“The 100 Page Treatment”

Bad To Not So Great

Many years ago, at some point in the early 2000s, a friend of mine was remarking that he never knew when to give up on a book. As it just so happened, maybe six months at most before this, I had coincidentally settled on a solution to this problem myself: what I’ve come to think of as the 100 Page Treatment. As in, if I’m not into a book by page 100, then it’s time to give it the ol’ heave ho. Of course, this is not the perfect answer — by page 100, for example, you would already be finished with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde — but it’s the best thing I’ve come up with. As my friend nodded and agreed that day, saying, “that’s a pretty good idea…I think I’ll try that,” I haven’t just tried it, but have stuck to it (with a few extreme exceptions) ever since.

He are some notes on the various offenders, who were chucked aside at that milepost (as well as some of those notable outliers)

“Left Hand Of Darkness” — Ursula Le Guin

Oh horseshit. There’s no way vast hordes of readers seriously believe this is one of the top 25 science fiction novels of all time. The best thing this book has going for it is that you’re dropped in the middle of the “action” (such as it is) without any explanation whatsoever as to what’s going on. I always appreciate this, as opposed to over-explaining. On the minus side, there’s no discernible plot to speak of, at least not as of page 100 — it’s just one guy wandering around, observing stuff on a foreign planet, with a couple of ancient parables thrown in. The dialog feels like it comes from one of the sillier episodes of the original Star Trek series. A bunch of made-up words that are also not explained do not help matters either, let me tell you. Around page 94 or so begins some vaguely compelling commentary on gender roles, but if this is the high water mark, you’re in serious trouble. I don’t think people read this one nearly as much as they pretend to have read it.

“Invisible Influence “— Jonah Berger

This is a great example of why I find myself increasingly digging essays these days, by talented writers, rather than dry business tomes. Though presented as a serious, research backed venture, the structure of just about every section was one tiny scientific example, followed by maybe five pages of what amounted to anecdotal conjecture. With a style that’s about as boring as it gets. Well before page 100 I couldn’t help but think, there’s nothing remotely scientific about this book, much of it’s about as vague as possible, and, beyond that, most significantly, who cares? 

“Brave New World” — Aldous Huxley

Okay, I must confess: I only got to page 11 on this one. What can I say, it was due back at the library.

“American Psycho” — Bret Easton Ellis

Alright, I get it, I get it. A novel set in 1980s Manhattan chronicling what outfits everyone is wearing, this exhaustive attention to detail is supposed to convey how vapid and evil such a lifestyle was. And therefore these people were basically asking for a Wall Street psychopath to chop them into little pieces. I’ve actually tried this on two separate occasions, decades apart, and got slightly farther the second time around. But only slightly. Next point please.

“1984″ — George Orwell

I made it well beyond 100 pages with this one, but this nonetheless represents for me a pivotal piece in the bullshit mythology surrounding many such books: some awesome ideas, but the actual writing itself sucks ass. However, if the writing were better, then this exact same book would be a Ken Follett novel, which is “bad.” The dry, extremely boring writing here makes it leet-er-ah-chewer, however, not a dreaded genre novel. I don’t expect explosions every page, but I have to think that, as I do with the even worse James Ellroy, if I were to turn any chapter of this in to my 7th grade English teacher, she would have given me a C. And rightly so.

These last two authors I’ve mentioned are actually somewhat conjoined in a related topic, at least in my mind, that you might not expect. Though unable to make it through American Psycho, I have finished some of Ellis’s other books, including the much derided Lunar Park. Reading Lunar Park, I had this weird epiphany, which underscores for me how arbitrary and nonsensical many of these designations are. Because for some reason, I kept conjuring up comparisons to Stephen King.

The strangest aspect to Lunar Park was that, to me, Ellis had actually come up with a better genre horror plot than King had in about a decade…but the “genre” guy, Stephen King, even on his worst day, can write rings around ‘ol Bret here. If handed this plot and outline, King would have written a far better book than Ellis — the alleged “literary” author, who has this huge critical pedigree behind him.

“Good To Great” — Jim Collins

A vague concept that is reiterated in slightly different form, over and over again. This book details some epiphany the author had about why certain floundering companies were able to transform themselves, while others fell by the wayside. I feel like it’s not nearly as scientific as he thinks it is. Also, there is this, which becomes about impossible to ignore:

I was already probably a couple of dozen pages into this thing (unsure where I even picked it up, though I believe it was a Little Library freebie) before I began to wonder, what does this joker look like, anyway? And thus flipped to the hardcover’s backflap to investigate. Upon which I basically thought of course he looks like that, and has taken this specific photo, as it totally matches the writing style. 

In more recent years, as previously mentioned, I have grown admittedly weary of stuffy, scientific, attic-dry business books. I’ve just gotten to where I want to see a little more personality, and what an author thinks about the topic at hand. Because a lot of these books — this one included — are purportedly fact based, though seriously lacking in meaningful evidence. One of the first things you learn about statistics, after all, is that you can often make statistics say whatever you what. So then what are you left with?

