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Bob Honey #1
Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff
Bob Honey—a modern American man, entrepreneur, and part-time assassin. He’s just a guy trying to make it through each day while grappling with loneliness, alienation, violence—uncertain of his place in a culture that considers branding more important than being.
Bob Honey has a hard time connecting with other people. He dreams he is sleeping with his ex-wife every night, and imagines waking up unhappy next to her every morning. Advertising, entertainment, and commerce rule his days; he’s sick of being marketed to every moment, but is unable to pry himself away from the constant feed. A paragon of American entrepreneurialism, Bob sells septic tanks to Jehovah’s Witnesses and arranges colorful pyrotechnic displays for foreign dictators. He’s also a part-time assassin for an off-the-books program run by the CIA that targets the elderly, the infirm, and others who drain this consumption-driven society of its resources.
When a nosy journalist starts asking questions, Bob can’t decide if it’s a chance to form some sort of new friendship or if it’s the beginning of the end for him. With treason on everyone’s lips, terrorism in everyone’s sights, and American political life racing to ever-lower standards, Bob decides it’s time to make a change. If he doesn’t get killed by his mysterious controllers or exposed in the rapacious media first.
Bob Honey has a hard time connecting with other people. He dreams he is sleeping with his ex-wife every night, and imagines waking up unhappy next to her every morning. Advertising, entertainment, and commerce rule his days; he’s sick of being marketed to every moment, but is unable to pry himself away from the constant feed. A paragon of American entrepreneurialism, Bob sells septic tanks to Jehovah’s Witnesses and arranges colorful pyrotechnic displays for foreign dictators. He’s also a part-time assassin for an off-the-books program run by the CIA that targets the elderly, the infirm, and others who drain this consumption-driven society of its resources.
When a nosy journalist starts asking questions, Bob can’t decide if it’s a chance to form some sort of new friendship or if it’s the beginning of the end for him. With treason on everyone’s lips, terrorism in everyone’s sights, and American political life racing to ever-lower standards, Bob decides it’s time to make a change. If he doesn’t get killed by his mysterious controllers or exposed in the rapacious media first.
176 pages, Hardcover
First published March 1, 2018
About the author
Sean Penn
15 books55 followersSean Penn won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performances in Mystic River and Milk, and received Academy Award nominations as Best Actor for Dead Man Walking, Sweet and Lowdown, and I Am Sam. He has worked as an actor, writer, producer and director on over one hundred theater and film productions.
His journalism has appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, The Nation, and The Huffington Post.
Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff is his first novel.
His journalism has appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, The Nation, and The Huffington Post.
Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff is his first novel.
Ratings & Reviews
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 216 reviews
November 16, 2018
One of the worst things I have ever seen in my life; and I work as a paramedic.
The only positive thing I can take away from this novel is the slowly developing community of survivors who have equally suffered at Sean Penns attempt at literature. We stand in solidarity. This was utter garbage.
The only positive thing I can take away from this novel is the slowly developing community of survivors who have equally suffered at Sean Penns attempt at literature. We stand in solidarity. This was utter garbage.
April 9, 2018
Find all of my reviews at: http://52bookminimum.blogspot.com/
When Laura Ingraham opened her big fat trap in order to insult someone for about the eleven-thousandth time by telling LeBron James he should just “shut up and dribble,” my reaction was pretty much identical to the King’s . . . .
I figured the low-star reactions to Penn penning a book might stem from the same idea. Yeah, notsamuch. Bob Honey truly is godawful. The most over written stream-of-consciousness style piece of garbage I may have ever laid my eyes on that at the end of the day amounts to nothing but this . . .
“Tweet me, bitch. I dare you.”
While I am definitely not a believer in trying to tell someone (famous or not) that they aren’t allowed to voice their opinion, I am a firm believer in . . . .
Pappy Pariah, I’m sorry to be the one to break it to you, but you write for shit. Maybe you should explore the world of giffery next time.
Endless thanks to the library who saved me from having to spend any of my hard-earned money on this tripe.
When Laura Ingraham opened her big fat trap in order to insult someone for about the eleven-thousandth time by telling LeBron James he should just “shut up and dribble,” my reaction was pretty much identical to the King’s . . . .
I figured the low-star reactions to Penn penning a book might stem from the same idea. Yeah, notsamuch. Bob Honey truly is godawful. The most over written stream-of-consciousness style piece of garbage I may have ever laid my eyes on that at the end of the day amounts to nothing but this . . .
“Tweet me, bitch. I dare you.”
While I am definitely not a believer in trying to tell someone (famous or not) that they aren’t allowed to voice their opinion, I am a firm believer in . . . .
Pappy Pariah, I’m sorry to be the one to break it to you, but you write for shit. Maybe you should explore the world of giffery next time.
Endless thanks to the library who saved me from having to spend any of my hard-earned money on this tripe.
April 4, 2018
This sublime novel sensationally structures the shattering of the soullessness secreting itself in the sorrowful and shameful sounding of solicitudinous, solitary sentience.
It emerges as an emotionally evocative evolution of the emblazing engagment embodied in the escheatment enlivened in the eschaton, engaging and rife with the ectopic ecstasy of expectant enjoyment.
It has a foundational funness that fulfills itself in the formation of the firmament of fantasy, full of the phantasmagoric and fundamental fjord of familiar funditry formed in the fuel of fire.
I highly recommend it to the reader reduced to the resounding redundancy resplendent in the ripe repositories of the restful repose of reason and recognizance and ready to reach and wrangle among the ranks of ridiculous of rascals and rakes.
It emerges as an emotionally evocative evolution of the emblazing engagment embodied in the escheatment enlivened in the eschaton, engaging and rife with the ectopic ecstasy of expectant enjoyment.
It has a foundational funness that fulfills itself in the formation of the firmament of fantasy, full of the phantasmagoric and fundamental fjord of familiar funditry formed in the fuel of fire.
I highly recommend it to the reader reduced to the resounding redundancy resplendent in the ripe repositories of the restful repose of reason and recognizance and ready to reach and wrangle among the ranks of ridiculous of rascals and rakes.
April 30, 2018
First things first: I did not like the book. I didn't hate it either.
But the hysterically negative reviews it’s been getting (with such headlines as “Repellant and Stupid on So Many Levels” from the Guardian; “Sean Penn the Novelist Must Be Stopped” from Huffington Post, complaints on Goodreads about extremes of alliteration, etc.) are way out of bounds. Honestly, I think if Sean Penn’s name were taken off the novel and Chuck Palahniuk, Brett Easton Ellis, Sam Lipsyte, Thomas Pynchon, etc., a lot of one-star reviews would probably go up to three- or four-stars, and maybe even a few fives. Is the writing style unpleasant and hard to take? Yeah. But it’s no more so than Nabokov (who is incredibly beloved, damned if I can figure out why), James Joyce, Roberto Bolano, some works by Mario Vargas Llosa, James Joyce, J.P. Donleavy,
Are there flashes of misogyny? Yes. But the, consider all the admiration Junot Diaz gets for novels and stories that are often little more than running scorecards of how many sluts Yunior, his ever-present protagonist, brags about boning. Are there "eew" moments here? Yes. There are also plenty in Cormac McCarthy’s work. Can the language sound a bit annoying and confusing? Yeah, but no worse than David Mitchel, Andrei Bely, Malcom Lowry. Etc., etc., etc.
Seriously . . . I think people need to calm down and if they don’t like Bob Honey, either don’t review it or at least give it an honest review and explain why they don’t like the approach in general, say why they’re ok with the approach but point out flaws in Penn’s execution, etc. Jeff Giles of the NY Times took the latter approach in one of the more legitimate reviews I’ve seen.
