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The First Bad Man - Whole Book (Chapters 8 - Epilogue) (Feb 2019)
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My reaction was far more positive than most of the Goodreads reviewers. It was "an easy read." While "our hero" Cheryl had bizarre fantasies, they don't seem outside human experience. They're fantasies, they don't need to be realistic. Her crush on Phillip did a good job of capturing the dissonance between the interior monolog and the outside world.Her sparring with Clee was sweet; Clee "doesn't like women," so she thinks about them all the time and hits them. It reminded me a lot of Clouseau and Kato.
The repeating theme that the world is different than what you think is a useful and needed point. And, to wrap it up, the author finished with a "sweetie": in fact, the future was exactly what Cheryl thought would happen.
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I also found it an easy, feel-good kind of read, although unlike any other books I would describe that way. Or, I should say, there was more complexity to it. Would you agree/disagree?
Yes, July lets in a LOT of messiness in Cheryl's inner fantasies that a more conventional author would bowdlerize. The other characters follow more conventional arcs, acting against Cheryl's perceptions.
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Did people think the ending was supposed to be true, with real life finally mimicking her fantasies, as Mark said? Or was it intentionally ambiguous?
Whitney,"Bad at life" pretty much sums Cheryl up! And her decency is what earns her the ending - you KNOW how she recieved Cree when she came back.
I liked Cheryl, her messiness, her lack of confidence and her good soul. I was also thinking that so many women experience someone like Philip, yearn for love and intimacy but then love comes from unexpected sources. It was an easy read and I laughed a lot and cared about Cheryl a lot. I thought initially that Cheryl was vulnerable but then she has so much strength in her. Was the ending believable? I am not sure but it was the happy ending for me.
Aga, believable? Who is to say where a single pachinko ball will go? Satisfying? Mmmm.
Up until the pregnancy, I found the book weird and creepy and disgusting and depressing. It was better after that. Rather that repeat what I said in my review, I'll just link it -- https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...
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For me, July created a very disorienting reaction--Cheryl's lust becomes if like a volcano waiting to explode and yet she can only express it using the borrowed, objectifying language of Philip. At first, one wonders whether the sparring with Clee is going to turn into actual physical abuse. You're thrust into the middle of these powerful, but uncertain intimacies and the awkwardness of physical connection (that attempted "coupling" between Philip and Cheryl toward the end is sort of sad and yet kind of perfunctory at the same time). The happy(ish) ending almost feels like the cherry on top of a melted sundae.
As LindaJ^ aptly pointed out, there's a shift once the pregnancy takes place. It's almost like July asks the reader to trust her: "Hey, I'm going to do these weird narrative things to you, but in the end, you'll feel good, but only if we go through it all together."
Feeling uneasy in the first half of the book is an understatement! This book reminds me of an art show I went to where the artist was the fiancée of the son of good friends. Like the first half of this book, I found it rather repulsive and wondered why one would expose oneself like this to everyone? So I'm thinking this book, like that art show, is exposing me to a generational difference. Millennials, in general, seem to me more willing to share, and share everything, what they feel and what happens to them with anyone and everyone than the generations that came before.
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It almost sounds like you reacted to the book as if it were real, which, I would think, is sort of a compliment to July in that she was able to make it believably repulsive. I'm not saying the ability to offend, repulse, or disgust a reader is necessarily an indication of talent per se, but I do think there are generational differences that she may be tapping into (e.g., the language and imagery of pornography and its dehumanizing effects; a whole generation is growing up with violence/pornography/name-your-taboo available 24 hours per day free from the palm of their hands if given smart phone access or friends who have such access).
I'm just thinking through this as spurred by your comment, but I guess what we're really talking about is both social and personal boundaries. I tend to like art that pushes these boundaries, but not solely for the sake of shock or discomfort.
I also felt uneasy for most of the book actually. The sexual fantasies were definitely the high of this discomfort for me as they were just so strange and not really very satisfying for Cheryl or as a reader either. But even during and after the pregnancy, Clee's entire behavior was very awkward for me.I also agree the ending seemed ambiguous and not really an explicit happy ending. It could just be in Cheryl's imagination once again.
