Customer Reviews

Watch Out

5 star:		(43)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

I couldn't put this book down and finished it in one night. So why am I giving it only 1 star? Because I expected something more frankly. I was very let down by the shabby plot. OK so maybe for this style of book, the plot is unimportant. Regardless, it's just about a guy who is waiting for an interview that never happens. Then the "climax" is a huge let down, and then the book seems to fall apart into a series of stories including the character's past. The chapter about "Britney Spears", though the name is never mentioned, left a lot, and I mean A LOT to be desired. With the amount of hate some people have for her, I would have much preferred a silly vicious rant from someone who can't spell. Yes, that'd be more entertaining. Each chapter is about three pages long. I guess it's good for those with a short attention span. This may not be seen as a downfall, but for some reason it annoys me with this book.

If you just like reading graphic novels, maybe you'll find this more interesting than me.

I admit that some of it IS entertaining, that's why I picked up the book, hoping I'd find more of this entertainment within. Ultimately the entertainment value severely lacked, as I kept hoping something would happen other than the same old thing. He plays with himself and talks about how everyone wants him. He mentions everyone looks like David Bowie, though a twist of David Bowie. It's kind of cute, but it really does get repetitive and unimaginative after awhile. Also he uses "Watch Out" far too much, and in an annoying fashion.

Joseph is a fantastic salesman. Let me stress FANTASTIC. He has many followers though most of them have never actually read his book. But it seems that those who have, LOVE his book. I'm the odd person out here apparently.

If you buy this book and randomly read passages with your friends you will most likely be entertained. As a whole book, I wasn't impressed though. I wouldn't buy this book for the price it's offered now. I am trying to sell it for $10 though myself. I just don't want to lose so much money on this because I really feel it was a waste of my money. Unfortunate.

I adore comedy, philosophy and I appreciate dark humor. This book is for shock value. An intelligent reader will hopefully not fall into the ego trap, "only an elite reader will understand this book". It will leave one feeling dirty and mentally dismembered. It is not really all that funny, although it is meant to be tongue in cheek. I did not want this book in my house when I finished reading it, so I threw it in the recycle bin. It reminded me of a ouji board that I had to dipose of lest it beome a vortex to bring evil into the room. Yes, it was that strange. Not worth wasting one's time. If you value your brain and find your sensibilities to be sacred, avoid this book.

Watch Out is like a nightmare you don't want to wake from. It does what any good novel should do -- transport you to a world so alien yet so convincing, you begin to see your own world through its warped lens, and in the case of Watch Out, through the eyes of its protagonist Jonathan Barrows. "A star needs a dark background in order to shine," Barrows declares early on. "I am unblemished by the taint of human scum." Next to Barrows's narcissism, Nietzche looks like Richard Simmons.

In fact, to call Barrows the protagonist is misleading. A protagonist is surrounded by other characters, however minor. Barrows is surrounded by carbon-based Zeros. Or as he puts it: "The world exists only in order to be digested by Me. I gourmandize everyone who gets in My way."

Suglia's writing has the poetic power of a runaway snowball, insistent & consistent enough to sustain the trance. When I say I couldn't put the book down, I mean it literally. The writing is that good.

Watch Out will no doubt gain much of its notoriety from its more shockingly violent & sexually perverse scenes (and there are many of them, and they are all those things). But if I had to compare the experience of reading the novel to anything, it would be to the feeling I had while first watching Wernor Herzog's Even Dwarfs Started Small: you can't quite believe you're seeing what your eyes are telling you you're seeing, you don't quite know if what is happening is really happening, you're utterly unsure who to root for & who to root against -- and in the end, you don't care about any of that. Because what you're witnessing, what you're in fact experiencing, is a world so genuine, so deeply felt, so authentically disturbing, you want it to end now, and when it ends, you watch it again & again, exhausted & renewed.

Very entertaining, "Watch Out" breaks the monotony of same plots/different scenarios and names of most novels.

Dr. Suglia's distinguished, provocative signature is present is every page, in every word. Do not expect the cheap kind of provocative writing, though.

"Watch Out" sucks you into a parallel universe, where wit, suspense, horror, mockery comedy and some wisdom, all blend into an original, genuine novel, unlike anything I've read before.

When reading it, at first, I didn't know whether to like it or not. But, it was unimportant - for all I wanted was to continue reading it.

