Customer Reviews

Sock

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

An unblinkered sort of book, "Sock" entertains while it instructs. There's a little bit of Martin Amis here, angry and funny and dark. There's a decent refutation of Pascal as well -- if you like that sort of thing there's another good one by Stanislaw Lem you might look up. The pop culture references are sometimes a bit forced, but more often than not it's fun to think about how the individual references relate to the story itself: a nice, concise way to dimensionalize the narrative. The references have a great reach, along the lines of early Mystery Science Theatre 3000. It starts with the Rolling Stones (great re-purposing of existing material) and manages to reach as far back (out?) to Safe as Milk / Trout Mask Replica vintage Captain Beefheart. Click Clack.

As a novel, "Sock" is really somewhat basic, it transposes traditional stock elements of "mysteries" into a more abstract set of events. The technique could be interpreted as a gimmick, if it weren't for the fact that the whodunit aspects aren't the real driving force of the narrative. That said, the prose is the thing and it remains fully charged throughout (honestly: no let down in the second act). In fact, in many ways the story itself could easily be considered secondary. The real driving force is some pointed stabs at capital "F" faith, god and all that comes with it. You'll find an undressing of the notion of being agnostic and a strong call for atheism. Rats, rats lay down flat.

This orientation does manage to depart, again, from the typical novel form and end our little story with a sort of essay in unmitigated and convincing favor of sanity over faith. Sock lets you know in no uncertain terms that it's time to put god on the shelf with the rest of your toys and start living like a thinking adult. Given the current tone of life in the good old U.S., this is a brave act and I think we owe Mr. Jillette our of thanks for adding to the ever more urgent literature and ideas capable of getting us out of the dark ages and into touch with a more real world. Time to replace superstition with a more genuine sense of ourselves and the world we live in. Hey! If you still need something to believe, believe in Sock. La Rossa extends her hand.

When I read an article about this book coming out, I thought Best. Idea. Ever. An Atheist sock monkey telling a murder mystery. Brilliant!

I wouldn't have read it had it not been by Penn Jillette. First things first: I used to hate Penn and Teller. Back when Penn did all the voice over work for Comedy Central, he drove me nuts. But my perspective changed dramaticly after the Showtime series "Bull****." The show was fantastic. I agreed with almost every single thing on there, and it gave me a whole new dimension to who Penn Jillette was: An Atheist, like me. He's very charasmatic, convincing, and intelligent on the show. I'd even go so far as to say I have a man-crush on him.

This book is really an Atheist manifesto thinly disguised as a murder mystery told through the POV of a Sock Monkey. There is a story there, but it gets sidetracked a LOT and goes on about social commentary, including quite a bit on religion. All the lead characters are Atheist as well. And because it comes from such a hard slant, anyone of faith may have a pretty tough time getting through this.

Most people might have a tough time anyway. The writing starts off very dense. Very stream of consciousness. The level of the density at the beginning doesn't hold up all the way through, though. And the constant song refrences get kind of old. Sometimes they really seem thrown in. If it weren't the most famouse chorus lines from each song, I might not have minded.

What I think the story really is about is a love story between a gay man and a straight man without turning into a traditional love story. I am going to assume that this being Penn's first novel, and the first persion perspective, that it is mostly his actual voice coming through in the book. If so, then I have to say that he is probably the most well adjusted human being on the face of this planet. The world needs a lot more people like him.

The one thing that turned me off (besides the scant dialogue, which doesn't even apear until 50+ pages in) would be the resolution. I thought it was a bit of a cop out. It lost a little bit of its edge for me there.

All in all Sock got me to do something I haven't done in two years: Read a book. I'm not going to say it was great, but it was good. It kept me thinking about it long after I finished it, which is what every good book should do.

Penn argues for atheism, subtly promotes the Libertarian Party (pp. 96-97), argues against newage (p. 101), criticizes Buddhism (pp. 139, 186), explains cold reading (pp. 184-185), puts Scientology in its place (pp. 163, 210), and tells an entertaining story of a NYPD diver and murder from the point of view of the diver's boyhood sock monkey.

I enjoyed the book very much. The ending of many paragraphs with pop culture references was at first annoying, but it became more comfortable as the book progressed, and the lines were well selected. (There's a site on the Internet that lists them all and where they came from.)

My only complaint is a very jarring change of voice that occurs in a paragraph on pp. 166-167 ("a friend of ours").

I think the other reviewers here have covered the bases (or, basis) pretty thoroughly and they all gave great reviews, so I won't reiterate what has been already said. Though if I may take but just a moment of your time.

I recently bought Sock as to have something new to read while I traveled on a 2,600-mile road trip. I had already known that Penn Jillette was opinionated and intelligent, though I felt I might be taking a risk by reading him. I mean it was going to be a long ride and I needed something that would keep me entertained. Well, I was more than entertained by Sock; it really offered powerful insight for me to contemplate between pages.

I read constantly, modern and classic, many genres. I love books that push the proverbial envelope, whether with prose or with insight, preferably both. Moreover, while Jillette may not possess grammatical perfection, he does possess a style all his own. It's what he writes, the boldly stated truth, which makes this novel so powerful. Sock is filled with truth and emotion, and it points out the similarity and the difference between the two.

One thing I would like to mention is the Atheist air that surrounds this novel. Though I'm sure those who hold strict moralistic and religious beliefs might be appalled or even offended by some of the material, they shouldn't be. The way I see it, those very individuals could view this novel as a way to reaffirm their strength in their beliefs, not simply turn up their noses and make excuses without even reading it, or they might just learn something about themselves and learn to think for themselves. I would really love those people to read this book, whether they agree or not, just read it. However, my understanding tells me that they won't. It's their loss, really.

I feel so much attention is brought about by the atheist air that surrounds this book. And, as the saying goes: "There's no such thing as bad press". But, Sock is not completely atheist in context, even if Jillette is a self-proclaimed atheist. It's being used as a label because atheism is the most common term. Overall, Sock is existential more than atheistic. When someone says that he or she is an existentialist, no one gives a damn. But, when someone says that they are an atheist, people go crazy, whether they agree or disagree doesn't matter, you now have their attention.

What's the difference between atheism and existentialism you may ask? Well, atheism focuses its argument upon the non-existence of god, while existentialism focuses its argument upon OUR existence. Existentialism brings us closer to the reality of solipsism. And, the argument of the solipsist focuses on the fact that the individual self is all that is known or can be known. And that my friend is really the point being made with this novel. Sock just also happens to be an entertaining, heartfelt, intellectual story with a point. Please buy this book. Do it not because I asked please. Do it because you owe it to yourself.

One more thing, I gave Sock 5 stars because frankly, it's the best work I've read all year, and being that I've read selections from the "ivory tower" of literature this year as well, that's saying a lot.

I found Jillette's (has anyone ever referred to him that way?) novel on a table of books marked "You CAN judge a book by its cover." The bookstore's attempt to be clever I assume. I read the back cover and was immediately intrigued. Having now finished reading it (a task accomplished in about a day and half), I can honestly tell you there is no way you can judge this book by its cover.

The hyperkinetic style draws you in immediately. But it's more than just razzle-dazzle. Insight, wit and clever observations leap off every page. Jillette knows how he feels and he's not holding back. Nobody else with the possible exception of Michael Moore has cajones this big. If PC is your bag, this book is NOT for you. If you voted for W, this book is NOT for you. If you think there is too much sex and violence on TV, then put the book down, walk away and ask the nice man at the bookstore where the Danielle Steel novels are. If you think the world is pretty [expletive deleted] up and sometimes it makes you want to scream, then buy this book right now and savour every word.

