that I recall simply as “the cigarette chapter,” because the smoking weaves in and out of the narrative, providing safe and sturdy islands between chaos.
“Clarity? Certainty? Only children and republicans expect life to be that simple.” The One-Eyed Man is a delight, both an escape and heavily grounding, even if my timing was a little off.
July 27, 2017
I had a rough time getting into this book. I started it and put it back on the bookshelf multiple times. Perhaps due to atmospheric changes or something, I finally got into the story and read the book. After his wife died of cancer, K (that is his name) had a large change in his philosophy of life. All things written, such as labels on soap, or verbally stated must be completely accurate. K had no qualms about correcting peoples statements, pointing out the fallacy of what the other person had said. A certain portion of the population adamantly disliked this and physically attacked K. These attacks made the news and soon led to a reality TV show in which K usually got attacked and on occasion, seriously hurt. A young woman named Claire who he had met at a grocery store where she worked had started traveling with K. They met before K had become famous. Claire had a major desire to be a celebrity so when K's name started showing up frequently in the papers she offered to travel with him. Claire became K's support system and although she didn't mind him being clobbered, she didn't want him killed. Their relationship was that of very good friends. K didn't mind one way or the other if he got killed and seemed to instigate arguments on occasion. After making a comment about people that owned guns, and being ignorant of the situation he was in, he managed to anger most of a talk show audience. Ks next appearance was the convention and parade the NRA, National Rifle Association, was putting on in Texas and they had gotten wind of K's comment about gun owners before he even arrived.
I wondered if K had ever stopped to figure out why he was acting as a punching bag to short tempered strangers. I wasn't overly thrilled with the ending of this book but I did understand why he and Claire acted as they did.
I won this book on a Goodreads giveaway. This is my honest review.
I wondered if K had ever stopped to figure out why he was acting as a punching bag to short tempered strangers. I wasn't overly thrilled with the ending of this book but I did understand why he and Claire acted as they did.
I won this book on a Goodreads giveaway. This is my honest review.
April 11, 2025
Part of me feels I should give this book five stars, but, in truth, I have given some of his other books five stars, and I don't know that this one stands up to them in my mind. Of course, that could be an unfair thing to say, judging one book against another, when "The One-Eyed Man" is markedly different than say, "God is Dead" or "Everything Matters!"
Still, I think I shall stay with my 4-star rating, as this tale about K. (just K.--- a nod to Kafka, I'm guessing), a man who can only take things literally since the death of his wife, is thrust into the limelight after saving a young woman from being shot in a coffee shop. His inability to express himself in anything other than the literal sense leads him to a kind of blunt honesty that is unpleasant to most people, but which ultimately garners him a reality TV show. In early parts of the book, K. seems a very passive narrator, unemotional, simply rattling off facts, the only thing he can trust, even at the expense of his own safety. He feels equal parts a literary descendent of Chance the Gardener and Ignatius J. Reilly (Currie has admitted "A Confederacy of Dunces" served as inspiration).
There is much about the book I like. Currie dedicates it (sincerely or cheekily, perhaps both) to "My Fellow Americans". There is a good deal of dark satire in the novel, much of it spot on, some a little over-the-top. I do feel the story slows a bit in the fifty pages or so, but the reader will still hang in to see how it all resolves.
I enjoy Currie, and am always rooting for Maine authors, and despite some flaws (disappearing characters, some heavy handed scenarios that feel like part of a checklist to satirize), "The One-Eyed Man" is a very good book, and Currie is a very good writer.
Still, I think I shall stay with my 4-star rating, as this tale about K. (just K.--- a nod to Kafka, I'm guessing), a man who can only take things literally since the death of his wife, is thrust into the limelight after saving a young woman from being shot in a coffee shop. His inability to express himself in anything other than the literal sense leads him to a kind of blunt honesty that is unpleasant to most people, but which ultimately garners him a reality TV show. In early parts of the book, K. seems a very passive narrator, unemotional, simply rattling off facts, the only thing he can trust, even at the expense of his own safety. He feels equal parts a literary descendent of Chance the Gardener and Ignatius J. Reilly (Currie has admitted "A Confederacy of Dunces" served as inspiration).
