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One of the things we writers like to talk about are the so-called “rules of writing”, if such things even exist. Mostly, we come down on the side that there are no rules. But I don’t know that I’ve ever met a book quite as dedicated to rule-breaking as this one.

It’s not just the “usual” writing rules that get violated in Awful, Ohio. The basic rules of spelling and grammar come in for a sound thrashing as well. On the first page, the author uses “was” when it should be “were.”

And then there’s the matter of the words themselves. What are words, after all? Nothing but symbols, signifying sounds, that we, as a society, mutually agree to mean things. There’s nothing inherent in them that says the symbols composing the term “elephant” must correspond to the thing they describe. If language had evolved differently, “elephant” might have meant what we mean when we say “teacup” instead. It’s arbitrary. And yet, language works because speakers of a given language are trained to follow these conventions. Words are ultimately just agreements between writers and readers.

Except not in Awful, Ohio. Frequently, the author uses some word that just cannot mean what it is conventionally understood to mean in the context.

Not to say that there aren’t clues. For example, the word “ration”, which can be either a noun referring to some limited quantity of something distributed according to a schedule, or a verb meaning the act of distributing same, is here used to mean “rationality.” Clearly, the words have some etymological connection, but this is in no way a standard usage.

I’ve often criticized Lovecraft for his overuse of adjectives and repetitive, long sentences. But in HPL’s prose, the overused adjectives typically meant the thing they were generally understood to mean. Now imagine if they didn’t. Imagine if sometimes, in one of his fits of purple verbiage, the horror-master of Providence had just started throwing out malapropisms and you had to guess what he actually meant. That happens frequently here.

In short, the author has chosen to break the most basic rule in all of communication, the fundamental agreement as to what things mean. Clearly, he is far more committed to the idea of rule-breaking than even I am, and I think of myself as a real iconoclast.

That’s an introduction to the prose style. I say “introduction” because I suspect linguists could write whole papers, perhaps hold whole conferences, analyzing the writing in this novel. But we haven’t the time for that now, we have to get along to the plot, which is the story of a man named Troy Slushy. Troy has grown bored with his factory job in the town of Awful, and just wants to get away from it all and spend time with his wife, Lacy.

Troy’s plan for how to escape the tyranny of the industrial labor force is an unusual one: to destroy the sun. His reasoning is, since the sun wakes people up to go to work, eliminating it means they wouldn’t have to. This is of course the same sort of confused logic underlying cargo cults, but we can ignore that for now. Things are going to get much weirder before we are through.

While plotting to destroy the sun, Troy still has to go to clock in at his place of employment, Mad Ted’s Uckin Hot Auce factory. Now, you might say, shouldn’t that be “hot sauce”? Well, it might. Throughout the text, the product the factory makes is called “hot sauce.” But the factory name is always written without the “S”. Why is this? We don’t know.

The aforesaid “Mad Ted” is a dictatorial figure who oversees the workers on his hot sauce assembly line from a mirrored pod hanging over the factory floor. Mad Ted is reclusive and mysterious, and what little information is available about him comes from the dubious source of an investigative reporter named Wilsie McHickoryboob.

If you haven’t noticed yet, the names in this book are absolutely bonkers. Later on, we meet Doink McTriggers and Sammy Ammo. The latter was once a kindly transient named Samuel Amiable, but changed his name when he was transformed into a ruthless criminal.

I think you’re starting to get an idea of how insane this book is. But really, I’ve only scratched the surface of it. Our author sometimes gleefully ignores the rules of basic causality, which makes for a very unpredictable plot.

Now, here’s the part that may surprise you.

I really enjoyed this book. The way the story works out is quite funny, and in the end, surprisingly satisfying. One thing that doesn’t become clear until fairly late in the game is that the plot does have a certain logic to it; albeit a very strange logic.

I heard about this book from a friend who did not finish it. I read it and enjoyed it, so recommended it to another friend who likes wacky humor. He also did not finish it.

So, 66.67% of those polled couldn’t stand it. But that’s a small sample size. I’m sure if we cast a wider net, we could get those numbers up to more like 90%-95%, at least.

