Assholes: A Theory by Aaron James

Published by Doubleday on October 30, 2012 

Aaron James took a break from the philosopher's customary search for the meaning of life to ponder a more burning question: What does it mean to be an asshole? I have the sense that James wrote Assholes so he could share his complaints about surfers who behave like assholes, particularly Brazilians. Whatever his motivation, and despite his earnest attempt to subject assholes to scholarly thought, much of Assholes is enjoyable simply because the topic is so appealing. Everyone, after all, has an opinion about assholes.

Assholes consistently cut in line, interrupt, and engage in name-calling. They do not play well with others (in James' language, they are not fully cooperative members of society). Many (perhaps most) people occasionally behave like an asshole without becoming an asshole. As a theory of the asshole, James posits that an asshole is a person who enjoys "special advantages in interpersonal relations out of an entrenched sense of entitlement that immunizes him against the complaints of other people." Although I think "asshole" is pretty much self-defining, in the sense of "I know one when I see one," I like James' definition. I think it's a definition rather than a theory, but I'm probably just quibbling about semantics (which is pretty much the philosopher's job description, making it a battle I can't win). Whether it is a theory or a definition, after he finishes parsing it, James politely suggests that it is up to the reader to decide whether to agree with it. James is plainly no asshole.

James tells us that assholes are morally repugnant but not truly evil. If you're interested in standard philosophical discussions of moral behavior and moral responsibility with references to the likes of Aristotle, Kant, and Buber, you'll find them here. Those of us who needed strong coffee to make it through our philosophy classes are probably hoping for something more fun than a rehash of Martin Buber in a book titled Assholes. We're looking for the author to name names. Happily, James does so (although not without some preliminary hand-wringing about whether calling out assholes is something only an asshole would do). From Simon Cowell to Mel Gibson, from Donald Trump to Steve Jobs, from Ann Coulter to Bill O'Reilly, James finds assholes in every walk of life. James even suggests that book reviewers can be assholes (oh my!) although he does so in the context of academia.

Consistent with his definitional/taxonomic approach, James classifies assholes by type, including the boorish asshole (Rush Limbaugh, Michael Moore), the smug asshole (Richard Dawkins, Larry Summers), the asshole boss (Naomi Campbell), the presidential asshole (Hugo Chavez), the reckless asshole (Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld), the self-aggrandizing asshole (Ralph Nader), the cable news asshole (Neil Cavuto, Keith Olbermann), and the delusional asshole (Kanye West, Wall Street bankers).

James' approach to categorization lends itself to party games. You can make up categories James overlooked, like the sports asshole (George Steinbrenner, Michael Vick), or you can add names to the categories he's invented. Don't worry, there are plenty more assholes identified in the book -- the names I've cherry-picked are illustrative only -- as well as some categories I haven't mentioned, but you'll easily think of more. The book is short and the world is filled with assholes.

Returning to the realm of philosophy, James considers whether assholes are morally responsible for being assholes, which leads to a discussion of whether assholes have free will. James' conclusion is at odds with the answer you would get from a neuroscientist like Bruce Hood, but whether you blame assholes or accept that they can't help being who they are, you're still stuck with them. James reasons that assholes are generally male because they are shaped by the culture of gender, although I think he puts too fine a point on it when he draws subtle distinctions between assholes and bitches. I also think he's a bit naive when he argues that, for cultural reasons, American men are more likely to be assholes than Japanese men, a proposition with which many Southeast Asians (not to mention the surviving residents of Nanking) would disagree.

James includes a chapter on how to manage assholes (short version: you really can't, but you can try to make yourself feel good) and a chapter that suggests how capitalist societies (which encourage the sense of entitlement on which assholes thrive) can deteriorate when the asshole ethic takes root (short version: greed isn't good, Gordon Gecko notwithstanding). The concluding chapter tells us how to find a peaceful life in a world full of assholes (short version: reconcile yourself to the things you cannot change while hoping for a better world). These chapters give James a chance to apply the thoughts of Plato and St. Augustine and the Stoics and Rousseau and even Jesus to the topic of assholes. Heavy thinkers will probably enjoy those discussions. Lightweight thinkers, like me, will enjoy the name naming while looking forward to the party games the book inspires.