The book is told in the first person from the point of view of a sock monkey. The sock monkey is owned by an NYPD diver who pulls dead bodies out of a river. After he winds up fishing out his ex, he and a gay hairdresser friend take it upon themselves to solve catch the killer. It's an interesting story, though WHO dunnit is not what is most important here; what is important is why--and the journey along the way. If you can turn off your mind, relax and float down stream, then you might want to let Sock take you on that journey.

What an exhilirating piece of fiction this book turned out to be! I went in with certain expectations - as it seems a person must when reading a book by the larger, louder, bravado-filled half of the Penn and Teller comedy-magic team - and had those expectations fulfilled and thensome.

On to the story. A New York City police diver - you know, the guys who go swimming in polluted rivers to find dead bodies and such - retrieves a female body from the Hudson River one day, and - wouldn't you know it - it's a former girlfriend of his. In fact, this girl could have been The One. So, the diver, along with - I'm not making this up - his (...) stylist, sets out on a vigilante mission to find the killer, which gets even more complex when five other bodies are found that seem to be related to this murder. Pedestrian plot, to be sure.

Oh, but wait, this entire story is narrated by the diver's sock monkey, Dickie, and now we begin to see the brilliance of the book. It's got style out the wazoo, but what's not immediately apparent is that Penn - yes the comedy magician - has got ideas. And ideas that actually mean something in the grander scheme of things. Where do we come from? What is our purpose? Why does it matter whether we kill people? Is someone really going to punish us for our trespasses?

Sock is filled with pop culture references; in fact, nearly every paragraph in the book ends with a song lyric or slogan of some kind. Having what I feel is a pretty large wealth of pop culture knowledge, there were still a bunch that I didn't get, but that didn't detract from the story at all, because each was designed to go along with the preceding paragraph.

I must obviously recommend this book with my highest approval rating, even though I don't actually have an approval rating system. I think you too will be surprised at the depth of Penn's insight. He's certainly got a great future in writing if he so chooses.

I had a hard time getting into Sock at first because it is so darn weird (a stream-of-consciousness narration by a sock monkey peppered with more pop culture references than you can shake a stick at), but it picked up pretty quickly, and I soon got pulled into the story and finished the book in one afternoon. It's a murder mystery, but not like anything Agatha Christie ever wrote (did she even have a sock monkey, I wonder?). It's a well-crafted mystery, though, with well-crafted suspense, and not at all predictable. I found myself mildly disappointed in the end, because while the solution is a satisfying one, mystery-wise, it also reveals that the whole book was nothing but a fable designed to push the author's moral agenda. It happened to be an extremely entertaining fable, and I happen to generally agree with most of the author's agenda (I mean, hey, it's everyone's favorite Libertarian magician Penn Jillette!), but I was disappointed that the author broke character after the big reveal and explicity made his point (and I'm paraphrasing here): "Hey, I wrote this book because I think [spoiler redacted], so don't do it, mmkay?" But I enjoyed the rest of it immensely, and years of reading Neal Stephenson has made me able to enjoy good books with crappy endings by pretending the endings don't exist.

(Advocates of positive portrayal of queers in the media will appreciate the book's normal, everyday treatment of a principal gay character, and the fact that his burly masculine heterosexual police officer friend doesn't get defensive or even care when people mistake them for being partners.)

There's something positive to be said for browsing - publishers know this and most authors should as well - random wanderings in bookstores tend to sell a lot of books that otherwise might not get picked up.

As a publisher (nightwares Books, books.nightwares.com) I've become more and more aware of the superiority of bookstores over online selling for this purpose. We hear often of people "surfing" online but that's true only to an extent. Most people who go online are in a directed search. They aren't browsing in the way a wanderer among physical shops is browsing.

Browsing was what brought me to _Sock_, the first major fiction work by Penn Jillette, and I'm glad it did.

Some of you might find his name vaguely familiar; but others are saying, "The Penn Jillette? That Penn Jillette?" It was that name recognition that led me to take the book off the shelf.

Yes, that Penn Jillette, the professional magician, half of the act known as Penn and Teller. The loquacious half. The larger, more intimidating half. And, apparently, the novelist half.

_Sock_ is bizarre and therefore lovely. The story is told from the perspective of Dickie, who is - really - a stuffed sock-monkey owned by the protagonist, whose name is kept hidden from us through most of the novel; he's simply known as the Little Fool.

The Little Fool is a diver for the New York Police Department. It's his job to swim in waters polluted by sewage and to locate bodies. Suicides, drug overdoses, accidental drownings and murders - he's seen them all, and through Dickie's singular, striking voice we're shown one that really begins to make a difference.

The Little Fool's ex-girlfriend Nell is one of the bodies he finds one day.

There ensues a slow spiral into obsession as the Little Fool tries to track down her murderer. Along the way he encounters his late girlfriend's best friend, a gay male beautician named Tommy who's half-convinced that the Little Fool is a deeply closeted gay man. (He may or may not be - Jillette leaves that quite ambiguous.) The two men spend more time together than not and uncover the means by which Nell's murderer - who is a serial killer - chooses his victims.

And, singlehandedly, they set out to put a stop to it.

Dickie, as a narrator, is immersed in pop culture and nearly every paragraph of the novel has a reference. Some are fairly obvious and a few are rather obscure, and the style is a cross between stream-of-consciousness and nearly clinical detachment. It's impossible to not be taken in by the tale, but throughout is the sense that we, as readers, are not being given the whole story.

We're not, and we find out how and why at the end. (And no, it's not that stupidly obvious literary twist you might be thinking of; and no, it's not that other, second most obvious twist either.)

Jillette as a writer is effective; it's a tribute to his talents that I was able to not impose his timbre and meter over the prose. Jillette's spoken voice is singular and quite recognizable, as is his style of delivery; but nowhere in the book does that verbal style of his surface. Hearing him speak onstage is one experience; reading him is another entirely. There are a couple passages that seem to ring a little hollow when dealing with characters' motivations and fantasies, but these are not so glaring as to ruin the value of the story.

Penn Jillette is also an atheist, and that features significantly in _Sock_. His unabashedly rational and humanist outlook is one of the things that gives _Sock_ its stark power. He's also (to the best of my knowledge) heterosexual, but deals extremely well with gay characters, despite the semi-stereotypical occupation of Tommy.

_Sock_ is a significant first novel and a well-written, engaging piece of whodunit fiction; it's one of those lucky finds that I hope others will make as well.

I am a big fan of P&T and have enjoyed many of their prior books (How to Play in Traffic, et al.). I really like what Penn has to say even though I don't always agree with him. I also don't mind the way he says it, but I agree with some other reviewers that, in thinking about it, he could probably get the message out there as well or better by toning some elements down just a pinch (i.e., sexuality, language and blasphemy).

That said, I'm sending this book to my closest pals because I think that there are some incredible ideas in here presented in a magnificent way. The story was very good--a nice, simple taut thriller. The characters, however, were brilliant. Penn has tremendous insight into people and I feel like I learn so much by his observations and characterizations. Philosophically, the book is powerful and, by presenting itself in the context of characters and story, it is able to convey more complex ideas in a way that really gets to the heart of things.

Religion, sex, prejudice, love, faith--I mean, he covers ALL of this and then some. He peppers it with observations, pet peeves, and pop-culture that I really enjoyed.

You have to get past his brashness to see his point--well, he might argue that the brashness is part of the point--but I think this is powerful stuff. A neat book to read and discuss with lots of fun, self-aware moments.

Yes, the author is that guy from Penn and Teller. It's a
loudmouthed novel told from the point of view of a "wammerjammer" sock
monkey belonging to a tall NYC police diver who finds his ex-girlfriend's
murdered body and then sets out to find the murderer. He is joined by his
gay hairstylist buddy in sleuthing and the whole ride is peppered with
philosophical riffs, rock and roll riffs and popular culture riffs. A
little over-the-top at times, much like the author's hairstyles of the
Eighties, but very enjoyable.