But to Clare Fallon of Huffington Post, if Sean Penn the novelist must be stopped, then we’ve got a hell of a lot of others who must also be stopped (see names mentioned above). To Sian Cain of the Guradian, if you want to see stupid on so many levels, check Nabokov’s “Invitation to a Beheading” and if replant is your thing, take a swing at Cormac McCarthy’s “Blood Meridian.” And if you don’t like Sean Penn as a person, what he has done in life, what he advocates, etc., then fine, write about that and swing away. But cheap-shot pseudo book reviews diminish the reviewer, not the author.
But the hysterically negative reviews it’s been getting (with such headlines as “Repellant and Stupid on So Many Levels” from the Guardian; “Sean Penn the Novelist Must Be Stopped” from Huffington Post, complaints on Goodreads about extremes of alliteration, etc.) are way out of bounds. Honestly, I think if Sean Penn’s name were taken off the novel and Chuck Palahniuk, Brett Easton Ellis, Sam Lipsyte, Thomas Pynchon, etc., a lot of one-star reviews would probably go up to three- or four-stars, and maybe even a few fives. Is the writing style unpleasant and hard to take? Yeah. But it’s no more so than Nabokov (who is incredibly beloved, damned if I can figure out why), James Joyce, Roberto Bolano, some works by Mario Vargas Llosa, James Joyce, J.P. Donleavy,
Are there flashes of misogyny? Yes. But the, consider all the admiration Junot Diaz gets for novels and stories that are often little more than running scorecards of how many sluts Yunior, his ever-present protagonist, brags about boning. Are there "eew" moments here? Yes. There are also plenty in Cormac McCarthy’s work. Can the language sound a bit annoying and confusing? Yeah, but no worse than David Mitchel, Andrei Bely, Malcom Lowry. Etc., etc., etc.
Seriously . . . I think people need to calm down and if they don’t like Bob Honey, either don’t review it or at least give it an honest review and explain why they don’t like the approach in general, say why they’re ok with the approach but point out flaws in Penn’s execution, etc. Jeff Giles of the NY Times took the latter approach in one of the more legitimate reviews I’ve seen.
But to Clare Fallon of Huffington Post, if Sean Penn the novelist must be stopped, then we’ve got a hell of a lot of others who must also be stopped (see names mentioned above). To Sian Cain of the Guradian, if you want to see stupid on so many levels, check Nabokov’s “Invitation to a Beheading” and if replant is your thing, take a swing at Cormac McCarthy’s “Blood Meridian.” And if you don’t like Sean Penn as a person, what he has done in life, what he advocates, etc., then fine, write about that and swing away. But cheap-shot pseudo book reviews diminish the reviewer, not the author.
March 28, 2018
To say this book is terrible is an understatement. He uses fancy words incorrectly in an attempt to sound intelligent and cultured but it sounds like an AI bot trying to use language by stringing together random words from a thesaurus out of context. It was disjointed and painful to read.
March 23, 2019
According to Wikipedia, this is the most recent book to be considered the Worst Book Ever Written and that's something I've just got to see for myself.
(added to my to-read shelf Feb 2019, read in March 2019)
All right, so what's the verdict? It is bad. Really bad. But the worst book ever? That's exaggerating. The premise is outlandish but that's more of a selling point than a detriment. The real offense is the language, which is composed of ugly and awkward phrasing so bad it's got to be intentional, as in:
Paired with an extraordinary auditory augmentation efficiency that came to Bob in equal parts handy and haunting (more on that anon), his engineering acumen was unparalleled.
or
Avoiding an escalation of scuffle, the Arabic mono-linguists radioed their dutiful dragoman.
2 stars out of 5. Interestingly the book is about as long as I'd expect a two-hour movie screenplay to be, so I suspect Penn had this idea for a movie initially. But I don't care enough to search out if that's true.
(added to my to-read shelf Feb 2019, read in March 2019)
All right, so what's the verdict? It is bad. Really bad. But the worst book ever? That's exaggerating. The premise is outlandish but that's more of a selling point than a detriment. The real offense is the language, which is composed of ugly and awkward phrasing so bad it's got to be intentional, as in:
Paired with an extraordinary auditory augmentation efficiency that came to Bob in equal parts handy and haunting (more on that anon), his engineering acumen was unparalleled.
or
Avoiding an escalation of scuffle, the Arabic mono-linguists radioed their dutiful dragoman.
2 stars out of 5. Interestingly the book is about as long as I'd expect a two-hour movie screenplay to be, so I suspect Penn had this idea for a movie initially. But I don't care enough to search out if that's true.
March 4, 2018
Received as an ARC from the publisher. Started 3-3-18. Finished 3-4-18. This seems to be a drug-induced stream of consciousness story of a man angry at the world and himself, and who is destined to die at his own hands, after he's assassinated those people whom he considers to be a waste of protoplasm. The author never found an adjective or descriptive phrase that he didn't like.
March 27, 2018
Caught my attention because it was so heavily recommended by Sean Penn at the time of the presidential election. It made me curious. It was ridiculous and pointless and left my husband and I both wondering why we kept reading waiting for it to get better. Spoiler alert: it never did.
March 18, 2018
not typically one to delve into celebrity fiction, sean penn's bob honey who just do stuff initially caught my eye after peeking at the credits and permissions page in the book's back matter, as six different phil ochs songs were cited. how could any novel which incorporates the witty, satirical lyrics from an historically overlooked and underrated songwriter not be worth reading? so, plunge down the proverbial rabbit hole i did... and if it's a wonderland to be found, it's a dark, delirious, and dastardly one.
the academy award-winning actor and director clearly has a vivid imagination and bob honey who just do stuff is a feverish, feral novel rife with politics, international espionage, and late-stage capitalistic ennui and nihilism—and more alliteration than i've ever encountered anywhere else (almost exhaustingly so). penn's book isn't a fictional tale of spycraft so much as it is a sardonic portrait of our present cultural madness, replete with ample sex and violence, told in an explosive and frenetic narrative. near its conclusion, penn aims at our current president, whom the title character refers to as "mr. landlord" in a letter to be sent on to him:
the academy award-winning actor and director clearly has a vivid imagination and bob honey who just do stuff is a feverish, feral novel rife with politics, international espionage, and late-stage capitalistic ennui and nihilism—and more alliteration than i've ever encountered anywhere else (almost exhaustingly so). penn's book isn't a fictional tale of spycraft so much as it is a sardonic portrait of our present cultural madness, replete with ample sex and violence, told in an explosive and frenetic narrative. near its conclusion, penn aims at our current president, whom the title character refers to as "mr. landlord" in a letter to be sent on to him:
...so, to your attempt to posthumously assassinate our founding fathers, and bait and switch your core, i say i will eat where the fish are glowing. you are not simply a president in need of impeachment, you are a man in need of an intervention. we are not simply a people in need of an intervention, we are a nation in need of an assassin. i am god's squared-away man. i am bob honey. that's who i am. sir, i challenge you to a duel. tweet me, bitch. i dare you."bob honey who just do stuff is short but striking. bob honey's visceral anger and distrust give little quarter to those around him, yet he's emblematic of a pervasive desperation and simmering discontent that nears its boiling point. bob honey who just do stuff (especially with its curious backstory as an audiobook [albeit in a different form], originally denied provenance by its creator) is a lot of fun, an unexpected romp through mayhem personal and political.
if society and the media choose to posture themselves culturally as counter to killing, some commonsense control over guns might conform. still, he isn't sure this yearning for reform or "good news" stories is genuine. it could be said that the public yearning once bent on belief reinforcement has now become an insatiable hunger bent on having one's own insecurity empowered. it's an exponentially logarithmetic madness in the making. in fact, bob's argument be made, what the cumulative actions and culture of america now yearn for are lawless days and lonely nights for all. a hybrid of race war and civil war amid a massive movement by a plethora of gangs and militias to upset a fraudulent order, posed and imposed by a wealthy few and their conveniently unwitting puppets for profit. Problem.