There is much about the book I like. Currie dedicates it (sincerely or cheekily, perhaps both) to "My Fellow Americans". There is a good deal of dark satire in the novel, much of it spot on, some a little over-the-top. I do feel the story slows a bit in the fifty pages or so, but the reader will still hang in to see how it all resolves.
I enjoy Currie, and am always rooting for Maine authors, and despite some flaws (disappearing characters, some heavy handed scenarios that feel like part of a checklist to satirize), "The One-Eyed Man" is a very good book, and Currie is a very good writer.
May 23, 2022
This book is about a 39-year old guy name 'K' who, after the loss of his wife, is having a bit of a nervous breakdown. He starts taking things really literal and asking irritating questions to people. At one point he interrupts a robbery and gets shot and becomes a hero. Well, he gets a reality show where where he asks people questions until they beat him up. It's like Ali G, but not funny. It's like Jerry Springer, too, in that it always culminates in violence. I totally get why people wanted to punch him. I was just reading this and I wanted to punch him, too.
The biggest turn off was his "both sides" style of truth telling. He even goes on a Bill Maher-style show similar to "Politically Incorrect". He makes lame arguments like "you say you against the corporations, but you work for a corporation." Or telling Planned Parenthood that the Pro-life side make a few good points. Sure, but one side wants it to be a choice and the other side wants to force the pro-choice side to live by their law.
Towards the end, "K" finds himself in a Waco-style compound about to be raided by the government. Here we go into a bit of depth in understanding the militiamen. This did work and I wish we spent more time understanding his interrogated guests.
I would say this book is about the loss of a loved one and how we process it and deal with the survivors guilt. Also something something both sides-ism.
The biggest turn off was his "both sides" style of truth telling. He even goes on a Bill Maher-style show similar to "Politically Incorrect". He makes lame arguments like "you say you against the corporations, but you work for a corporation." Or telling Planned Parenthood that the Pro-life side make a few good points. Sure, but one side wants it to be a choice and the other side wants to force the pro-choice side to live by their law.
Towards the end, "K" finds himself in a Waco-style compound about to be raided by the government. Here we go into a bit of depth in understanding the militiamen. This did work and I wish we spent more time understanding his interrogated guests.
I would say this book is about the loss of a loved one and how we process it and deal with the survivors guilt. Also something something both sides-ism.
July 12, 2017
K is a heartbroken man who is grieving over the sudden loss of his wife and begins a aggressive truth telling campaign that pisses people off and ultimately causes them to want to kill him. Along with former "Total Foods" clerk Claire, K travels the country doing a reality TV show called "America, you Stoopid," in which nearly every episode culminates in him getting beat up by some stranger he has pushed too far with his excessive logic. Where it goes after that would be giving away too much.
The One Eyed Man says things in a way I wish I could say them in real life. Like when somebody is saying something stupid and you want to pick apart their argument but it's 1. Not worth the effort and 2. just too frustrating to put all that logic into words. I know I can't always get my point out with my words and often prefer not to (see: reason 1). But K rips apart some pretty dumb emotion based arguments and you can see how that starts to get upsetting. He is not so much immoral but sort of a benign amoral character. He becomes lovable only when you realize he doesn't mean anything by anything.
Admittedly, I was almost turned away by this book at the beginning when K's character quirks initially came off a little unnaturally and made him unlikable to me. But I'm glad I got past it because this really was a delightful book.
The One Eyed Man says things in a way I wish I could say them in real life. Like when somebody is saying something stupid and you want to pick apart their argument but it's 1. Not worth the effort and 2. just too frustrating to put all that logic into words. I know I can't always get my point out with my words and often prefer not to (see: reason 1). But K rips apart some pretty dumb emotion based arguments and you can see how that starts to get upsetting. He is not so much immoral but sort of a benign amoral character. He becomes lovable only when you realize he doesn't mean anything by anything.
Admittedly, I was almost turned away by this book at the beginning when K's character quirks initially came off a little unnaturally and made him unlikable to me. But I'm glad I got past it because this really was a delightful book.
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