Twenty chapters in the life of a lonely young man, whose compassion for others makes Bill O’Reilly look like Mister Rogers.
A disorganized collection of vitriolic, unfounded rants.
Under the guise of offering food for thought, Etheredge–a self-described “average, middle-class American who has dealth with the ever-increasing problems that life has thrown his way,” and “complainer who has insight”–presents remarks made in his teen years as sage advice, coming out of the box swinging at the sundry objects of his displeasure. Acknowledging and refusing to apologize for the fact that his so-called “lessons” are comprised solely of baseless opinions, the author lets loose in a colloquial style befitting a journal never intended for publication. Some of his targets include the fat and/or lazy: “Were there any gyms or health clubs in every large town 75 years ago? No. Why weren’t there any? People actually worked”; George W. Bush: a “mediocre boob” who can’t be trusted because of the “perpetual smirk on his face”; conservative “millionaire billionaire republicans” as well as liberal democrats, especially “the politically correct pansies in this country” seeking removal of the Ten Commandments from an Alabama courthouse. Perhaps because the author found the Lord after a girl stood him up at a school dance, he saves his most virulent and repeated attacks for homosexuals: “I hate hearing people have to say they are sorry for making remarks about homosexuals. Homosexuality is WRONG…Maybe they are born with that impulse to have sexual relations with the same sex, but aren’t serial killers born with the impulse to kill?...The comparison to discrimination of the black population of the sixties to the homosexuals today is a slap in the face to black people everywhere, and the jackasses who have made this comparison should rethink the situation.” Then, just 12 pages later: “When one has seen every aspect of something, then and only then can they make a valid assessment on something without prejudging it in error.” Apparently, the only lesson the author has taken to heart is “do as I say, not as I do.”
Twenty chapters in the life of a lonely young man, whose compassion for others makes Bill O’Reilly look like Mister Rogers.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-595-39983-5
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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