John Dies at the End review
“This is the breaking point in a human life, right here. This is waking up on an operating table to find aliens peering down at you, this is hearing the audible voice of God telling you the date the world will end. This is seeing a family of bigfoots in the forest and being without a camera.
Welcome to freakdom, Dave. It’ll be time to start a website soon.“
John Dies at the End is not a sci-fi classic, it's not even sci-fi it is actually a combination of horror and dick jokes.But mostly dick jokes. If the Culture Universe is a well matured wine, kept at the proper temperature for 20 years to be enjoyed while having a veal steak enjoying great conversation with your educated friends - great taste and all the excitement of a root canal, John Dies at the End is the cocktail that mixes half the alcohol the bartender finds that you order after doing 3 shots - all the excitement in the world, followed by a splitting headache the day after when you might not even know where you wake up or how you got there.
The writer Jason Pargin started and still writes for cracked.com. He wrote the story under the pseudonym David Wong. As to the why he chose the name:
"It's not a very interesting story, "David Wong" was the villain in a story I had written way back in the day, so when I was signing up for my first online accounts in 1998 I started using it. Then when hate mail started coming in with a bunch of racist anti-Chinese insults, I realised I had either gone badly wrong or badly right."
“Solving the following riddle will reveal the awful secret behind the universe, assuming you do not go utterly mad in the attempt. If you already happen to know the awful secret behind the universe, feel free to skip ahead.”
The fascinating part is that it all started as a series of articles which were later compiled to form this book. That means that the book is a bit(more than a bit) disjointed and even the writing style varies from one part to another. It has been criticised that it lacks cohesion.
The book follows the adventures of two misfits/anti-heroes John and Dave as they battle the forces of evil, even though they really just want to be left alone. They are true underachievers, working dead end jobs in a small shitty town. It is refreshing that they do not become heroes at any point in the book, they always react realistically to the shitstorm(it's a word!) they find themselves in.
There are nuggets of wisdom thrown along with the myriad of dick jokes and juvenile humour. It’s like a 12 year old kid took a course in philosophy but he can’t go for more than 5 minutes without cracking some really stupid joke or making fart noises.
Some of the quotes really show how the author sees the world or at least some of his fears. It’s the fear of being on the sidelines incapable of playing with the rest of the team, forever shut out, always trying to understand some joke that everyone else gets immediately. And maybe I like those parts more than the dick jokes. It’s hard to explain but they feel real in a way that’s refreshing.
“From day one it was like society was this violent, complicated dance and everybody had taken lessons but me. Knocked to the floor again, climbing to my feet each time, bloody and humiliated. Always met with disapproving faces, waiting for me to leave so I'd stop fucking up the party.
The wanted to push me outside, where the freaks huddled in the cold. Out there with the misfits, the broken, the glazed-eye types who can only watch as the normals enjoy their shiny new cars and careers and marriages and vacations with the kids.
The freaks spend their lives shambling around, wondering how they got left out, mumbling about conspiracy theories and bigfoot sightings. Their encounters with the world are marked by awkward conversations and stifled laughter, hidden smirks and rolled eyes. And worst of all, pity.”
Don’t get me wrong, I really like the juvenile humour. A good measuring stick for me for how funny a book is, is if it makes me laugh in the subway. This one did.
“John, let me make one thing clear,” Jim said, cutting me off in his most stern, evangelical voice. “Every man is blessed with his gifts from the Lord. One of mine happens to be a penis large enough that, if it had a penis of its own, my penis’ penis would be larger than your penis.”.....
..."Fuck all of you,” John retorted. “You don’t even exist. We’re all just a figment of my cock’s imagination.”
I think it’s the sarcastic attitude combined with the bad analogies that makes me like this book in the end. The heroes are not superhuman, they don’t have the best intentions and their actions sometimes cause more harm than good. And that’s the way it’s supposed to be.
“PEOPLE DIE.
This is the fact the world desperately hides from us from birth. Long after you find out the truth about sex and Santa Claus, this other myth endures, this one about how you’ll always get rescued at the last second and if not, your death will at least mean something and there’ll be somebody there to hold your hand and cry over you. All of society is built to prop up that lie, the whole world a big, noisy puppet show meant to distract us from the fact that at the end, you’ll die, and you’ll probably be alone.”
It's the kind of book you either love or hate. You have to have some pretty weird taste to really love it, out of all my friends I was the only one that really did. The book has a pretty big cult following and there’s also a pretty decent movie with Paul Giamatti in it that you should watch after you read the book.
I know, this is a fuckton of quotes I get it. And this will probably the only review that gets this treatment. It’s just this is the kind of writing where it makes sense.
Stay tuned for a review of “This Book Is Full of Spiders”, the sequel to JDATE.
Pros:
- In some parts of the book the writing shines and it feels real and raw
- Great plot twists
- Dick jokes and juvenile humour
Cons:
- The writing style could be better polished
- Disjointed and lacking cohesion and structure at some points
- Dick jokes and juvenile humour
Score: 9 out of 10 for me, though this is probably my least objective score for a book.