April 18, 2018
An ageing actor attempts to astound with achingly awful alliterative nonsense.
It does, however, contain a reference to a merkin. So that's something.
It does, however, contain a reference to a merkin. So that's something.
April 7, 2018
Certainly the worst published book I’ve ever managed to finish. Is Penn trolling the whole world with this? If so, his goal and message in doing so are lost on me. Otherwise, the blend of pretentiousness, pseudo-lyricism, incoherence, and ideological incomprehensibility (I’m coming perilously close to imitating the Great Man’s obsessive alliteration) almost renders this a worthwhile hate-read. ALMOST.
Actually, if a format for doing so could be agreed upon, a reasonable drinking game could be made out of this thing: Penn delivers a strophe of meaningless rhymes? Take one drink. Penn doesn’t appear to know quite what the meaning of a word is? Take two drinks. Novel concludes with several pages of ghastly hectoring doggerel? Finish whatever’s in front of you, if only in preservation of your own sanity.
And as I conclude I look bleakly at the ‘Spoilers?’ button and think: Spoil WHAT?
Actually, if a format for doing so could be agreed upon, a reasonable drinking game could be made out of this thing: Penn delivers a strophe of meaningless rhymes? Take one drink. Penn doesn’t appear to know quite what the meaning of a word is? Take two drinks. Novel concludes with several pages of ghastly hectoring doggerel? Finish whatever’s in front of you, if only in preservation of your own sanity.
And as I conclude I look bleakly at the ‘Spoilers?’ button and think: Spoil WHAT?
Read
February 11, 2020DID NOT FINISH. To his credit, at least Sean Penn avoided the most common problem when a famous actor decides to write a novel, which is to turn in a manuscript that reads like a prose version of a screenplay. Unfortunately, though, this also turns out to be the main problem of the book -- that in his zeal to produce a novel sufficiently literary and un-movie-like, he bent over way too far in the opposite direction, giving us a story so pretentiously written that it's almost unreadable as a simple piece of commercial fiction. Essentially what he's doing here is affecting the prose style of the "bizarro" genre, in which the whole point is to write in a deliberately over-the-top purplish way, a writing style that's intentionally supposed to call attention to itself and how clever it's being, usually to support a plot that's equally zany and over-the-top, kind of like a written-out version of a Looney Tunes cartoon (think Mark Leyner, Chuck Palahniuk, etc). But here, Penn is using the cartoonish prose style of bizarro lit to instead tell a politically-based social-realist tale, which from the synopsis and Penn's background I'm assuming has to do with a California septic-tank salesman who accidentally becomes a CIA-backed assassin, the entire thing a veiled indictment of political conservatives and the so-called War On Terror. But I don't know this for sure, because Penn's writing style is so glaringly artsy-fartsy here that I barely made it through 25 pages of the book before angrily giving up, a novel I had been looking forward to and so whose abandonment hit even harder this time than usual. The printed-page equivalent of that sixty-something dude with the ponytail and fedora hat at the poetry open mic, who performs limericks about Donald Trump that make the rest of the room groan and dash outside for a cigarette, it does not come recommended to a general audience.
July 17, 2018
Because I'm giving this book two stars (instead of the more customary three or four stars I award to books I finish), I want to write a brief review to explain why I am not awarding more stars to Sean Penn's… well, novel gets close enough.
BOB HONEY WHO JUST DO STUFF is a book about Bob Honey, a lonesome man who sometimes does stuff. Some of the stuff that Bob Honey does could, in fact, make for a pretty decent book. Or at least an entertaining book. One could imagine another author wrestling an entertaining yarn around the concept of a part-time hit man who targets the old and enfeebled with his trusty mallet.
But BOB HONEY WHO JUST DO STUFF generally fails to entertain on a macro scale. Things happen, but the stuff that Bob Honey do is so overwhelmed by the philosophical ramblings Sean Penn threads throughout the book. It would be one thing if these philosophical ramblings were interesting or original or well-stated. They aren't.
Mentioning the concept of things being well-stated… BOB HONEY WHO JUST DO STUFF is written in a style that, well, has style. Alliteration abounds. Lots and lots and lots of alliteration, alliteration which somehow surpasses the point of self-parody. I mentioned earlier that BOB HONEY fails to entertain on a macro scale, but on a micro scale, the book has numerous delights in just how awkward and unnatural some of its phraseology manages to be. The writing is almost charmingly inept. The most accurate way to describe it would be as an experience; it may not be a good experience but it is certainly an experience.
In fact, there is something almost oddly charming about BOB HONEY. It's just so overwrought. It tries so hard. Granted, it does not succeed, or even come within spitting distance of any conventionally recognizable qualifications for success, but the effort is there. And if all the book did was mostly-incoherently rant about technology and the homogenizing effects of corporate media and branding, then I may have considered giving the book three stars. But beneath the bumbling and fumbling of Penn's prose and Penn's attempt at plotting, the book is angry and mean in ways that make it hard to recommend even as an experience. There's a strong anti-woman streak woven throughout the book; women, it seems, are inherently evil. And while vitriol aimed against President 45 is certainly understandable, the ranting against 45 in the book is pure anger (threaded through with violent threats, naturally) with minimal substance behind it.
BOB HONEY WHO JUST DO STUFF could have been an oddly charming little volume with its overabundance of alliteration and general inability to cohere on a story level (the highlight is when, at one point, a helicopter randomly drops from the sky and kills one of Bob Honey's neighbors). It is hard to see how BOB HONEY ever could have been a good book, but the potential for a three-star novelty experience was there (although I do need to note that for a 160 page book, BOB HONEY took an awfully long time to read, largely due to the completely unnecessary writing style). It's a shame that there's so much ugliness in the book's heart.
In short: Bob Honey may do stuff. If only Bob would do stuff well.
BOB HONEY WHO JUST DO STUFF is a book about Bob Honey, a lonesome man who sometimes does stuff. Some of the stuff that Bob Honey does could, in fact, make for a pretty decent book. Or at least an entertaining book. One could imagine another author wrestling an entertaining yarn around the concept of a part-time hit man who targets the old and enfeebled with his trusty mallet.
But BOB HONEY WHO JUST DO STUFF generally fails to entertain on a macro scale. Things happen, but the stuff that Bob Honey do is so overwhelmed by the philosophical ramblings Sean Penn threads throughout the book. It would be one thing if these philosophical ramblings were interesting or original or well-stated. They aren't.
Mentioning the concept of things being well-stated… BOB HONEY WHO JUST DO STUFF is written in a style that, well, has style. Alliteration abounds. Lots and lots and lots of alliteration, alliteration which somehow surpasses the point of self-parody. I mentioned earlier that BOB HONEY fails to entertain on a macro scale, but on a micro scale, the book has numerous delights in just how awkward and unnatural some of its phraseology manages to be. The writing is almost charmingly inept. The most accurate way to describe it would be as an experience; it may not be a good experience but it is certainly an experience.
In fact, there is something almost oddly charming about BOB HONEY. It's just so overwrought. It tries so hard. Granted, it does not succeed, or even come within spitting distance of any conventionally recognizable qualifications for success, but the effort is there. And if all the book did was mostly-incoherently rant about technology and the homogenizing effects of corporate media and branding, then I may have considered giving the book three stars. But beneath the bumbling and fumbling of Penn's prose and Penn's attempt at plotting, the book is angry and mean in ways that make it hard to recommend even as an experience. There's a strong anti-woman streak woven throughout the book; women, it seems, are inherently evil. And while vitriol aimed against President 45 is certainly understandable, the ranting against 45 in the book is pure anger (threaded through with violent threats, naturally) with minimal substance behind it.
BOB HONEY WHO JUST DO STUFF could have been an oddly charming little volume with its overabundance of alliteration and general inability to cohere on a story level (the highlight is when, at one point, a helicopter randomly drops from the sky and kills one of Bob Honey's neighbors). It is hard to see how BOB HONEY ever could have been a good book, but the potential for a three-star novelty experience was there (although I do need to note that for a 160 page book, BOB HONEY took an awfully long time to read, largely due to the completely unnecessary writing style). It's a shame that there's so much ugliness in the book's heart.
In short: Bob Honey may do stuff. If only Bob would do stuff well.
April 4, 2019
There are almost countless ways a book can be a good and worthwhile read. From classics that have stood the test of time to books that are awful but fall into the so-bad-its-good camp. Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff is neither of these or anything in between. It is bad in every way that a book can be bad and then some.
The prose is atrocious. The characters suck. The plot is incoherent. The book tries to have some thematic value but they're so far off the mark they're not even worth considering. The book isn't even enjoyable as a train wreck. From the first page to the last it's 100%, without exception repellent.
This book is so bad it makes me reconsider Sean Penn's entire career. I'm a big fan of Into The Wild, which he directed. Now I'm wondering if I misjudged that movie because I just can't conceive of it being the same person who directed that thoughtful, profound film and wrote this fetid piece of shit.
Ultimately the only "stuff" Bob Honey just does is annoying the absolute hell out of the audience. This is a book so awful that the only appropriate response seems to be to drive a stake through your copy, burn it, bury the ashes, and then salt the earth over the grave. May Sean Penn never, ever touch a word processor again
The prose is atrocious. The characters suck. The plot is incoherent. The book tries to have some thematic value but they're so far off the mark they're not even worth considering. The book isn't even enjoyable as a train wreck. From the first page to the last it's 100%, without exception repellent.
This book is so bad it makes me reconsider Sean Penn's entire career. I'm a big fan of Into The Wild, which he directed. Now I'm wondering if I misjudged that movie because I just can't conceive of it being the same person who directed that thoughtful, profound film and wrote this fetid piece of shit.
Ultimately the only "stuff" Bob Honey just does is annoying the absolute hell out of the audience. This is a book so awful that the only appropriate response seems to be to drive a stake through your copy, burn it, bury the ashes, and then salt the earth over the grave. May Sean Penn never, ever touch a word processor again
May 4, 2018
Think back to high school or your time as an undergrad. Do you remember that super pretentious "writer" that thought he was an intellectual and the best writer ever. He wrote this book. I swear, Penn used a thesaurus on every word in this book and chose the largest word on the page. He goes into such unnecessary detail; I'm pretty sure he read numerous Wikipedia to become knowledgeable on so many random, specific topics.
I only made it halfway through this book before I had to abandon it.
I only made it halfway through this book before I had to abandon it.
November 16, 2021
Mere seconds into my library copy of
Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff
I am greeted by my first red flag — someone has dog-eared their place on the very first page, and then never unmarked it. It seems Penn’s debut novel inspires levels of commitment even more tenuous than those of the man’s own marriages.
Even more promising are the endorsements on the dust jacket. Salman Rushdie manages to not say anything directly about his feelings about the book, but does seem to dog-whistle that the whole thing’s a blatant rip on Pynchon. Art Linson confusingly attests that the book made him hug his dog. Bill Maher is cited as merely saying anything at all. My favourite endorsement is that of Sarah Silverman, who begins her review:
Before I started reading, I glanced over the table of contents. The first chapter is called ‘Seeking Homeostasis in Inherent Hypocrisy.’ I rolled my eyes and said aloud to no one, ‘fuuuck you.’
Generally-speaking, if the endorsements on a novel are a hodge-podge of random B-list Hollywood celebrities, almost none of whom are writers of fiction, it’s usually a bad sign. Perhaps Bob Honey will prove that this goes so far as to be immutable law.
I had been eagerly anticipating the chance to read Penn’s book and it did not disappoint in the slightest, by which I mean it is basically completely unreadable. Penn’s prose style is perhaps the single worst I have ever read; his writing is obtuse, often redundant, always circuitous, and he has this terrible habit of using constant alliteration. I imagine Penn believes this makes him sound like James Joyce, but the reality is much closer to approximating Amanda McKittrick Ros. Opening to just about any page in Penn’s novel, one is treated to a deluge of pain:
Bob passes a feature film fourplex and formerly divine deco drive-in. He realizes that not only in road-roaming reality has romance been relinquished to ruins, but the cinemas themselves have been caged and quartered into quixotic concrete calamities of corporatized culture capitulation.
Oh, sniff succulent sausage, Sean, you simpering sophomoric simpleton; this pretensious prosaic posturing is particularly unimpressive. Any halfwit hack can haphazard hollow hymnals, assembled of asinine alliteration to approximate actual authorial aptitude. You can’t even construct coherent clauses with competent consonance while keeping up you clowning capering, caroming like a careless cretin; could you contemplate a cavalcade of cromulent critics cajoling you instead of caustically cawing at your crimes against culture? His use of alliteration is completely arbitrary, entirely unrhythmic, and entirely unnecessary.
It is transparently obvious what Penn is setting out to do. He is trying to write, in spite of its tawdry length, one of The Big Ones — specifically a cadre of supposedly faultless books that reformed 4Channers such as myself refer to as “The Meme Trilogy”: Ulysses , Gravity’s Rainbow , and Infinite Jest . This is the writing of an embarrassingly shallow-headed individual, who believes that alliteration makes James Joyce, funny names makes Thomas Pynchon, and footnotes makes Dave Wallace. Indeed, this book has all three, and none of it serves any purpose. There are characters with names like Helen Mayo¹ and Spurley Cultier,² and they all³ aimlessly⁴ amble in their adventures,⁵ seeking some sort of sober statement† in a static shibboleth.‡ It’s clear that Penn wrote the whole thing with a checklist by his side, setting out like an adolescent boy might by believing that the secret to writing the G.A.N. is to simply rip off every previous attempt.
Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff is a novel aboutSean Penn a middle-aged man named Boney Honey (who just does stuff) who assassinates “old people, the infirm, and others who drain this consumption-driven society of its resources,” while having a romance with a barely post-pubescent girl, and mourning the divorce of his fat idiot ex-wife who has had plastic surgery done (unrelated note: Sean Penn is recently divorced). There’s almost too much to say about the book’s actual content. Whether it’s hearing about Sean Penn’s middle-aged author-insert constantly f*cking a teenager (Penn rallies against millennials by suggesting that addiction to social media would lead to the girl having an immediate orgasm), Penn’s constant and groan-inducing post-Naomi-Klein screeds about advertising (“BRANDING IS BEING”), Penn’s incredibly cringey rant about Trump and Clinton (after referring to Trump as the “penis-edent” and accusing him of attempting to “posthumously assassinate the Founding Fathers,” and in spite of blaming the Russians for the election one page earlier, Penn goes on to say: "Was she the worst possible candidate or are you the most arrogant, ill, and unqualified electorate in the history of the Western world?” [I’ll take “she was the worst possible candidate,” Penn], snobbishly suggesting that the American riffraff are “unqualified” for democracy), Penn’s unrepentant liberalism (Penn on Obama: “hard in this world to be an elegant man, Bob thought, but when his game’s on, that Chi-Town-Kenyan-Kansan can-can-can”), Penn’s delusional messiah complex (“in opinions of morality, religion, politics, and science would he increasingly consider the possibility… EVERYBODY… ELSE… IS… WRONG”), Penn’s contempt for #MeToo (“and what’s with this ‘Me Too’? / This infantilizing term of the day… / Is this a toddlers’ crusade? / Reducing rape, slut-shaming, and suffrage to reckless child’s play? / A platform for accusation impunity? / Due process has lost its sheen?”), or Penn’s (ironic?) racism (referring to a young black woman as a “juvie Jemima;” referring repeatedly to indigenous New Guineans as “grass-skirted cadres of cannibals;” Bob’s trip to an Indian Reservation whereupon he is “assaulted by animism;” or simply the line “pride, he believed, a pleasure better suited to Orientals”); each would merit a verbose takedown all on their own, but can ultimately be summed up in three words: F*ck Sean Penn.