RECOMMENDED

The Devil Doesn't Want Me by Eric Beetner

Published by Penguin as a "Dutton Guilt Edged Mystery" on October 23, 2012

Lars is a hit man, and with two exceptions, a successful one. One was a recent bloodbath in Vegas and the other is Mitchell "Mitch the Snitch" Kenney, who for seventeen years has been evading Lars, hiding in a witness protection program somewhere in the southwest. Lars has been practicing yoga and chasing down leads but has never managed to find Mitch. Now Lars is being forced into retirement, replaced by a kid named Trent who expects to find and kill Mitch within a few days. As the plot unfolds, the question isn't whether someone will kill Mitch but whether Lars will kill Trent before Trent can kill Lars.

Large quantities of blood splatter across the pages as the story develops, but this isn't a novel of mindless action. Not that the story lacks pace -- it moves like a racehorse -- but it is characterization, not action, that makes the novel stand out. Lars has lost the motivation that shaped his murderous career. He feels old. That doesn't make him unique in the annals of crime literature, but it makes him more interesting than the typical killer. With the perspective of age and an outmoded, Old School sense of virtue, Lars realizes that he's ready for retirement, yet he feels a duty to protect a sixteen-year-old girl who, through no fault of her own, becomes a target of Trent's men. Can Lars get his stone cold killer mojo back before it's too late?

Dialog is sharp and snappy (I particularly liked "A puppy with a squeak toy is more dangerous than you, kid"). The story is peppered with humor, much of it provided by Lars' befuddlement with the sixteen-year-old who becomes his road trip partner. Also contributing to the humor are Trent, who can't get anything right, a rivalry between Lars' ailing boss and the son who can't wait for dad to die so he can take over the mob, and a group of FBI agents who would prefer to do anything but work. Even minor characters are memorable, sketched with a deft hand.

The road trip ends with a clever twist that leads to a wild ending. Although Eric Beetner had me before the novel even began by writing an Author's Note that talks about his love for his dog, it is his ability as a storyteller that kept me fully engaged.

RECOMMENDED

Accelerated by Bronwen Hruska

Published by Pegasus on October 2, 2012 

Accelerated is a novel in search of an identity. The first half is a cross between a character-driven literary novel and a cheesy soap opera. The second half tries to be a thriller, while the overall theme suggests that Accelerated is a message novel. While some aspects of the novel work reasonably well, none of its ambitions are fully realized.

Sean Benning beats himself up because he's not Wonder Dad. He doesn't take his third grade son Toby to Sight Training or to Occupational Therapy to improve his pencil grip. He can't pay for Toby's pricey private school, the sort of place that caters to the overprivileged, but his in-laws are picking up the tab, a circumstance that (like most of his circumstances) leaves Sean feeling humiliated. The school thinks Toby should be medicated because he engages in the sort of "distracting" behavior that is common among boys, but Sean initially resists the idea of turning his son into a drugged zombie.

For no apparent reason other than the need to drive the storyline, Toby's mother, Ellie, has disappeared for three months, occasionally phoning in her regrets. She resurfaces with a desire to take Toby over his Christmas break, which would give Sean the time he desperately needs to prepare for an art show that he scored on the basis of a mere three pieces. Ellie later proves to be such a self-absorbed ninny that it's impossible to take her seriously.

Parts of Accelerated hint at Bronwen Hruska's talent. Sean's concern for his son and struggle with parenting feels authentic. Hruska effectively conveys Sean's anxiety as he talks to Toby about the death of another student, as well as Sean's sense of frustration when he deals with school administrators and mental health providers who seem rather glib in their desire to pin labels on Toby.

Other aspects of the novel don't work at all. Hruska strives for biting humor and sweet sentiment but the story she tells is too obvious to reach those goals. Sean's attendance at a party where Bill Clinton hits on Toby's third grade teacher is laughable, while Sean's inevitable relationship with the teacher is predictable. A happy ending is forced, clearly created to appease readers who like happy endings.

