Josh
Why the “twist”? I think I would have liked it better to have been a story of modern day Jack Turner recounting the experiences while navigating his current life.
In the mid 1800's, Dostoevsky wrote the predecessor to early 2000's autistic 4chan basement dwellers. This socially dysfunctional character is in a world where they can't adequately interpret their own feelings or the feelings of others. The author of the notes is constantly at odds with their own desires and with other people intents. Their ability to discern what they want vs what they are anticipating to be the expected outcome of that want is fragmented. I mean to say, they don't know what they are feeling as much as they are feeling a first emotion, then a counter emotion, then a tertiary emotion, and then they feel compelled to rationalize these conflicting feelings and thoughts into a fractured philosophy and moral compass.
The book consists of the shallow notes of a poor and mentally isolated man that tries to convince himself (us?) that it's great to be in the “underground”.
It's late and I'm not organizing my thoughts well, but this book doesn't feel like a deep philosophy like other discussions suggest. It's not filled with “deep hard questions”. It also doesn't feel comical. Even if you manage to keep up with the frantic pacing, the comedy would be if you find being manically mentally exasperated funny. Is he making a fool out of himself? Yes, but, that's because the character is necessarily foolish due to their environment. They don't fit. If there's a joke, the joke is the world that necessitates their existence in such a state.
“His eyes took in the details of my body with a conflicted face that I knew well: even having seen all the facts of the case, he still wanted me. He wanted me despite knowing what that meant about him”
I'd add an extra comparison that this has traits of storytelling like that of the movie “The Wolf of Wall Street”. You're in the persons POV and you're supposed to be judging yourself and your society and culture.
The author says they've been researching poverty and its causes and then proposes the solution of poverty abolition through efficient government/“ethical” capitalism. It's a very shallow attempt to look at poverty in America and does almost know analysis beyond that of a frat bro proselytizing to drunken friends about how ethical and advanced their start up will be.
The reason the age and year published help to place this is that the author has a more “practical” view (some circles might say “boomer”). It's very much oriented around succeeding in school/work and refers to “aspies” in Silicon Valley and loves the pattern, word, art, engineering sort of categories for people that have “ASD”. I find it hard to be enthralled with an “advocate” when they are mostly advocating for equal exploitation under jobs. It is a great discussion to talk about everyone's value, but it becomes a stunted discussion when it focuses on jobs/education (education that is geared towards jobs) over individuals rights to fit in a system that allows them to best function.
There's some interesting ideas, but, maybe just because of the time, none of them are exactly novel.
Not looking for an advocate to fawn over the engineering of an iphone design and touting the failure of iphone designs being that apple just didn't have the right “aspie” mixture working on any given project.
It's a sketch comedy that you'd see only if the actor was really selling it and then everyone would winner why you keep watching it. The last 50 pages changed into a more lethargic pace but with larger strides. There's no point to this story, but most pulps are just that and that's this.
The personal anecdotes and the first half resonated better than the later half. There was too much time discussing the origin of the term gaslit. I would be more interested in reading other works now though. Doesn't feel like this book said anything new, but is rather a compendium of ideas already more rigorously communicated elsewhere.