I’m under no illusions about this. Most people who attempt to read this are going to give up because it’s so bizarre in so many ways. The writing is truly hard to decipher in points. Sometimes a book is hard to read because the author uses too many large, obscure words. Sometimes a book is hard to read because of basic mistakes in grammar and spelling. It’s rare to find a book that is hard to read because of both. Usually sesquipedalian types have a good handle on the fundamentals.

But I could get past this. And the reason is simply that I respect a willingness to experiment and try different things. Anytime you do that, you’re risking disastrous, embarrassing failure. But you’ve got to do it if you want any hope of ever hitting it big. Everybody remembers the moon landing. Almost nobody remembers all the test rockets that blew up on the launchpad. But you can’t get the one without the other.

If you like extremely strange, wildly experimental fiction, and can look past a whole slew of typos, grammatical errors, and just flat-out incomprehensible things, Awful, Ohio is a surprisingly fun story.

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I’ve never been a huge fan of John Wayne. It always seemed to me he played the same character in every movie he was in. And yet, all the same, there’s no denying he was a symbol of an era

In The Shootist, he plays J.B. Books, an aging gunfighter who rides into Carson City, Nevada to see an old friend, a Dr. Hostetler, to get a second opinion on what another medical man has told him.

Hostetler confirms the bad news: Books has an inoperable cancer. There’s nothing the doctor can do except prescribe laudanum, and give Books a reference to a boarding house down the road, operated by a widow named Bond Rogers and her son, Gillom.

Books takes a room, hoping only to die in peace, but word of the famous gunman soon spreads around town, and everyone, from the sheriff to the local newspaperman, is looking to make hay off of the dying celebrity.

Meanwhile, Books finds himself in a tumultuous relationship with Mrs. Rogers. There is immediate chemistry between them, but Books’s rough, gruff personality clashes with her prim religiosity. Gillom, for his part, is delighted to have Books staying in their house, but starts to resent him when he sees the stress it puts on his mother.

After a few days, Books realizes he isn’t going to be allowed to die peacefully, despite what Doc Hostetler recommends.  Various low-lifes keep trying to make names for themselves by ambushing Books, and a number of local criminals express their interest in becoming “The Man to Kill J.B. Books” in no uncertain terms. And so, Books realizes that in the end, his best bet at finding dignity is to die as he lived.

What makes the movie particularly noteworthy is twofold: first of all are how many quiet, understated scenes there are, especially between Books and Mrs. Rogers. They can communicate whole conversations worth of information with just a look between them. As is so often the case, what makes the scenes powerful are the things they don’t say.

And second is that there’s a certain “meta” element to the movie. The Shootist was John Wayne’s last film, and he would die of cancer only a few years after it was filmed. But that’s only the beginning of the parallels between the film’s plot and its behind-the-scenes reality. It’s about the end of the era of the Wild West, with Books as its last representative. As the sheriff tells him:

“The old days are gone, and you don’t know it. We’ve got waterworks, telephones, lights. We’ll have our streetcar electrified next year, and we’ve started to pave the streets. We’ve still got some weeding to do, but once we’re rid of people like you, we’ll have a goddamn Garden of Eden here. To put it in a nutshell, you’ve plain, plumb outlived your time.”

And the film itself is likewise the end of an era for Hollywood. Besides Wayne, you’ve got Lauren Bacall and Jimmy Stewart playing Mrs. Rogers and Doc Hostetler, two more stars of the Golden Age of Hollywood who grew gray in its service. Everything about the movie really does convey that, as Jim Morrison would say, “this is The End, beautiful friend.”

It’s really this element that elevates the film from just another “aging cowboy comes back for one more fight” story into something more sweeping and powerful. Some of the lines about sorrow and death seem more powerful coming from an actor delivering his last performance, and an actress who witnessed her own husband succumb to cancer.

In other words, I recommend this movie, even if you don’t particularly like John Wayne’s brand of Western. It’s surprisingly subtle and it packs an emotional punch, especially in the raw and poignant final scene, in which nary a word is spoken, but the actors’ faces and movements convey their tremendous anguish and turmoil.