Much of the story surrounds Sean's belief that Toby's school pushes healthy kids to take unnecessary medication and then covers up the disastrous results. In its implicit condemnation of school administrators and drugs like Ritalin, the plot becomes heavy-handed. I have no problem with the notion that normal childish behavior is misdiagnosed as ADHD and that schools have a vested interest in medicating boys as a control mechanism. I do have a problem with hinging a thriller plot on the proposition that drugs like Ritalin routinely cause heart problems in healthy children, that schools push for medication of every male student despite ensuing health problems, that they tell parents the problems are caused by peanut allergies or bee stings, and that parents are too blind and cardiologists too incompetent to recognize the truth. By flirting with hysteria, the plot loses its integrity.

Before Accelerated spins out of control, it features a reasonably balanced debate about the merits and pitfalls of medicating kids. That theme could have been the foundation for a serious novel. By turning the story into a mundane thriller, Hruska cheapened an important debate, wasted her carefully constructed characters, and impaired the novel's credibility. Despite its merits, the novel never recovers from those flaws.

NOT RECOMMENDED

The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester

First published in 1956

There are more ideas in The Stars My Destination -- profound ideas about human potential -- than you're likely to find collectively in the next dozen novels you read. The Stars My Destination begins as a tale of obsession and vengeance. The protagonist is an anti-hero, not the sort of person for whom a reader would normally root, but he is sympathetic compared to most of the novel's other characters, including a powerful corporate executive who makes Gordon Gecko seem like a mischievous boy. In Alfred Bester's future, people have acquired the ability to teleport over long distances, the colonized planets are at war with each other, and cities are filled with people who belong in carnival sideshows. But that's all window dressing for Bester's deeper exploration of a man who is "nothing but hatred and revenge," an Ahab of the twenty-fourth century chasing his own version of a white whale, a spaceship called Vorga. Ultimately, The Stars My Destination is a novel about the limits of idealism, the meaning of justice, the nature of power, and the transcendental ability of the human species to overcome its self-imposed limitations.

Gulliver Foyle, a common man who lacks ambition, a brute raised in the gutter school and "among the least valuable alive," is a crew member on the Nomad when it is attacked during the war between the inner and outer (colonized) planets of Earth's solar system. Foyle, the only member of the Nomad to survive, lives for months in an airtight tool locker not much bigger than a coffin. On his way to madness, he becomes obsessed with a rhyme that ends: "Deep space is my dwelling place/And death's my destination." When a ship called the Vorga ignores his distress signal, Foyle makes it his mission to repair the Nomad's engines so he can track down and destroy the Vorga. He manages to get himself to the asteroid belt (populated by descendants of stranded scientists who tattoo a grotesque tiger-design on Foyle's face) before he makes his way back to Earth. Once there, however, he's captured by employees of Presteign, CEO of the company that owns the Vorga. Presteign wants to know where to find the Nomad and its valuable cargo, a weapon that could shift the balance of power in the interstellar war. Foyle's captivity brings him into contact with Jisbella McQueen, with whom he falls in love -- but love is a small emotion compared his consuming hatred of the Vorga. He later falls in love with Presteign's daughter Olivia, who sees the world in infrared. But love is a cruel emotion, particularly when it clouds the overwhelming desire for vengeance.

New and strange twists appear regularly as the story progresses. Foyle creates the ability to move at accelerated speed. An entity called The Burning Man pops up from time to time, a fiery creature who looks like Foyle. While Foyle wonders if The Burning Man is his guardian angel, a more creative and satisfying explanation for the entity eventually comes to light. After a series of adventures that lead Foyle back to the Nomad, Foyle reinvents himself, becoming Fourmyle of Ceres, an illusionist and circus master whose clout matches Presteign's own. Foyle uses and abuses telepaths in his attempt to track down the person who ordered the Vorga to ignore the Nomad's distress call. The truth, when he finally learns it, shocks him.