Perhaps it’s unfair to make such an intentional fallacy as to assume Bob Honey represents Sean Penn, simply because they seem to share the same age, interests, and views. Bob Honey is most certainly NOT Sean Penn. I shouldn’t suggest that. What would give one the idea that Penn would write his own thoughts under some kind of self stand-in? Aside from that he initially published this novel under the name “Pappy Pariah” and denied that it was him. Yes — aside from that, from the fact that Honey himself is implied to be the narrator on page 1, the fact that Honey looks into his reflection in a cup of coffee and winds up seeing “Pappy Pariah” reflected back at him, and of course Penn’s comments on Colbert where he unequivocally suggests several times that Bob Honey is Sean Penn, including suggesting that this book started out as an attempt at a memoir, I don’t know how one would arrive at the conclusion that Honey is a stand-in for Penn.
Sean Penn’s Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff is a symphony of profound self-regard and equal incompetence. The most glowing endorsement Penn’s books will ever receive will be the day they are inevitably all loaded into a rocket and fired directly into the sun. But what does it matter? Penn has already staunchly announced his intention to continue writing as his single-minded career goal, and this book is already a best-seller, so we can look forward to even more of this garbage in the near-future, with such titles one can imagine as Bob Honey Who Do A Little More , Bob Honey Who Don’t Do Fuck All , and Bob Honey Endorses Sean Penn For President 2020 (also known as “Bob Honey’s Dreams Of His Father’s”). Penn will continue to wow us with his testaments to the fact that 2016 made every liberal in the nation short-circuit completely and go f*cking cuckoo bananas. Still, the event of this first book’s release was nonetheless exciting, because it’s something we so rarely get to see at this level. Terrible, incompetent books are published every day, but few of them are this incompetent, and fewer still have pretensions of capital-L Literary glory. This is the kind of spectacular failure that could have only come along as the vanity project of a delusional Hollywood egotist: a clearly editor-less trough of pure, self-indulgent dog sh*t.
Even more promising are the endorsements on the dust jacket. Salman Rushdie manages to not say anything directly about his feelings about the book, but does seem to dog-whistle that the whole thing’s a blatant rip on Pynchon. Art Linson confusingly attests that the book made him hug his dog. Bill Maher is cited as merely saying anything at all. My favourite endorsement is that of Sarah Silverman, who begins her review:
Before I started reading, I glanced over the table of contents. The first chapter is called ‘Seeking Homeostasis in Inherent Hypocrisy.’ I rolled my eyes and said aloud to no one, ‘fuuuck you.’
Generally-speaking, if the endorsements on a novel are a hodge-podge of random B-list Hollywood celebrities, almost none of whom are writers of fiction, it’s usually a bad sign. Perhaps Bob Honey will prove that this goes so far as to be immutable law.
I had been eagerly anticipating the chance to read Penn’s book and it did not disappoint in the slightest, by which I mean it is basically completely unreadable. Penn’s prose style is perhaps the single worst I have ever read; his writing is obtuse, often redundant, always circuitous, and he has this terrible habit of using constant alliteration. I imagine Penn believes this makes him sound like James Joyce, but the reality is much closer to approximating Amanda McKittrick Ros. Opening to just about any page in Penn’s novel, one is treated to a deluge of pain:
Bob passes a feature film fourplex and formerly divine deco drive-in. He realizes that not only in road-roaming reality has romance been relinquished to ruins, but the cinemas themselves have been caged and quartered into quixotic concrete calamities of corporatized culture capitulation.
Oh, sniff succulent sausage, Sean, you simpering sophomoric simpleton; this pretensious prosaic posturing is particularly unimpressive. Any halfwit hack can haphazard hollow hymnals, assembled of asinine alliteration to approximate actual authorial aptitude. You can’t even construct coherent clauses with competent consonance while keeping up you clowning capering, caroming like a careless cretin; could you contemplate a cavalcade of cromulent critics cajoling you instead of caustically cawing at your crimes against culture? His use of alliteration is completely arbitrary, entirely unrhythmic, and entirely unnecessary.
It is transparently obvious what Penn is setting out to do. He is trying to write, in spite of its tawdry length, one of The Big Ones — specifically a cadre of supposedly faultless books that reformed 4Channers such as myself refer to as “The Meme Trilogy”: Ulysses , Gravity’s Rainbow , and Infinite Jest . This is the writing of an embarrassingly shallow-headed individual, who believes that alliteration makes James Joyce, funny names makes Thomas Pynchon, and footnotes makes Dave Wallace. Indeed, this book has all three, and none of it serves any purpose. There are characters with names like Helen Mayo¹ and Spurley Cultier,² and they all³ aimlessly⁴ amble in their adventures,⁵ seeking some sort of sober statement† in a static shibboleth.‡ It’s clear that Penn wrote the whole thing with a checklist by his side, setting out like an adolescent boy might by believing that the secret to writing the G.A.N. is to simply rip off every previous attempt.
Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff is a novel about
Perhaps it’s unfair to make such an intentional fallacy as to assume Bob Honey represents Sean Penn, simply because they seem to share the same age, interests, and views. Bob Honey is most certainly NOT Sean Penn. I shouldn’t suggest that. What would give one the idea that Penn would write his own thoughts under some kind of self stand-in? Aside from that he initially published this novel under the name “Pappy Pariah” and denied that it was him. Yes — aside from that, from the fact that Honey himself is implied to be the narrator on page 1, the fact that Honey looks into his reflection in a cup of coffee and winds up seeing “Pappy Pariah” reflected back at him, and of course Penn’s comments on Colbert where he unequivocally suggests several times that Bob Honey is Sean Penn, including suggesting that this book started out as an attempt at a memoir, I don’t know how one would arrive at the conclusion that Honey is a stand-in for Penn.
Sean Penn’s Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff is a symphony of profound self-regard and equal incompetence. The most glowing endorsement Penn’s books will ever receive will be the day they are inevitably all loaded into a rocket and fired directly into the sun. But what does it matter? Penn has already staunchly announced his intention to continue writing as his single-minded career goal, and this book is already a best-seller, so we can look forward to even more of this garbage in the near-future, with such titles one can imagine as Bob Honey Who Do A Little More , Bob Honey Who Don’t Do Fuck All , and Bob Honey Endorses Sean Penn For President 2020 (also known as “Bob Honey’s Dreams Of His Father’s”). Penn will continue to wow us with his testaments to the fact that 2016 made every liberal in the nation short-circuit completely and go f*cking cuckoo bananas. Still, the event of this first book’s release was nonetheless exciting, because it’s something we so rarely get to see at this level. Terrible, incompetent books are published every day, but few of them are this incompetent, and fewer still have pretensions of capital-L Literary glory. This is the kind of spectacular failure that could have only come along as the vanity project of a delusional Hollywood egotist: a clearly editor-less trough of pure, self-indulgent dog sh*t.
May 22, 2018
First of all, I’m not going focus on the author here. Secondly, I’m not a fan of postmodern literature, so I can’t even claim to have enjoyed reading this book. In the end, though, I have to give the author credit for creating a pastiche which I found impressive. Let me add that this novella is a quick read, so even if you invest your time and energy reading it and end up hating it, you won’t have lost much. But you do stand to gain something for your investment if you can open your mind and let Sean Penn's prose and poetry in, even if it's merely a glimpse into the world of other “famous” authors whose works are considered “literature”, but may or may not be enjoyable to read or comprehensible or agreeable or “well written”.
So, with that in mind, my review limits itself to my own impressions. Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff reminded me of Leopold Bloom who just wanders around doing stuff too. There’s some explosions and weirdness like in Gravity’s Rainbow and footnotes explaining things à la David Foster Wallace. Speaking of which, the assassin aspect (and much much more) harkens back to Infinite Jest. Fortunately, you’re spared the 1,000+ pages that book requires reading. There were nebulous images that reminded me of Sexing the Cherry, some Tom Robbins-type characters and situations, lots of pushing the envelope, pop cultural and current affairs references and critique, some poop and barf, big words, made up words, alliteration, quotes and ideas from other people, and “yeah, well, you know, that's just, like, your opinion, man”.
Sean Penn brought a lot to the table in this puny tome. How he managed to squeeze so much of what came before into such a short and meaningless story is beyond me. I bet this single text could be the subject of an entire semester of student analysis. Or at least a late-night stoner discussion. I’m sure there are many worse things being published these days and bigger and better ways of wasting your minutes than this. Five stars for the author's performance, one star for my entertainment equals the three star rating of this author's debut novel.
So, with that in mind, my review limits itself to my own impressions. Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff reminded me of Leopold Bloom who just wanders around doing stuff too. There’s some explosions and weirdness like in Gravity’s Rainbow and footnotes explaining things à la David Foster Wallace. Speaking of which, the assassin aspect (and much much more) harkens back to Infinite Jest. Fortunately, you’re spared the 1,000+ pages that book requires reading. There were nebulous images that reminded me of Sexing the Cherry, some Tom Robbins-type characters and situations, lots of pushing the envelope, pop cultural and current affairs references and critique, some poop and barf, big words, made up words, alliteration, quotes and ideas from other people, and “yeah, well, you know, that's just, like, your opinion, man”.
Sean Penn brought a lot to the table in this puny tome. How he managed to squeeze so much of what came before into such a short and meaningless story is beyond me. I bet this single text could be the subject of an entire semester of student analysis. Or at least a late-night stoner discussion. I’m sure there are many worse things being published these days and bigger and better ways of wasting your minutes than this. Five stars for the author's performance, one star for my entertainment equals the three star rating of this author's debut novel.
December 21, 2019
Come on you asshole! Why are you wasting my time!
October 14, 2021
I often try to think of something positive I have for a book I've read when I'm rating it low. But I usually don't write it down. However I got none of this. It wasn't good in any means felt like a first try to write a story that turned into a novel. First try is usually bad and this definitely was that.
April 3, 2018
Sean Penn appears to have actually written this himself, or perhaps a friend or a child?
April 3, 2018
I made it to page 22. It's awful.
December 16, 2020
this was the worst thing that's ever happened to me
May 16, 2018
This book is awful. But you and I already knew that.
Newspapers and bloggers from around the country have been lambasting it as one of the worst books of the year, and with all the fuss, well...curiosity got the better of me. I just had to see if it was as bad as everyone said it was. Three days later I must say It's not the worst thing I've read. At a paltry 160 pages, I at least managed to finish it, which is more than I can say of some celebrated classics, but yeah, this is pure trash. Every page is a broken garbage bag left on the pavement in 110 degree heat. If you're hoping for a so-bad-it's-good campy schlockfest you can laugh at, the best you're gonna get is a few tongue-twister sentences like
Wader's whimsy for wheeling Wahhabist roadways was unsettling to his white war-zone passenger.
He realizes that not only in road-roaming reality has romance been relinquished to ruins, but the cinemas themselves have been caged and quartered into quixotic concrete calamities of corporatized cultural capitulation.
and possibly the worst sex scene I've ever had the misfortune of reading
Effervescence lived in her every cellular expression, and she had spizzerinctum to spare. They sat and talked, or rather, she did. What a magical vagina, Bob thought, after exploring it for hours...Off came the clothing and on came their effortless ease of communication where vagaries landed literally, and silences as voluminous volumes. Never one for psychosexual infantilism or pedophilic fantasy, after their sex he said, "Good vagina. Maybe more Vietnam." "More Vietnam?" she asked. "Is it a bit urban, sugar? You're looking for some jungle?" Bob nodded. "Okay," she said, "I'll put on my little merkin piece next time."
The characters are completely without motive or any redemptive arc. Nobody changes or learns anything by the book's end. Secondary characters are nothing more than cringeworthy stereotypes who appear for a few paragraphs and vanish just as quickly, contributing nothing and not driving the plot forward in any way. Speaking of which, if you put a gun to my head, I don't think I could tell you the plot of this book. Bob works for some shady company that kills off retirees because their farts are carbon emissions and with them out of the way, corporate America has more license to pollute? There's a journalist following him around, some Guinean conspiracy, and half a dozen international excursions that have no effect on the story. Gone is any causality. There's no build-up, pay-off, climax, or goal Bob is trying to obtain. The plot just meanders around aimlessly between passages about dildos, septic tanks, and boogers, and lines from poor John Lennon's "Working Class Hero" paired with Penn's own abysmal stanzas about Donald Trump and how the #MeToo movement is a "toddler's crusade."
I imagine that during a weeklong coke binge, Sean Penn had read some Thomas Pynchon, Kurt Vonnegut, and Beat poetry and thought, "Hell, I can do that!" So without understanding what made those authors good in the first place, he blended his cursory understanding into this rambling, misogynist, racist, incomprehensible, sad, little book. At least he got bored with it after 160 pages. When reading about our main character looking for business opportunities in the Baghdad septic tank industry or assassinating old people so their flatulence won't contribute to global warming, you can tell Penn thinks he's writing brilliant satire, but like his mallet-wielding protagonist, he can only mash the button and crank the volume up to 11. All subtlety and nuance go out the window. His screeds against advertising, technology, political corruption, and war aren't thoughtful and don't give you a perspective you hadn't considered. It comes off instead as a drunk shouting on the street corner or an old man angry at these damned kids on their cell phones, and what the hell is an Instagram?! They're unfocused and read like a stream-of-consciousness Twitter feed, tossing in whatever happened to be on the news that day.
It's not clever. It's not entertaining. And honestly, I don't know if this is meant to be sincere or whether Sean Penn is just trolling all of us for $24 a pop?
There's so many good stories out there looking to be published, and it gets passed over for a wife-beater celebrity's vanity project. I guess I have no one to blame for myself for picking this up. I'm drawn to cultural dumpster fires just like everyone else. As penance for my sins, I'm going to read some Joyce or Proust to get back a little integrity.