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Book cover of 'Engines of Liberty: Rebel Heart' featuring a young man in a leather jacket holding a mechanical device, with an eagle in the background and a dramatic sunset.

What if I told you there was a YA adventure book about a boy fighting evil wizards? You’d probably say, “meh, sounds like a Harry Potter clone.”

I see why you’d think that. But what if I told you it’s set in America? Or rather, an alternate retro-futuristic America, in which the revolution was defeated, and the rebel colonists remain under the thumb of the cruel mages, who keep the non-magical people in a state of constant poverty by restricting their technology.

This is the world in which Calvin Adler, the protagonist, has grown up, and against which he rages impotently, lashing out at the mages who oppress his family. This act of rebellion earns them all a harsh punishment, and also earns Calvin a place in the underground resistance forming to fight the magic-wielding oppressors. A group of “technomancers”, who have vowed to succeed where George Washington failed.

The story is fast-paced and fun. It has all the usual beats of a coming-of-age YA novel: evil villains, school where hero takes some hits and learns to get back up, arrogant bullies, budding romance, and all the other elements we expect are here. Also, some interesting retrofuturistic technology, especially the guns. That’s right, unlike the Potterverse, wands aren’t the only weapons folks have at their disposal!

Is it the most original, innovative, or inventive story I ever read? No, it’s not. But I had fun reading it, and I think that’s all that really matters. If you’re in the mood for a fun fantasy adventure for quick reading, then this is a good choice. 

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Theodore Roosevelt was a man of many talents. He was, as Ben Stiller summarizes in that great masterpiece of 21st-century cinema, Night at the Museum 2: “26th President of the United States, Roughrider, Founder of the National Parks, and a whole bunch of other stuff.”

Among that “whole bunch of other stuff”, he was a writer, and one of his works is this biography of Oliver Cromwell: “Lord Protector of England, Puritan, born in 1599 and died in 1658, September.”🎶  (Once you hear the Monty Python song about him, you can never un-hear it.)

I love reading one famous historical figure writing about another. The gold standard for this is, of course, Napoleon’s commentaries on the wars of Julius Caesar, but this one is right up there. T.R.’s writing is efficient, to the point, and very opinionated. He’s making no attempt at neutrality, but arguing strenuously that Oliver Cromwell was awesome, and that the Stuart monarchy he temporarily deposed were, basically, a bunch of mindless jerks who were the first against the wall when the revolution came.

But Teddy had a problem, in that Cromwell’s reign was, by basically any measure, just a tyrannous as was that of Charles I, if not more so. To his credit, he doesn’t deny this. He admits that Cromwell did some nasty stuff. He even puts together a tiered ranking of “guys who took over their countries after a revolution.” Top tier: George Washington. Next tier: Cromwell. Bottom tier: Napoleon. (Too bad he didn’t write this after 1917.)

He makes a lot of excuses for Cromwell, basically all of which amount to, “he meant well.” Yeah, yeah, Ted; that’s what they all say.

Nevertheless, the biographical sketch is quite interesting, and it’s kind of nice to read a politician who is unafraid to take an unequivocal stance on a relatively controversial topic. Not to mention that the idea of a politician taking the trouble to learn something about a distant period of history is rather amazing by modern standards.

Is it the best book ever written on Cromwell? Probably not. Is it objective? Definitely not. But is it the best book we’re ever likely to get about Cromwell written by an American politician? For at least the foreseeable future, yes.

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I am not generally in favor of content warnings. It’s not that I have any problem with them per se; it’s just that if you start doing them, you have to list everything that could possibly upset anyone. Which could really be anything. My mother knows a woman who is afraid of kittens. Kittens!

But this book should come with a warning. It is incredibly depressing. So depressing that, as I was reading it, the thought occurred to me that it could actually be in some sense dangerous. I am not prone to depression or melancholy, and yet even I was filled with a profound sense of gloom after reading this. I would say if you do read it, you should be sure you have someone you can talk to about it, because otherwise it might get just too damn bleak. For myself, I re-read a Zachary Shatzer book after finishing it, as a sort of satyr play.