The book is still stuck in my mind. The plot, and the way it's presented, is quite intense, and, oh-so-funny!

I love quoting "Jonathan Barrows" precious thoughts, as "you're the result of an unhappy abortion", or " the worst thing you can do to someone is to ignore him....".

In a nutshell, "Watch Out" is amusing, smart story, told in a very refreshing, original way.

There are three things that make a novel worth reading: the story, the characters, or the writing itself. Finding a book that gets all three right is rare enough, but even rarer (I've noticed) is finding a book that gets the most important one right: the writing. It doesn't matter how clever your plot or how interesting your characters, if you can't write with some measure of skill, you are -- let's face it -- a hack.

(Nothing against hacks, per se. The name itself sounds derived from the blunt, utilitarian chops used to fell a tree, and although the process lacks precision or grace, there's no arguing it gets the job done.)

If there's one thing that can be said about Suglia's "Watch Out," it is that the man is not a hack. He can most certainly write. Every once in a while the prose is scarred by a clumsy cliche ("hard as diamonds") or made flatulent with a preponderance of ten-dollar words, but I'm not entirely sure such missteps aren't intentional. After all, the rest of the writing is so accomplished and organic, it's hard to imagine the man penning it would allow it to be flawed by anything that isn't intentionally self-mutilating.

And there's a hell of a lot of mutilation in the book. The mucilanginous metaphors sometimes drip, sometimes spurt off the page, recalling Burrough's Naked Lunch or Ellis's American Psycho. People lose toes, get shot, vomit torrents of orange fluid, and have their faces removed. And the scatology? Well, let's just say a lot of folks in the book forget to flush.

I think Suglia forgot to do some flushing, too. He has a lot to say about society's self-congratulatory lunacy, and although his point is about as hard to miss as a giant carnivorous butterfly, it's also cleverly parlayed. However, Suglia's writing may be stunning and even gut-wrenching, but it is also maddeningly unctuous -- in every definition of the word. The characters? The story? There's not really much of either. Even our main man Barrows is nothing more than an erudite flesh puppet for a self-destructive ideology. The book doesn't read like a novel so much as it does as visceral exegesis of conflicting philosophies.

This isn't so bad for a while. Suglia is funny enough to keep the repetition from drowning itself out, and he plays it straight enough to keep you turning the pages even as you're shaking your head. Unfortunately, it grows stale -- sickeningly, nauseatingly, you-will-get-dizzy-and-ill stale -- in the last forty pages or so. The book is arranged in two parts, the first of which concerns the madly narcissistic experiences of a man named Jonathan Barrows as he awaits an interview for a professorship at The School of Learning. The second part is a collected pastiche of events from Barrows' life, most of them murderous. Ostensibly a mural of his ego-mania, the second part -- placed where it is -- is gratuitous and out-of-whack. Barrows (and the readers) learn a lesson about life in the first half, but evidence of that lesson doesn't carry over to the second half. Instead, you're treated to such a slew of graphic carnage that the message of it all gets blared out by the white noise of the violence.

Suglia calls this "excessive fiction," and it's a fitting title. I haven't decided either way whether there's much utility to the practice, but I will admit that, on some level, it's entertaining, if not simultaneously distracting and off-putting. With Suglia's talent, however, I wonder how much more he could accomplish given more challenging goals. It's like Scorcese directing a twenty minute commercial for hemorrhoidal ointment. It may be funny. It may reveal unmistakable glints of the talent behind the camera. But you still get the impression that the guy is better than the things on which he's chosen to focus.

Halfway up and halfway down on this one, but --- if I may be cute -- I'll be watching out for his next book.

There are a few pages of violence which I had wished I had steered clear of in this story. On reflection, however, it may not be worse that what one might expect in a historical account of medieval times, then again, for those few pages it is that bad.

Funny? Often a riot. Irreverrent? Often beyond comprehension. Grotesque? Often. Repititous? Perhaps, it depends on how much you can take of Suglia's camp Max Stirner sendup. If you can accept the unacceptable, you will definitely not be disappointed by all the places where Suglia's fertile mind and pen will lead you.

Has "Watch Out" changed my life? it is too soon to say but not too soon to wonder. Stirner, however difficult, posed great challenges as does Suglia. I will have to re-read. I certainly will think twice before watching "Celebrity Abortions" should it make it to the air.

Joseph is a founding member of the Riot Lit Collective, a small group of writers who have banded together on the Internet. Keep an eye on them.

Suglia hopes to make an impression with his novel "Watch Out". "Watch out" is the refrain, throughout, a heightened state of alert pumped into the brain stem with no explanation and no true context. "Watch Out" is the story, or several stories, of Professor Jonathan Barrows, a cold, violent, self-pleasuring egoist.

The world of Jonathan Barrows is grotesque, stupid, and, like Jonathan Barrows, focused on Jonathan Barrows. While it is not rare for characters to have an exceptionally large ego, in this case Jonathan's view of the world is largely corroborated by the world's responses to him--even taking into account the self-colored glasses we're reading through.

Jonathan Barrows is the pinnacle of humanity--so far removed that he, at times, considers himself not a member of humanity at all; while at other times he considers himself the only human. We join him on a trip to a small college town where he is to have an interview, and the first half of the book follows that arc--from the filth-ridden train that introduces us to Jonathan's contempt all the way through to a FINAL SHOWDOWN ORGY with his interviewer.

The latter half of the book is comprised of increasingly violent and surreal vignettes of Jonathan's formative years, plus one farewell send-off to cap things--the only indication in the whole work that there might be some semblance of law and order in the world represented.

Jonathan's incessant auto-arousal grows tiresome, but is balanced with the surreal abusement and dislivingmentation of a number of other parties. Suglia pushes the human body's natural resilience to absurd and engrossing dimensions with his vivid descriptions.

The language used is colorful and clever--Suglia is a skilled user and playful inventor of language, and the inventions intensify the unsettling mindset, the disturbitude of it all. I laughed frequently while reading, either at a turn of phrase or at the audacity of the character. Laughter was both glee and surprise, though some scenes gnawed on my brain and others verged on making me uncomfortable.

"Watch Out", with its detached violence, surreallity, and repetition, puts me in mind of a modern pop culture riff on JG Ballard's "The Atrocity Exhibition". Finishing the book left me slightly disconnected from the world, as my mind struggled to come to terms with what I'd just read. It had no real denouement, with the first climax coming halfway through and subsequent climaxes coming more quickly until it just sort of withered off at the end. Watch Out!

I recently learned that Watch Out will be made into a film. I can't wait to see it! But I must say that I cannot imagine a film justly illustrating the beauty of this book. One can only hope that Suglia will have some sort of creative control over the project. The imagery in Watch Out is astounding. The man paints a vivid picture without grandiloquence. Reading this text, I felt that I was there, in Benton Harbor. And I wanted to hide! The absurdity was both frightening and exhilarating. If you're tired of hackneyed "bestseller" fiction, read Watch Out for a novel experience.

This is a sophomoric effort to emulate Georges Bataille. It fails abysmally. This is clearly one of the worst books ever written. You can read this garbage in a half-hour, but you'll never get that half-hour back. I cannot fathom how anyone with any modicum of intelligence can actually praise this garbage, unless you're a 13-year old kid who likes dirty words and torture-porn.

I read a lot of books from a variety of genres. I've read of the most ordinary and extraordinary characters in literature. I can honestly say that I have never seen a character like Jonathan Barrows, the narrator of Suglia's masterpiece, Watch Out. Barrows cannot be described in a few words; he probably can't even be contained in many words, or even the novel itself. You've never seen anyone like him, and you probably will never find another with his qualities.

As other people have probably pointed out here, Barrows is completely obsessed with himself. He pleasures himself constantly, using pictures of his genitals and a video of himself taking a shower. He is continually adored by everyone around him, yet he despises them all for their inequality as compared to his perfection. This lack of fellowship with the rest of humanity leads Jonathan Barrows to say and do things that make Patrick Bateman of American Psycho look like Mr. Rogers. His narcissism knows no bounds, just as his murderous nature cannot be confined by social mores. The latter part of the novel is much more disturbing, as Jonathan relives a handful of his defining childhood experiences, as well as the disturbing mutilation and murder of "X," known to many as the world's biggest female pop star.

Joseph Suglia, the author himself, claims that this is the crowning achievement of his life's work, and it may well be the most important novel in years. After reading Watch Out and discussing it with the author, I'm honestly inclined to believe him. This book deserves to be a bestseller. It begs to be studied, analyzed, even reviled by the weaker readers of the world. Take a chance on Watch Out, then tell your friends to do the same. You cannot afford to miss an experience like this one.