Newspapers and bloggers from around the country have been lambasting it as one of the worst books of the year, and with all the fuss, well...curiosity got the better of me. I just had to see if it was as bad as everyone said it was. Three days later I must say It's not the worst thing I've read. At a paltry 160 pages, I at least managed to finish it, which is more than I can say of some celebrated classics, but yeah, this is pure trash. Every page is a broken garbage bag left on the pavement in 110 degree heat. If you're hoping for a so-bad-it's-good campy schlockfest you can laugh at, the best you're gonna get is a few tongue-twister sentences like
Wader's whimsy for wheeling Wahhabist roadways was unsettling to his white war-zone passenger.
He realizes that not only in road-roaming reality has romance been relinquished to ruins, but the cinemas themselves have been caged and quartered into quixotic concrete calamities of corporatized cultural capitulation.
and possibly the worst sex scene I've ever had the misfortune of reading
Effervescence lived in her every cellular expression, and she had spizzerinctum to spare. They sat and talked, or rather, she did. What a magical vagina, Bob thought, after exploring it for hours...Off came the clothing and on came their effortless ease of communication where vagaries landed literally, and silences as voluminous volumes. Never one for psychosexual infantilism or pedophilic fantasy, after their sex he said, "Good vagina. Maybe more Vietnam." "More Vietnam?" she asked. "Is it a bit urban, sugar? You're looking for some jungle?" Bob nodded. "Okay," she said, "I'll put on my little merkin piece next time."
The characters are completely without motive or any redemptive arc. Nobody changes or learns anything by the book's end. Secondary characters are nothing more than cringeworthy stereotypes who appear for a few paragraphs and vanish just as quickly, contributing nothing and not driving the plot forward in any way. Speaking of which, if you put a gun to my head, I don't think I could tell you the plot of this book. Bob works for some shady company that kills off retirees because their farts are carbon emissions and with them out of the way, corporate America has more license to pollute? There's a journalist following him around, some Guinean conspiracy, and half a dozen international excursions that have no effect on the story. Gone is any causality. There's no build-up, pay-off, climax, or goal Bob is trying to obtain. The plot just meanders around aimlessly between passages about dildos, septic tanks, and boogers, and lines from poor John Lennon's "Working Class Hero" paired with Penn's own abysmal stanzas about Donald Trump and how the #MeToo movement is a "toddler's crusade."
I imagine that during a weeklong coke binge, Sean Penn had read some Thomas Pynchon, Kurt Vonnegut, and Beat poetry and thought, "Hell, I can do that!" So without understanding what made those authors good in the first place, he blended his cursory understanding into this rambling, misogynist, racist, incomprehensible, sad, little book. At least he got bored with it after 160 pages. When reading about our main character looking for business opportunities in the Baghdad septic tank industry or assassinating old people so their flatulence won't contribute to global warming, you can tell Penn thinks he's writing brilliant satire, but like his mallet-wielding protagonist, he can only mash the button and crank the volume up to 11. All subtlety and nuance go out the window. His screeds against advertising, technology, political corruption, and war aren't thoughtful and don't give you a perspective you hadn't considered. It comes off instead as a drunk shouting on the street corner or an old man angry at these damned kids on their cell phones, and what the hell is an Instagram?! They're unfocused and read like a stream-of-consciousness Twitter feed, tossing in whatever happened to be on the news that day.
It's not clever. It's not entertaining. And honestly, I don't know if this is meant to be sincere or whether Sean Penn is just trolling all of us for $24 a pop?
There's so many good stories out there looking to be published, and it gets passed over for a wife-beater celebrity's vanity project. I guess I have no one to blame for myself for picking this up. I'm drawn to cultural dumpster fires just like everyone else. As penance for my sins, I'm going to read some Joyce or Proust to get back a little integrity.
July 3, 2023
Picked up a pristine hardcover of Sean’s novel from the little free library awhile back and read it today.
Here’s a typical sentence.
“Hence, his life remains incessantly infused with her identity-infidelity, and her abhorrent ascensions to those constant salacious sessions of sexual solitaire she’s seen as self-regard.”
A 45-car pile-up of a book that I could not but help to rubberneck all the way down the highway.
Here’s a typical sentence.
“Hence, his life remains incessantly infused with her identity-infidelity, and her abhorrent ascensions to those constant salacious sessions of sexual solitaire she’s seen as self-regard.”
A 45-car pile-up of a book that I could not but help to rubberneck all the way down the highway.
March 29, 2018
Rambling, the lack of creative decisiveness completely detracts from each page, making it feel like your permanently on cough medicine in philosophy class - and not on a fun way. It feels like zero effort was made, except to hit a word count and use all the popular buzz terms. Empty and dull.
April 13, 2018
Relevant, timely, wacky. Very prose-y with what feels like a healthy dose of stream-of-consciousness. One of the more entertaining and demanding of the reader's attention reads I've pawed through in a long time.
December 31, 2018
This has to be the absolute worst book ever written. I not only lose respect for Sean Penn for even writing this, I lose respect for publishers who publish this when there are so many great authors out there struggling to get something published. If I could give it 0 stars I would.
January 19, 2021
1) I HAD to read this book because my secret Satan gave me this assignment (@Dejan, you bastard, you got what you deserved from your Satan in return)
2) WHY was this published? Answer: cause Sean Penn
3) What the fuck did I just read.
I have a feeling I might be writing a bit of a longer rant review very soon.
But just in case I don't - just don't read this. Read anyANYany other book, but this one. (perhaps not Grey by SMeyer, but this one comes close)
BlogReview
To say that I gave this book 1 star would be overstating it. I forced myself to read it through and I got to the other side stronger. After this book, there’s nothing that the publishing industry could throw at me that I wouldn’t be able to finish. (except perhaps for this book’s sequel. Yes, there is a sequel.)
Sean Penn, a well-known normal movie star, wrote a book that was published in 2018 that is a critique of something, I’m sure. All I got was a feeling that he wanted to spew comments on the society but felt that his twitter presence was not enough. This book reads more like a series of comments written on pieces of toilet paper padded with a thesaurus.
The book’s protagonist is the titular Bob, and the plot is the titular him doing stuff. We follow Bob around as a secret government agency pays him to hammer people to death. I guess. I’m not sure. His neighbours think he’s strange and report him to the police, but this strangeness leaves no real evidence, it’s just that feeling the people have. And Americans being Americans and having yelled “Woolf” too many times, nobody pays real attention to their accusations. And that’s that. I forgot to mention that the idea behind his assassinations is to reduce the carbon footprint of the society by killing the elderly. Fun.
We also find out he is a divorcé and that his ex-wife is a crazy person who now owns an ice cream truck. We see him hang around with a Jew on a boat and then the two of them join a drug lord’s yacht party. So many fun things. Oh, and there’s a journalist who suspects something.
All this is delivered in a pretentious attempt at “bizarro” style that is almost impossible to read. This is something Chuck Palahniuk does masterfully – this style where the writing constantly puts a spotlight on itself. But Penn is no Chuck. Where Chuck sprinkles the weird writing to make the weird story seem nestled in all the weird and makes you feel all warm and fuzzy even when he is talking about spiking a guy’s food and drinks with hormone therapy, here we just have off putting thesaurus bashing.
Listen to this:
“Here it seems that the desert itself has been deserted.”
“Behind the windows of the beige stucco building that sits behind a dilapidated, sporadically visited parking lot where brown weeds burst through fissures in pavement…”
“Ah, but when these considerations tickle the tumult of actionability, only then does he relinquish their delicious danger, and find himself buoyantly liberated to move away from the definitively empty bed.”
“He thought of her beauty and the lure of her shaved and shapely cinnamon sticks standing at the trailer’s screen door.”
“Dreams died like destiny’s deadwood.” (what a missed opportunity here, if he’s only written “Destiny’s Child”)
Now all of this would be enough to make one stop reading. But I didn’t have that luxury, I had to go on. And boy did the fun continue.
In addition to this writing “style” there were moments when even he realized that this might be a problem for some of his readers. So, Penn decided to help the poor sod who was reading this because of idolizing the author (that’s the only person I see finishing this book without having a gun pressed against their head). Whenever there was a turn of phrase, he used that might confuse the intellectually limited reader, Penn graciously helped them by providing freaking FOOTNOTES. Some were ok, I guess. But come on.
“The five-sided puzzle palace had an autonomous private contracting budget” --> the Pentagon.
“As you were.” --> standard military command (no shit Sherlock! Who doesn’t know that?
“…he has started calculating the g/km of his burnings” --> grams per kilometre (I know Americans are perceived as being stupid, but that stupid?)
Now, ok, you might say this is the narrator, not the Author. I don’t buy that.
And to finish it off we have:
Random stereotyping of Jews and the way their talk Completely not random western view of the Muslim world Every woman being insupportable receptacle for his penis but with smeared lipstick on her teeth. A completely disconnected anti-Trump rant that came out of the blue. Bob making a woman laugh so much she keeled over, and a bit of poop got out of her and wetness could be seen between her buttocks.
Now, to some more memorable quotes
“A driver drives.”
“With that, he absquatulated.”
“a fugitive from Jordan who’s fled a case of fraud.”
If you’re wondering, wow, this is so bad I might just have to read it, just don’t. Read 50shades of grey books, or the Covid Erotica I mentioned at the beginning, or even bad fanfiction. Anything but this. Or you could just read a thesaurus – the same amount of fun, but you won’t end up hating yourself.
2) WHY was this published? Answer: cause Sean Penn
3) What the fuck did I just read.
I have a feeling I might be writing a bit of a longer rant review very soon.
But just in case I don't - just don't read this. Read anyANYany other book, but this one. (perhaps not Grey by SMeyer, but this one comes close)
BlogReview
To say that I gave this book 1 star would be overstating it. I forced myself to read it through and I got to the other side stronger. After this book, there’s nothing that the publishing industry could throw at me that I wouldn’t be able to finish. (except perhaps for this book’s sequel. Yes, there is a sequel.)
Sean Penn, a well-known normal movie star, wrote a book that was published in 2018 that is a critique of something, I’m sure. All I got was a feeling that he wanted to spew comments on the society but felt that his twitter presence was not enough. This book reads more like a series of comments written on pieces of toilet paper padded with a thesaurus.
The book’s protagonist is the titular Bob, and the plot is the titular him doing stuff. We follow Bob around as a secret government agency pays him to hammer people to death. I guess. I’m not sure. His neighbours think he’s strange and report him to the police, but this strangeness leaves no real evidence, it’s just that feeling the people have. And Americans being Americans and having yelled “Woolf” too many times, nobody pays real attention to their accusations. And that’s that. I forgot to mention that the idea behind his assassinations is to reduce the carbon footprint of the society by killing the elderly. Fun.
We also find out he is a divorcé and that his ex-wife is a crazy person who now owns an ice cream truck. We see him hang around with a Jew on a boat and then the two of them join a drug lord’s yacht party. So many fun things. Oh, and there’s a journalist who suspects something.
All this is delivered in a pretentious attempt at “bizarro” style that is almost impossible to read. This is something Chuck Palahniuk does masterfully – this style where the writing constantly puts a spotlight on itself. But Penn is no Chuck. Where Chuck sprinkles the weird writing to make the weird story seem nestled in all the weird and makes you feel all warm and fuzzy even when he is talking about spiking a guy’s food and drinks with hormone therapy, here we just have off putting thesaurus bashing.
Listen to this:
“Here it seems that the desert itself has been deserted.”
“Behind the windows of the beige stucco building that sits behind a dilapidated, sporadically visited parking lot where brown weeds burst through fissures in pavement…”
“Ah, but when these considerations tickle the tumult of actionability, only then does he relinquish their delicious danger, and find himself buoyantly liberated to move away from the definitively empty bed.”
“He thought of her beauty and the lure of her shaved and shapely cinnamon sticks standing at the trailer’s screen door.”
“Dreams died like destiny’s deadwood.” (what a missed opportunity here, if he’s only written “Destiny’s Child”)
Now all of this would be enough to make one stop reading. But I didn’t have that luxury, I had to go on. And boy did the fun continue.
In addition to this writing “style” there were moments when even he realized that this might be a problem for some of his readers. So, Penn decided to help the poor sod who was reading this because of idolizing the author (that’s the only person I see finishing this book without having a gun pressed against their head). Whenever there was a turn of phrase, he used that might confuse the intellectually limited reader, Penn graciously helped them by providing freaking FOOTNOTES. Some were ok, I guess. But come on.
“The five-sided puzzle palace had an autonomous private contracting budget” --> the Pentagon.
“As you were.” --> standard military command (no shit Sherlock! Who doesn’t know that?
“…he has started calculating the g/km of his burnings” --> grams per kilometre (I know Americans are perceived as being stupid, but that stupid?)
Now, ok, you might say this is the narrator, not the Author. I don’t buy that.
And to finish it off we have:
Random stereotyping of Jews and the way their talk Completely not random western view of the Muslim world Every woman being insupportable receptacle for his penis but with smeared lipstick on her teeth. A completely disconnected anti-Trump rant that came out of the blue. Bob making a woman laugh so much she keeled over, and a bit of poop got out of her and wetness could be seen between her buttocks.
I KNOW!!!!! I KNOW!
Now, to some more memorable quotes
“A driver drives.”
“With that, he absquatulated.”
“a fugitive from Jordan who’s fled a case of fraud.”
If you’re wondering, wow, this is so bad I might just have to read it, just don’t. Read 50shades of grey books, or the Covid Erotica I mentioned at the beginning, or even bad fanfiction. Anything but this. Or you could just read a thesaurus – the same amount of fun, but you won’t end up hating yourself.
May 23, 2018
I really only have myself to blame. I'd heard the reports. I'd seen the memes. I read it anyway. Now I will spend my days trying to purge myself of the memory.
Penn's prose is a perfunctory potpourri of alienating alliteration and redundant references in footnotes* that runs together in the antithesis of a narrative. Given that Penn has stated that he wants to give up on acting in lieu of book writin', here's a handy hint: before you start deconstructing the conventions of contemporary fiction, you may want to master some of the basics. Like paragraphs. Sentences. Or consecutive words that are placed next to each for a reason other than starting with the same letter.
Now let us never speak of this again.
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* A footnote is an explanatory note or some kind of reference to another work. I know you know this, but if Penn was writing this review, he'd assume you didn't. This sentence would have also disappeared up its own orifice** by now as well.
** Arse. I'm talking about an arse.
Penn's prose is a perfunctory potpourri of alienating alliteration and redundant references in footnotes* that runs together in the antithesis of a narrative. Given that Penn has stated that he wants to give up on acting in lieu of book writin', here's a handy hint: before you start deconstructing the conventions of contemporary fiction, you may want to master some of the basics. Like paragraphs. Sentences. Or consecutive words that are placed next to each for a reason other than starting with the same letter.
Now let us never speak of this again.
-------
* A footnote is an explanatory note or some kind of reference to another work. I know you know this, but if Penn was writing this review, he'd assume you didn't. This sentence would have also disappeared up its own orifice** by now as well.
** Arse. I'm talking about an arse.
April 2, 2018
Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff is exhausting, and it would have been better if it was about a boy who was estranged from his father until one day he found a boom box that happened to be home to a genie who helped him consume junk food and also take down a music bootlegger his father worked for so he could actually have a relationship with his father. Can't win them all.
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