Bester gives the uneducated Foyle a unique dialect that is a joy to read. Bester's vivid prose is well-suited to the story, but the novel was ahead of its time in its unconventional use of font placement, creating pictures with fonts to emphasize the confusion that besets Foyle's mind.

The Stars My Destination is a seminal work of science fiction that succeeds on a number of levels. It is a rollicking adventure story and an imaginative tale of the future, but it is more fundamentally a psychological exploration of a troubled soul in need of redemption. It is a cautionary tale about the arrogance of leadership and the virtue of restoring power to the people. Finally, it is a touching story about acceptance and self-determination and the possibility of achieving greatness. To achieve his ends, Gully Foyle must remake himself, and that is where the novel's genius lies. Foyle is no Ahab, incapable of change, consumed by a hatred that will eventually destroy him. Foyle's obsession motivates him to acquire knowledge and strength to serve his need for vengeance, but once he has those new resources, he begins to see the world anew -- as does the reader. Foyle recognizes that he is a freak, but so what? "Life is a freak. That's its hope and glory." We're all freaks, but we all have the ability to become something glorious.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Only Superhuman by Christopher L. Bennett

Published by Tor Books on October 16, 2012 

Superheroes endure in the imagination because they speak to our desire to empower the powerless, to be inspired by the iconic. Superheroes in science fiction have gained new life by the trendy notion of transhumanism, the use of technology to enhance human abilities. The current breed of supermen aren't born on Krypton; they're genetically or mechanically engineered. While paying tribute to comic book superheroes of the twentieth century (particularly a certain webspinner who likes to talk about the responsibility that comes with power), Christopher Bennett's Only Superhuman transforms the costumed superhero into a plausible (if unlikely) inhabitant of the future.

The novel opens in 2017. The hero upon whom the story focuses is a Troubleshooter named Emerald Blair, a/k/a the Green Blaze. Bennett gives her a melodramatic origin story (a tradition for superheroes) and sets up a background in which most transhumans hail from the asteroid belt, genetic engineering having met with disfavor on Earth. The Troubleshooters are a union of uniformed vigilantes who strive for justice, except when they don't. The Troubleshooters are only one of a number of competing transhuman groups. The most significant of the others are the Vanguardians and the Neogaians (human/animal hybrids who oppose restrictions on human enhancement that deny humanity "its right to evolve"). The Vanguard is most prominently represented in the novel by Eliot Thorne and his daughter Psyche, a woman with genetically enhanced empathy and an engineered ability to manipulate others.  A helpful appendix identifies the different groups that have taken up residence in the various asteroid belts.

While the story has its share of battles between costumed characters, the plot is driven by political treachery. Emerald must decide whether the leaders of the Troubleshooters are using improper means to achieve the wrong ends and eventually comes to question her long-standing assumptions about the group's righteousness. Should she ally herself instead with the Vanguardians, the organization her father abandoned and where her relatives still dwell? Emerald improbably blames her father for her mother's death, and what she learns with the Vanguard requires her to confront that anger.

As you might guess from this synopsis, much of the story is too obvious to succeed as good storytelling. The reader knows that Emerald will learn Valuable Lessons and will resolve her feelings about her father. At the same time, the heart of the story -- the betrayals and political intrigue -- is reasonably strong. Only Superhuman also showcases an interesting debate about the ethics of genetic enhancement, the possibility of saving and improving lives versus the use of babies as guinea pigs. More of that and fewer obvious life lessons would have made this a better novel.

The story's pace is uneven, in part because too much of the writing is expository and in part because it is so filled with relationships and betrayals that a reader might need to diagram them to make sense of it. Too much anguished conversation interrupts the story's flow. All the superhero sex becomes a bit tedious (the Green Blaze is easily aroused and Psyche, who uses sex as a weapon, has a full arsenal). Emerald's histrionics are tiresome. The novel keeps going long after it should end as the various characters engage in extended talk therapy with each other. In short, some good ideas and likable characters kept me reading, but a tighter, less predictable story would have earned a stronger recommendation.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS