Customer Reviews

The Average American Male: A Novel

5 star:		(54)
4 star:		(25)
3 star:		(14)
2 star:		(16)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

For a good portion of the book, I was very entertained. But on like day 3 of reading out of maybe 5 days, I suddenly was bored with it. I realized that this guy is a pretty serious scum bag, and it was just no longer funny. His actions and thoughts are concepts that us men like to joke about, not actually do. I found myself very depressed by the end of it. No man thinks about sex as much as Chad Kultgen does. Women who find themselves reading this: I'm sorry. Do not associate this man as being the Average American Male. We're better than this.

It's worth your time to examine the quality of the spelling in the positive reviews of this book in order to form an opinion of what marketers like to call "the target demographic." Ask yourself: do I fit into this group? Do I want to? If you want to read something with a lot of unapologetic masculinity lying around for you to slip in, by all means read Chuck Palahniuk's "Fight Club" or "Choke." If you want to read something with a ton of sex, please treat yourself to Jonathan Franzen's "Freedom." If you want a good, old-fashioned story with great male and female characters and plenty of sex and violence, may I recommend George R. R. Martin's "A Game of Thrones?" Under no circumstances, however, should you read this book.

This book offers little in terms of literary merit or entertainment value. A chore to read, a lack of humor, a bland plot, one-dimensional characters. If satire is the author's intended goal, he does a very poor job accomplishing said goal.

How? Thats what I ask. I have read others in the male pig gendre, Tucker Max, Darren Bryce. I admit laughing at the utter chaos from Max and Bryce, damned, there is a story line. Kultgen gives us the same thing over and over and over. Have sex, think about sex, degrading sex with women, more sex, more observations about sex with strangers he sees. Not much of a story and tons of real garbage. Not my cup of tea.

I really, REALLY wanted to like this novel. I really did. I paid the full price of admission and I set aside an entire Saturday... and I read it straight through, too. Cover-to-cover in maybe 3-4 hours. I gave it a truly fair reading -- and parts of it, a re-read. And, the thing is... that I wish I didn't have to say this... because even now, even after I've read it, I STILL want to like it more than I do... but so much here is simply missing.

Essentially, the novel, after an astonishgly strong start, slowly loses the force of its raw and vibrant open... and you realize that what passed for striking originality at the beginning is quite frankly the writer's only gimmick -- and it IS a gimmick, however likable the gimmick is -- and the dissapointment grows as the novel... um, climaxes.

I hate to say it, but this is strictly juvenilia. I found myself re-writing it in my minds-eye as I read it -- the thought did occur to me that a filmed version would be a MASSIVE home run if a guy like Quinten Tarantino ever got his hands on it.

I will, however, still be looking forward to Kultgen's next book.

I think it was the writer Gary Indiana who said something like, "The problem with young people is their lives are not endlessly interesting, although they think so." That is the problem with this book: it is not the empty endless sex or the provocative language or the fact the protagonist seems to fill his days only with meaningless sex, thoughts of sex, and video games. That's fun and funny for a few pages, almost shocking in a sophomoric `let's see if I can gross you out' way a la early Brett Easton Ellis and/or Chuck Palahniuk. But then it becomes a very serious bore. Both of those other writers, whether you like them or not, tell stories that go somewhere. This one goes to the couch, to the mall, and to the bedroom and that's it. The end. It is also told in a monotone that indicates even the first person narrator is bored with it all. Why would the writer think we aren't too?

The title of the book is very deceiving; I was expecting a unique view in to the struggles of the average American male with a detailed discussion of gender roles and or a perspective opposite of the feminist movement. What I got was some guy talking about how he wants to bang everything with a pulse and the constant whining of how his girl friend's start out at the best girls in the world but lose interest of having sex with him after a year and eventually try to force a marriage a out of him. The book is not as funny as it claims to be and the vocabulary seems to come straight from and 8th graders mouth. This book is for that guy who has a girlfriend (most likely 5-8 years younger than him: like one of those douche bags who as a high school senior dated freshmen girls ) but lacks ambition to do or acquire anything else do your brain a favor and skip this trash.

[...]

I think you have to take this book for what it is worth. It is not going to win any awards for its technical writing prowess nor will it break any new ground in the world of fiction. It is an extremely entertaining look at the world through the eyes of a young male in his 20s. The humor in the book can at times trump the storyline, but those times make the book incredibly enjoyable.

I highly recommend taking the quick read...you will not be disappointed.

If this book really does represent the average American male, I would like to know immediately so I can dedicate my life to becoming a lesbian. Or start a program to chemically castrate every male in the country. This is literally the most depressing book I've ever read.

My top subject says it all. He's just a meat head. Girls, you know the kind: primal instincts, gathers other men to agree with their sleez-ball opinions on how other men are also like dogs. This one just developed literary skills. Please, only sleez-balls will find this book relating to true life.