Monday 25 May 2015

#36. "I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell" by Tucker Max

Fuck You Donika Miller.

(0/10)

By Peartree

(book chosen by Admiral Fartmore)





Editor's Note: Having spent a few rough nights out with Peartree, I'm damn glad he has enough of a brain not to write things down. Also, Tucker Max's head looks like something you'd use to clean the barrel of a cannon.


I have read some pretty shitty books in this club. 'I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell' was the least enjoyable one of them all, and that includes an humourless 1950's guide to raising children with mental disabilities. When something isn't funny, you can at least laugh at it. Whereas when someone is trying to be funny but it's not your sense of humour, the most annoying thing is for that person to keep talking. Imagine being forced to sit through a five hour showing of a Yakov Smirnoff routine. Sure, that one joke got a chuckle but reusing it every punch line makes you go insane.

And thus having read this Piece Of Shit™ I am sullen. Half way through I realised I could not find any funny angle to use, it was just shit. There were no gaps in the coil of this shit for me to get into. Maybe it's because this book is so damn popular and everything has been said about it - it was on the best sellers list for years - but I think it's morseo because he's a self-professed piece of shit who knows everything he puts out is shit.

There is no story in this collection of seemingly cookie cutter anecdotes. Drink alcohol, meet women, insult women, vomit. He even ironically addresses this in one of the stories commenting on how his early days were great but nothing note worthy. One of his first stories which was a catalyst to his fame was when he had a portable breathalyzer, challenged everyone to a drinking contest, lost, and puked in some bushes outside a sushi restaurant. It's an incredibly unimpressive feat and a pandering story.

No matter how much he drinks he always has a witty comeback right on the spot and can apparently keep track of time like George Michael Bluth. One moment he will be falling over drunk and the next he's rebuking girls like a frat boy written by a wannabe Woody Allen. And of course he always has the last word, is never humiliated (unless while it's performing some sex act), and everyone he encounters is incredibly stupid. All the women he meets are 'dumb whores'. None of them are in it for the same thing he is, just a quick bang. No, of course they all adore him and fall for his tricks because as we know no woman has ever wanted to just fuck and be done with a guy. Nonono.

Max is the Shirley Phelps-Roper of misogynists. There are the ones we forget about because of their art like Picasso or John Lennon, but Max's fame is his controversy. He will enjoy anything his name is in, and that's how he became famous. Narcissism is nothing new. From Lord Henry Wotton to the characters of It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia, we as a society enjoy narcissists. But when people start trying to live the philosophies of fictional characters they become like their characters:  two-dimensional, with no development or true conflict, and also fucking idiots. No one would be friends with a man like this. It would get old as quickly as it was reading about it.

As an easily decipherable parallel for his views on women, and most other men, in one of the earlier stories he goes to a country bar and makes fun off all the 'red necks' and 'hicks'. They, as we all know, are all inbred retarded alcoholics. Yet he decides to go a bar populated by them. He puts himself in situations he feels superior and dismisses all others who challenge him because he is a lummox. This is evident in his new real-life entrepreneurial endeavour 'book in a box' (essentially a ghost-writer networking business)

One of the only lines from the book to make me laugh is after a trip he writes "the way that weekend worked out, we really didn't run into or have to deal with the legions of douche bags and tools that now seem to infect every aspect of Vegas." That was it. The only time I laughed.

So why is this guy so popular? I used to read Maddox with my friends when I was young and it was about the same humour. It could be that as I get older I have less time for drunken aggrandized sex stories, or that I find having constant thoughts of sex and picking up women at any cost pathetic, but I think it's the quantity. If I had read one of these stories while perusing reddit I would have laughed and moved on. But 267 pages of the same shit over and over is depressing and infuriating to the point of psychological damage. So if you want to torment your enemy force them to read this book. Unless he's a twenty-something frat boy. In that case don't waste your time, have some self-respect and get a better enemy.

-Peartree

PS. I should state my actual beef, as per the title, is with Donika Miller. His editor or something who Max says in the acknowledgement 'does more than just add value--her critiques turn good writing into great writing'. I can only guess as to what value she had added as there is none in the final draft, and this book is a fucking astronomical unit away from 'great writing'. Max may embellish and aggrandise his writings, but that was not hyperbole.

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