Objectively 7 out of 10, but who wants to be objective anyway?
Welcome to freakdom, Dave. It’ll be time to start a website soon.“
John Dies at the End is not a sci-fi classic, it's not even sci-fi it is actually a combination of horror and dick jokes.But mostly dick jokes. If the Culture Universe is a well matured wine, kept at the proper temperature for 20 years to be enjoyed while having a veal steak enjoying great conversation with your educated friends - great taste and all the excitement of a root canal, John Dies at the End is the cocktail that mixes half the alcohol the bartender finds that you order after doing 3 shots - all the excitement in the world, followed by a splitting headache the day after when you might not even know where you wake up or how you got there.
The writer Jason Pargin started and still writes for cracked.com. He wrote the story under the pseudonym David Wong. As to the why he chose the name:
"It's not a very interesting story, "David Wong" was the villain in a story I had written way back in the day, so when I was signing up for my first online accounts in 1998 I started using it. Then when hate mail started coming in with a bunch of racist anti-Chinese insults, I realised I had either gone badly wrong or badly right."
“Solving the following riddle will reveal the awful secret behind the universe, assuming you do not go utterly mad in the attempt. If you already happen to know the awful secret behind the universe, feel free to skip ahead.”
The fascinating part is that it all started as a series of articles which were later compiled to form this book. That means that the book is a bit(more than a bit) disjointed and even the writing style varies from one part to another. It has been criticised that it lacks cohesion.
The book follows the adventures of two misfits/anti-heroes John and Dave as they battle the forces of evil, even though they really just want to be left alone. They are true underachievers, working dead end jobs in a small shitty town. It is refreshing that they do not become heroes at any point in the book, they always react realistically to the shitstorm(it's a word!) they find themselves in.
There are nuggets of wisdom thrown along with the myriad of dick jokes and juvenile humour. It’s like a 12 year old kid took a course in philosophy but he can’t go for more than 5 minutes without cracking some really stupid joke or making fart noises.
Some of the quotes really show how the author sees the world or at least some of his fears. It’s the fear of being on the sidelines incapable of playing with the rest of the team, forever shut out, always trying to understand some joke that everyone else gets immediately. And maybe I like those parts more than the dick jokes. It’s hard to explain but they feel real in a way that’s refreshing.
“From day one it was like society was this violent, complicated dance and everybody had taken lessons but me. Knocked to the floor again, climbing to my feet each time, bloody and humiliated. Always met with disapproving faces, waiting for me to leave so I'd stop fucking up the party.
The wanted to push me outside, where the freaks huddled in the cold. Out there with the misfits, the broken, the glazed-eye types who can only watch as the normals enjoy their shiny new cars and careers and marriages and vacations with the kids.
The freaks spend their lives shambling around, wondering how they got left out, mumbling about conspiracy theories and bigfoot sightings. Their encounters with the world are marked by awkward conversations and stifled laughter, hidden smirks and rolled eyes. And worst of all, pity.”
Don’t get me wrong, I really like the juvenile humour. A good measuring stick for me for how funny a book is, is if it makes me laugh in the subway. This one did.
“John, let me make one thing clear,” Jim said, cutting me off in his most stern, evangelical voice. “Every man is blessed with his gifts from the Lord. One of mine happens to be a penis large enough that, if it had a penis of its own, my penis’ penis would be larger than your penis.”.....
..."Fuck all of you,” John retorted. “You don’t even exist. We’re all just a figment of my cock’s imagination.”
I think it’s the sarcastic attitude combined with the bad analogies that makes me like this book in the end. The heroes are not superhuman, they don’t have the best intentions and their actions sometimes cause more harm than good. And that’s the way it’s supposed to be.
“PEOPLE DIE.
This is the fact the world desperately hides from us from birth. Long after you find out the truth about sex and Santa Claus, this other myth endures, this one about how you’ll always get rescued at the last second and if not, your death will at least mean something and there’ll be somebody there to hold your hand and cry over you. All of society is built to prop up that lie, the whole world a big, noisy puppet show meant to distract us from the fact that at the end, you’ll die, and you’ll probably be alone.”
It's the kind of book you either love or hate. You have to have some pretty weird taste to really love it, out of all my friends I was the only one that really did. The book has a pretty big cult following and there’s also a pretty decent movie with Paul Giamatti in it that you should watch after you read the book.
I know, this is a fuckton of quotes I get it. And this will probably the only review that gets this treatment. It’s just this is the kind of writing where it makes sense.
Stay tuned for a review of “This Book Is Full of Spiders”, the sequel to JDATE.
Pros:
- In some parts of the book the writing shines and it feels real and raw
- Great plot twists
- Dick jokes and juvenile humour
Cons:
- The writing style could be better polished
- Disjointed and lacking cohesion and structure at some points
- Dick jokes and juvenile humour
Score: 9 out of 10 for me, though this is probably my least objective score for a book.
Objectively 7 out of 10, but who wants to be objective anyway?
Your review is as funny as the book. Good one :D
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