What, you ask, is Stoner about? Not a drug enthusiast or the famous firearm designer, as you might have thought, but a man named William Stoner born on a small Missouri farm, back when the West was young… oh, wait, no; that’s Frank and Jesse James. Stoner is born on a small Missouri farm in 1891. Farm life is bleak and hard and miserable, and so, in 1910, Stoner’s father suggests he take classes at the University of Missouri, an institution set up to educate rural youths such as himself and mold them into productive citizens. (Their motto is salus populi suprema lex esto: “the health of the people shall be the supreme law.”)

Stoner enrolls at Mizzou, but finds the agricultural science classes boring. English literature catches his fancy, and he seeks a graduate degree in it, much to his parents’ disappointment. From there, he goes on to a career teaching at the same university. He meets a woman named Edith, whom he marries for no particular reason, and their marriage quickly proves to be an unhappy one. Despite this, they have a daughter, whom they name Grace. Stoner bonds with Grace when she is young and Edith is frequently absent, but then Edith begins manipulating her to keep her away from her father.

Meanwhile, Stoner’s professional life is the dreary, repetitive drudgery of teaching the same classes over and over, intermixed with the petty factional squabbles common to academia. Anyone who has ever been connected with a university for an extended period will recognize familiar types: the scheming faculty members with their intradepartmental political jockeying, and the malingering, dishonest students who put more effort into gaming the system than into studying their assignments.

All of it makes Stoner miserable, but only in a very detached sort of way. Frequently, we are told he views his problems as if he is watching them happening to somebody else. Some might call this stoicism or perseverance. But to me, it called to mind a line from a Monty Python skit: “He doesn’t know when he’s beaten, this boy! He doesn’t know when he’s winning either. He has no sort of sensory apparatus!”

Stoner is just a non-entity. A vaguely sad non-entity, but when it seems as if he himself can’t be bothered to care that his life sucks, well, why should I?

Stoner was more or less ignored when it was published in 1965, and only recently rediscovered in the age of the internet. This book has over 18,000 reviews on Amazon, most of them positive. It’s also tagged with something called “Best of #BookTok”, which means it’s popular on social media. Which amazes me, because it seems like exactly the sort of book that wouldn’t interest the TikTok crowd, what with its slow pace, historical setting, and lack of sparkling vampires. In a way, I view it as a good sign that a book like this can still find an audience today.

But not that good of a sign, because it’s still an unbelievably grim slog. A lot of reviews say that, basically, that’s the point. Stoner’s entire life is drab and uninteresting, like so many people’s lives, and yet the author was able to weave a narrative out of a completely dull non-story.

I have my own theory as to why the book is more popular now than it was upon its original publication. I suspect Stoner is most interesting to people who are familiar with the inner-workings of academia. In the 1960s, this was a smaller share of the population. But as access to college has increased, and especially as more students have sought post-graduate degrees, the percentage of people who can relate to Stoner has grown as well.

Which is a rather ominous message, given that the theme of the book seems to be that academic life is gloomy and wretched. Then again, it doesn’t suggest that Stoner’s agrarian parents were living the Life of Reilly, either. Basically, there are no happy endings here. All that was missing was a Barry Lyndon-esque epilogue in case we hadn’t gotten the point already: “It was in the reign of Franklin Roosevelt that the aforesaid personages lived and quarreled…”

So, the big question: should you read the damn thing? Well… it’s hard to say. It’s well-written, and given the aggressively tedious subject matter, I have to give the author credit for making it fairly readable. I kept going after all, with morbid curiosity, wanting to know what awful thing Stoner would have to deal with next, and what his new excuse would be for not making his own life better.

Probably any young person just going off to college should read this. Then they can decide for themselves if they want to risk ending up like Stoner. But I don’t think many college-age kids read this blog. So for my typical readers: if you love well-written and crushingly depressing literary fiction, sure, give it a shot. Otherwise, steer clear.