Linda, that is a great analogy. I have also experienced a few very strange art shows and performance art shows that have pushed my conception of art and beauty.
I don't know how or why this book worked for me, but it did. Cheryl didn't even make me that uneasy —amazingly enough — because she seemed so otherworldly (not really the word I'm looking for but oh well) that all the weirdness seem to roll right off her. She even thrived on it. So I was like, if it doesn't bother her, why should I let it bother me?My favorite example of Cheryl's glib weirdness about herself and her situation, the following quote:
"Anyone who questions what satisfaction can be gained from a not-so-bright girlfriend half one’s age has never had one."
(Amen, Cheryl.)
Hope it’s okay to quote from a different thread: Hugh wrote: "At first it seemed very funny, and I loved Cheryl's narrative tone, but once we got into darker territory it made me rather uneasy, and made me question what July is trying to achieve..."
That’s my experience as well. Except it stayed funny for me throughout, even the really dark territory came with laugh out loud inner thoughts that are so funny, I wanted to share them all over social media.
I couldn’t take the book very seriously until close to the end, I kept wondering what makes this literary. This feels like a book version of those sexually explicit, self-mocking, entertaining TV shows.
I think what made me uncomfortable is also what made this more than low-effort entertainment for me (not that there’s anything wrong with low-effort entertainments). My reactions or indignations changed while reading the same set of transgressions replayed between different people, wearing different roles, age, gender, social positions, relational status, occupations, etc. Would something be somehow more legitimage in therapeutic setting? Is something okay to do to a patient but not the therapist? Is it worse if an old man did this to a young girl? Are Clee’s parents’ attitude somehow more understandable once they signalled they’re only touchy about her relationship with their employee? Is Cheryl’s betrayal of her boss comparable to Phillip’s betrayal of Cheryl? Why do I react differently based on gender or age? Why do I think it’s bad for him to do it but not her?
In the end, this very funny book made me see, and question, and become uncomfortable with my own attitudes regarding gender roles and sexual relations. To badly misquote Kafka, it’s a[n in]decent axe for that frozen sea within me. (Sorry!)
This was one of those strange reading experiences I can't explain - I listened to about 2 hours of the audiobook and liked it (including the author's narration) but felt like I was done at that point. The notes were well-played, but I didn't need to hear them played over and over. For me, it should have been a long short story. I may try it in print in the far-ish future to see if I have the same reaction.
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You've summed up nicely some of my reaction to the book as well, although I don't see it as an inappropriate tone, rather one that comes at you as a bit of a sneak attack. Like a pixie assassin. There are so many questions and considerations lurking below what Cheryl tries to maintain (desperately at times) as a breezy tone.
I like your question about how transgressions are more or less acceptable depending on who's doing them. I think that would make an excellent thesis statement for an academic analysis of this book. As you said, both Philip and Cheryl are having affairs with minors, something I didn't even judge Cheryl for until you brought it up. Maybe because Cheryl has almost no power in their relationship, whereas Philip is certainly predatory.
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Like others, my first impression was that Clee's parents were upset about her being a lesbian and not that it was her being with Cheryl that actually upset them (age doesn't seem to be a primary concern, but then Cheryl is so naive that she almost seems childish and you forget her actual age).
Lots about how we see and relate to others. Cheryl goes through nearly the entire book thinking her volunteer gardener is homeless!
I reread the Epilogue the other night and it actually brought up a lot of questions for me. It present an older child (presumably Jack) coming back to the U.S. from China and being met by both Cheryl and Clee. It sounds like he hasn't seen them in quite a while and isn't even sure how to refer to Cheryl. We don't know with whom he's traveling just that it's someone older who tries to encourage/guide him. I'm not sure how I missed this in both my readings, but how did other interpret this? Does Jack end up going to Thailand with Phillip despite Phillip's distancing/disavowal of the child? Does he get put up for adoption? It feels like a reunion or a coming home. It fits in with the type of future projections/daydreams that Cheryl has throughout the book, but then what is she envisioning as his future or is this just some sort of film-ending feel-good moment for her?
Whitney wrote: "both Philip and Cheryl are having affairs with minors, something I didn't even judge Cheryl for until you brought it up. Maybe because Cheryl has almost no power in their relationship, whereas Philip is certainly predatory..."Thanks Whitney. I forgot how old Clee was, I went back to look and turns out she’s 21. Not exactly a minor, then again, how rigid are these ethical boundaries? Is it as simple as a numerical age?
Speaking of ... I thought Cheryl started out sounding like the predatory one, like a stalker! I got uncomfortable from the get go, like I shouldn’t think this is funny, but maybe it’s not as threatening if the “obsessive stalker” is just an adorably naive woman ...
Marc wrote: “...this just some sort of film-ending feel-good moment for her?” “This” is actually tied up with how I view the whole book, or the trustworthiness of our narrator, Cheryl. Can anyone be *that* naive, or is she preemptively twisting the narrative into something that makes her seem less blameworthy?
If you take her version of the events literally, then everything just happened to Cheryl without her design and she copes. But, she did have some kind of predatory “design” on Phillip in the beginning (I thought she sounded like a stalker, maybe a funny one, but still...). And Cheryl found out her therapist was using her to “get” her love interest through the ridiculous birth-therapy — lo and behold — Cheryl turns her life around by going through someone else’s birth, “learns” to “abandon” Clee like how her therapist “abandoned” her, from the position of someone who diagnosed Clee’s mental health crisis (depression,) AND she gets her original love interest through this whole thing. Basically another version of what her therapist did, but she’s entirely, conveniently blameless. It’s a little too meta, too improbable.
And of course, Cheryl filters all her actions and choices through what she had seen, watched, overheard. She’s copying her therapist, copying self-defense move from videos, copying [bad] masculinity from people she watched ... Almost as though she’s just a mirror with no agency, no volition.
Clee’s parents are pretty inexcusable either way. In what world is it okay to force your staff to take your extremely difficult “child” into her home? They more or less abandoned her when she got pregnant, the mother was extremely selfish and abusive about it when Clee called from the hospital. The turnaround when Cheryl kicked Clee out sounded like some kind of power-tripping after things got out of control for them — like they thought they were competing against Cheryl and that’s their way of declaring they “won”.
When July (Cheryl?) came right out to describe the final scene:
He ran toward her and she ran toward him and as they got closer they both started to laugh. They were laughing and laughing and running and running and running and music played, brass instruments, a soaring anthem, not a dry eye in the house, the credits rolled. Applause like rain.
I felt like it confirms we are not to take Cheryl’s version seriously. The event is filtered into entertainment, like a movie, or TV show, with contrive soap-opera like setup. We’re made aware that we are watching someone enacting a script ...
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The event being "filtered into entertainment" (and many others like her entering rooms sideways to lead with her good feature--her ears) reminded me a bit of how mediated life has become. Much like how social media foists the individual into having a public persona (Cheryl certainly wants to be seen in a certain light and one that is so at odds with reality as to be comedic).
Marc wrote: "The event being "filtered into entertainment" (and many others like her entering rooms sideways to lead with her good feature--her ears) reminded me a bit of how mediated life has become. Much like how social media foists the individual into having a public persona (Cheryl certainly wants to be seen in a certain light and one that is so at odds with reality as to be comedic)..."I thought something about this book reminds me of Delillo’s “Most Photographed Barn in America”...
There is something terrifyingly helpless about not being able to see your life as anything other than popular media tropes...
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Disturbingly well-stated, Lia!
More than a few readers have pointed to being turned off or just about done with the book by about chapter 6 or 7 in terms of the humor and or the "ick-factor" getting to them. After having read the whole book, do you think this was merely the author pushing things for too long or too far, or did you see it as necessary to make the transition to the second half of the book more effective?
As I’ve said above, the strength of this book (for me) is precisely what made me uncomfortable — you get tired of *just* being entertained at some point, and you start to ask what are the jokes hiding. And then you see for yourself how “inauthentic” this is — she owns nothing. She allows Rick to care for her garden but only because someone else set that in motion and she didn’t want to disturb other people’s arrangement. She sleeps with Clee, but as Phil, not herself. She also disowns personal responsibility on other people’s behalf, and habitually explains her own icky actions using her observation of other people being degrading but excused as jokes.
This “insight” of Cheryl is telling:
This had been my plan, to use the same word that he had used to describe my necklace at the fundraiser. He had lifted the heavy beads off my chest and said, “This is phenomenal, where’d you get it?” and I said, “From a vendor at the farmer’s market,” and then he used the beads to pull me toward him. “Hey,” he said, “I like this, this is handy.” An outsider, such as Nakako the grant writer, might have thought this moment was degrading, but I knew the degradation was just a joke; he was mocking the kind of man who would do something like that. He’s been doing these things for years; once, during a board meeting, he insisted my blouse wasn’t zipped up in back, and then he unzipped it, laughing. I’d laughed too, immediately reaching around to close it back up. The joke was, Can you believe people? The tacky kinds of things they do? But it had another layer to it, because imitating crass people was kind of liberating—like pretending to be a child or a crazy person. It was something you could do only with someone you really trusted, someone who knew how capable and good you actually were.
It’s like July is poking out of the backstage curtain to ask “get it? Get it?” We’ve been trained, habituated, to be so urbane as to laugh at even really icky things, because that shows you’re “in” on the joke, you’re intimate, part of the herd. Cheryl is so lonely, so bent on belonging to the herd even as it excludes her and takes advantage of her, she learns to see any sort of transgressions and degradation as implying trust and belonging.
July doesn’t write an essay to tell you this, she writes a novel funny enough to get you reading, but disturbing enough to make you ask questions; it needs to pushed far enough for you to see there’s something disturbing behind the funnies. I thought that’s really well done, but still icky kind of well done.
Thanks Lia for explaining that. The problem for me is that I never found the book funny - just disgusting. Perhaps this is because my only social media is Goodreads so I did not consider the first half of the book entertaining in any sense. I only kept going because of the upcoming book discussion. So I guess I was not the audience for which the author wrote the book.
LindaJ^ wrote: "The problem for me is that I never found the book funny - just disgusting. Perhaps this is because my only social media is Goodreads so I did not consider the first ..."Thanks Lynda for sharing your perspective. I blame an elder brother who kept escalating the dining table ick-war growing up >_<
But I also “discovered” Goodreads after being fed up with other social media platforms that were badly influencing my faith in humanity. I immediately identified July’s “self-deprecating jokes” with those anonymous confessions of escalating transgressions, that get applauded for dark humor, that kept one-upping each others. I bet July would be popular on 4chan. I didn’t even think about how I was (possibly unjustifiably) lumping this book with that “online dark humor tradition”.
With all that said, compared to some of what I’ve seen, July’s book is definitely more on the “incredibly funny” side than “dark.”
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Lia, that's great analysis, I think you're dead on. Your comments remind of Gone Girl's main character talking about the pressure to be "the cool girl", with the low-level abuse and erasure that entails. In that case, some truth coming from a sociopath instead of someone as self-deprecating and apparently clueless as Cheryl.
The section you quoted reminded me of a sexual harassment film I recall. It showed two workers at a bar, the guy ostensibly commiserating with the women about how customers would do inappropriate things, such as grabbing her *like this*.
I agree July would be popular on 4-chan, a group unlikely to look below the surface of her characters' near worship of narcissistic men.
I also didn't find the book funny, and I see some point in the icky-ness of chapter 6 and 7, but for me it was to much. Not, that I could not take anymore of it, but I started to read faster and started skimming to see if the book was maybe turning in a different direction.Cheryls self-deprication seemed to me like a self-defense mechanism. If you do not take yourself seriously, you also have not to take your problems seriously. She does not take the lead in her life, but just goes with whatever life throws at her - a flatmate, a relationship, a baby, she just accepts it.
Thanks Whitney. I haven’t read Gone Girl yet, but that remark got me thinking — Cheryl really reminds me of the naive yet ingratiating “donors” in Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go: we know there’s something both familiar and very wrong (uncanny) going on, you can’t believe they’re embracing it without a fight, their happiness or cheerful acceptance itself is disturbing. (Like Cheryl’s.)That low (?) level abuse (or demands for participants to signal that the know the abuses are only jokes) is why this book reminded me of 4chan, I didn’t mean July’s book would be popular there though, (they REALLY don’t like female authors,) I just think her ability to make even really grim, tragic, grotesque, transgressive, disastrous human affairs funny would make her fit right in. The home-birth chapter had me laughing so hard I had tears in my eyes ... from the funnies, not empathy. The whole time I was thinking I’m going to hell for this: it’s wrong to laugh about something so horrible! But ... but ... the language ... the absurdities ... I can’t help it!
And it’s the same kind of indecent-but-still-funny transgressive oneupmanship that seems to characterize 4chan for me (a contest I bet July can easily win.)
Sorry Kristina, I hope my false promise in the other thread can be seen as a harmless joke :pKristina wrote: “She does not take the lead in her life, but just goes with whatever life throws at her - a flatmate, a relationship, a baby, she just accepts it. ”
Do you think she became more assertive when she suddenly remembered the “pea soup” coloring signals crisis?
“Call 911,” I said.
Clee lifted her sleepy head and Rick froze.
The phone was by his knee; he picked it up slowly.
“Pea soup. We learned that in class. It means something bad. Call 911.”
Everybody was just doing whatever to cope, she’s the one who suddenly broke out of her infuriatingly ingratiating shell to take charge and shocked everybody, I thought that was a nice (?) change.
She also really wanted the baby, though she suppressed that to avoid conflicts until Clee herself decides to keep him. Still, she admitted how much she hated, judged those would-be adoptive parents.
She also told Clee to call her parents, and told Clee to hang up on her mom — something our aggressive-Clee never dared to do.
She also kicked Clee out.
She also finally “got” Phillip, but I suspect she sees his inconsiderate rejection of paternity for what it is — without the “insider joke” sugar-coating.
I like to think the insufferable cheery endurance in the first half of the book made this new found assertiveness real and earned for me. Without that, there is nothing particularly virtuous about it.
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- When you read about non-icky things like Cheryl's intricate one-set-of-dishes-only cleaning method for the kitchen, did you just think it was odd or stupid?
(I found it funny because I do less-drastic-but-similar things like try to use the same glass for every drink for a day... or two... )
Not to be misunderstood. I liked the second half of the book as well as the beginning. It clearly is still in my mind, so it is not bad and I am .. confused.. by the book, which can be good thing.Mhm, I think for me it was just odd. Bit extreme, but harmless and odd, nothing I have not seen in a similar way with some flatmates. The idea, that everything has its place, reminded me of the KonMari Method, again also an exaggerated version. Anyone had similar associations?
Marc, you ask When you read about non-icky things like Cheryl's intricate one-set-of-dishes-only cleaning method for the kitchen, did you just think it was odd or stupid? My response is that it was very obsessive compulsive but it was not funny and certainly not as odd as other aspects of Cheryl's life. Kristina, I've never heard of "KonMari Method" so I had to google it. At best, Cheryl's method would seem to be extreme konmari.
Whitney and Lia, I've also never heard of 4chan and don't think I want or need to learn about it!
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No, no you don't. Unless you want a deep dive into the MRM, incels, and other extreme misogynistic and racist groups. It's sort of like diving into an outhouse.
Whitney wrote: "No, no you don't. Unless you want a deep dive into the MRM, incels, and other extreme misogynistic and racist groups. It's sort of like diving into an outhouse. ..."Whitney, what a perfect description - an internet outhouse. You've got my metaphor of the year award :)
Whitney, what does MRM stand for? and what are incels? I do think I am learning a lot about online culture through this discussion!
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Oh, god, I'm so sorry for bringing this cesspool to your attention. MRM = Men's Rights Movement, also know as MRA, Men's Rights Activism. Summary - men are the real victims in society, because feminism.
Incel = "Involuntary Celibate", what used to be known as "guys who can't get laid". A couple of them have committed random mass murder as some kind of protest. Summary - men are the real victims in society, because feminism.
And social media provides a platform to spread the rage without, at least on first glance, identification.
Possible topics of discussion (feel free to comment on these or anything that moves/moved you):
- Expectations going into this book (or based on the first few chapters) vs after finishing the novel
- Your subjective reactions (laughter, disbelief, disgust, annoyance, enjoyment, sympathy, etc.)
- Identity (social, professional, gender, and sexual roles)
- Writing style