The method at work here is for him to retroactively explain away results by this extremely regimented process: if it worked, it was obviously great; if it didn’t, then it was clearly a bad idea. Randomness and luck and consumer whims and other such mysterious forces do not exist. Plus, this is the third book in a month that I’ve read which mentioned the Hedgehog vs. Fox concept, none of them even being the original source. But all three thought they were shining a spotlight on some obscure, highly clever idea.

“Dead Stars” — Bruce Wagner

There were some brief stretches where I would almost like this thing, and feel like it was going somewhere, but then this feeling dissipated just as swiftly. Overall it’s a very annoying writing style, I guess would be my primary complaint — I don’t care so much about “plot” if the material is compelling you to turn the pages anyway, but that was sorely lacking here. Let’s just say this guy’s use of the & sign makes me want to limit it myself. 

I have no idea what age he is, but I will tell you what his writing voice reminded me of: this is the sound of some really old dude convinced he is pulling off a thoroughly peppy, snappy, “modern” street slang. Kind of like if you ever sat through a business meeting or for that matter happy hour with some total middle of the road corporate tool whose whole shtick nonetheless was that he “tells it like it is.” And therefore extensively utilizes the vocabulary of a 14 year old — probably practiced it in the mirror and/or while driving to work, for that matter — yet has still only gotten it about half right. He is convinced he is the very sound of the streets right now, that he has the essence down pat. 

So if I were to discover, say, he was actually in his 20s while writing this, I don’t know if that would make it seem better or worse. Probably much worse, if we’re being real here. Ya dig what I’m saying? Sex sells, baby! It’s all about the likes & thumbs up & the glitz & the glamour & the hustle for the teenage dollar$ ! Fake it till ya make it baby! 

Zzzzzzzz. Maybe he and Jim Collins up there should collaborate on something. Now that I could surely make it through 101 pages of. Maybe 102. 

“Inventing The Enemy” — Umberto Eco

Okay, this is another of these situations where I feel I have to say…my foot. I simply refuse to believe certain people are into this guy as much as they are pretending to be. Well, in fairness, this is a late career effort, and probably not indicative of his best work. Still, I feel like you can develop a pretty decent picture of how he likely rolls, just from reading this.

All I can tell you is, this fellow sure does like to do a lot of research. But that’s just it: that is it. This book of essays is him just regurgitating what a bunch of other people have said on various topics, with little to no input of his own. In some instances you will literally have a full page of him quoting somebody else, followed by some sort transition phrase of his, followed by another long quoted passage. His research collage (aka “essay”) on fire was particularly excrutiating and ran something like this:

“Okay, so then here’s what St. Francis Assisi had to say about fire…

(insert five unbroken paragraphs lifted from some ancient tome)

“yes and therefore one can indeed say that fire has always been considered quite hot. But don’t take my word for it, consider what Dante has had to offer on this topic…

(four more paragraphs lifted directly from Inferno)

“He’s not alone with these sentiments. Thomas Jefferson thought fire was mostly orange, sometimes red. Pope Pius IV said flames were known to occasionally burn things. Ancient peasants in Morocco might have possibly worshipped fire. My next door neighbor, who lost his house to an arsonist, said he considers fire evil. As you can see, this has always been a divisive topic.”

“Fever Pitch” — Nick Hornby

I think I’m officially done with this guy now. Though making it through a few of his books, this one represents the tipping point. The cover quotes were gushing about what a knee slapper this was, but let’s just say, evidence of this is as lacking here as it is in Jim Collins’s “scientific” hypotheses. 

To me, what happened here is that a pair of good movies were made from his novels, in the early 2000s (High Fidelity, About A Boy), and they permanently altered the official public stance on Hornby. He has been coasting on this fortuitous streak ever since. I read both, and they were okay, but were each a rare example of the movie being better — in fact, I think picturing the movie scenes themselves while reading made the books much more tolerable than they would have been otherwise. I mean, after the technical ending of High Fidelity, he seriously has a section labeled something like “Three Scenes I Couldn’t Seem To Make Fit Anywhere,” which is about as clunky and ridiculous as it sounds. If any of us tried turning that in to an editor, they would be using our book for a doorstop.

And this isn’t a slam on British humor. I actually like that outrageous, often absurdist comedy slant. No, his style is more the other notoriously English humor, that of the exceptionally droll guy. You can totally picture him doing a reading of this material (in fact, I have attended one of his readings, and can testify this is the scene) whereby he’s reciting every single line here in the same dry monologue, pausing after every clever bit to look up with a pleading smile and cue the audience where to insert their appropriately polite chuckles. Problem is, they are all picturing John Cusack and Jack Black and Hugh Grant delivering these lines instead, whether they know it or not, which would indeed make them much funnier.

The best thing this book has going for it is the structure: I kind of dug the maniacal devotion it takes for someone to list every single soccer (sorry, “football”) game he’s been to, along with the date, the result, and what was happening in his life at the time. So it wasn’t a total disaster. A couple of the jokes I guess are mildly amusing, a couple personal anecdotes memorable. But he describes almost nothing about the players themselves, despite namechecking an absolute blizzard of them, and the whole thing becomes extremely monotonous before long. Also, as previously mentioned, I’m a bit perplexed where any of the alleged laugh out loud moments would be found. If this were a soccer match, I think he loses by a score of about 5–2 to a thoroughly middle of the pack team.