The Lie - Chad Kultgen

Every now and again, I worry that I will never publish a book.

My next step in this process is to go out and buy a book, and at least begin to read it.

This will accomplish one of two things. Either:

1) I see what is worthwhile about this book, and can begin to apply the fundamental and commercial elements to my own work or

2) Realize that there is so much crap out there that gets published, if I have some modicum of patience, someone will publish it.

The Lie by Chad Kultgen falls into this later category. Previously, when I would see "Also author of..." I assume that this means there is some reason I should know that name. This is a clever technique to place some measure of high value on them(he's done it before!), and some low value on you (Oh of course you wouldn't know about it). Well, regardless, one of these labels is not just affixed, not just added as a post-production clipart atop of the cover, but printed in, quite obviously by the writer's devise, upon the front cover.

From as near as I can reason, which is a result of paying as much attention to the characters as I would people who actually act like this, the book is about how Heather is sleeping with Kyle to get to Brett, or some other similar college (though sounds more like high school) nonsense. I think college is only a clever device to be able to have frat parties and dorms as a story expedient.

The story is told from the perspective of three narrators, sequentially: Kyle, the self-loathing chode who is apparrently a sexual savant, Heather, the self-absorbed valley girl you had in that one intro to criminal justice class back in Freshman year, and Brett, the pretentious rich asshole, whom you hate a little less only because he hates other rich kids too.All of the narrators just seem a bit unrealistic. I mean, characters aren't supposed to be actual people: they're representations of people, but regardless, Kultgen overshoots a little bit and ends up closer to characature rather than character. To be fair however, all of his characters have completely unique voices.

Kyle talks a lot like you or I might, except with a measure of self-loathing that is stereotypical of a nerdy college freshman. Despite only ever having slept with one girl, he is apparrently a whiz kid at sex, which is not a digression, but painfully relevant to the plot.

Heather's telling of her parts of the story are sometimes interesting, but only when dialogue isn't concerned. Kultgen's attempt for realism involves Heather retelling in the following style:

"She was like, 'blah blah'
I was like, 'blah blah'
Then he was like, 'blah blah'"

Yes, quite. It was endearing once or twice.

Brett, however, despite being immensely popular with women, talks with a massively eruditic vocabulary. Actually, when he talks, I think of Dr.Manhattan from The Watchmen. Supposedly "the hottest guy in school" and "one of the richest", he has a detachment from women that views them as "whores," not in the literal sense, "that [he] wasn't paying them to fuck [him], they were whores nonetheless becausethey would fuck [him] and they would do this because they understood [him] to represent money that could potentially be theirs in various forms of gifts, dinners, et cetera. Furthermore, if one were lucky or skilled enough to sink her hooks in and eventually wed [him], the money [he] would represent would be more than any common whore would make in ten thousand careers" (Kultgen 36).

Yeah, actual quote. It was as though Kultgen has just read I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell and thought, "Ah! That's what my story is missing! A self-entitled, rich, college kid with absolutely no compassion towards women, in fact, quite the opposite!"

The entire reading feels very asinine. The banality is occasionally broken up by clever little usages of the round-robin style narration:In the midst of Heather meeting Brett for the first time in person, she begins to remember why it was she was sleeping with Kyle, and begins thinking amorously of Brett:"Kyle was really the best guy I'd ever had sex with, but I was pretty sure Brett was probably better." - Heather

And then the resounding first line of Brett's narrative on the next page, in bold face:

"She was a cunt"I chuckled. All in all though, these little diversions were nothing more than that: diversions from an otherwise uninspired novel that has sought to give me a bit of hope.